Raqqa Families Concerned over Iraq’s Transfer of Detained Relatives to Damascus

Raqqa families fear detained relatives in Iraq will be handed over to Damascus. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Raqqa families fear detained relatives in Iraq will be handed over to Damascus. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Raqqa Families Concerned over Iraq’s Transfer of Detained Relatives to Damascus

Raqqa families fear detained relatives in Iraq will be handed over to Damascus. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Raqqa families fear detained relatives in Iraq will be handed over to Damascus. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Videos have surfaced of the arrest of individuals, who hail from the Syrian city of Raqqa and whom Iraqi authorities claim are members of ISIS. Their families have expressed concern that Iraq may hand them over to Damascus, asserting that they had only headed to Iraq from Syria to earn a living.

On Saturday, Iraq announced the arrest of dozens of Syrians from Raqqa, who were allegedly found in the possession of explosives.

Suad al-Hamadi, mother of one of the detainees, Abdullah Mohammed, 17, said that he had traveled to Iraq’s Sinjar at the beginning of the year.

Abdullah, along with his cousins and neighbors, have sought employment in Iraq to earn a living for his impoverished family, she said, adding that he has been working there for eight months and usually enters Syria through smuggling routes.

Yasser Mustafa al-Hussein, 34, who managed to escape detention, explained that some 55 Raqqa residents had decided to seek employment in Iraq due to the crippling economic crisis in their own country. They decided to travel to the neighboring country through smuggling routes and seek jobs in construction in Sinjar.

The borders between the neighbors have been closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Yasser recounted that on Thursday, they boarded a bus from Raqqa and headed to Iraq. When they reached the border, the group spilt in to: One went off with smugglers and another headed towards the border, where they were ambushed by Iraqi forces.

Yasser was part of the smuggler group that was still on the Syrian side of the border when the ambush happened. He accused the smugglers of conspiring with the Iraqi border guards.

The group has since returned to Raqqa. Yasser’s younger brother Maher, 22, is among the detainees still in Iraq.

His anguished mother pleaded with Baghdad to release him and the others, stressing that they were only seeking to earn a living.

Khalil Hamadi, Abdullah’s father, expressed concern that the group would be turned over to Syrian security forces.

“This was the first time that he has ever left Raqqa. It was poverty that made me agree to his traveling to Iraq.”



Win the Vote but Still Lose? Behold America’s Electoral College

Voters head into a polling location to cast their ballots on the last day of early voting for the 2024 election on November 1, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Getty Images/AFP)
Voters head into a polling location to cast their ballots on the last day of early voting for the 2024 election on November 1, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Win the Vote but Still Lose? Behold America’s Electoral College

Voters head into a polling location to cast their ballots on the last day of early voting for the 2024 election on November 1, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Getty Images/AFP)
Voters head into a polling location to cast their ballots on the last day of early voting for the 2024 election on November 1, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Getty Images/AFP)

When political outsider Donald Trump defied polls and expectations to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, he described the victory as "beautiful."

Not everyone saw it that way -- considering that Democrat Clinton had received nearly three million more votes nationally than her Republican rival. Non-Americans were particularly perplexed that the second-highest vote-getter would be the one crowned president.

But Trump had done what the US system requires: win enough individual states, sometimes by very narrow margins, to surpass the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to win the White House.

Now, on the eve of the 2024 election showdown between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, the rules of this enigmatic and, to some, outmoded, system is coming back into focus.

- Why an Electoral College? -

The 538 members of the US Electoral College gather in their state's respective capitals after the quadrennial presidential election to designate the winner.

A presidential candidate must obtain an absolute majority of the "electors" -- or 270 of the 538 -- to win.

The system originated with the US Constitution in 1787, establishing the rules for indirect, single-round presidential elections.

The country's Founding Fathers saw the system as a compromise between direct presidential elections with universal suffrage, and an election by members of Congress -- an approach rejected as insufficiently democratic.

Because many states predictably lean Republican or Democratic, presidential candidates focus heavily on the handful of "swing" states on which the election will likely turn -- nearly ignoring some large states such as left-leaning California and right-leaning Texas.

Over the years, hundreds of amendments have been proposed to Congress in efforts to modify or abolish the Electoral College. None has succeeded.

Trump's 2016 victory rekindled the debate. And if the 2024 race is the nail-biter that most polls predict, the Electoral College will surely return to the spotlight.

- Who are the 538 electors? -

Most are local elected officials or party leaders, but their names do not appear on ballots.

Each state has as many electors as it has members in the US House of Representatives (a number dependent on the state's population), plus the Senate (two in every state, regardless of size).

California, for example, has 54 electors; Texas has 40; and sparsely populated Alaska, Delaware, Vermont and Wyoming have only three each.

The US capital city, Washington, also gets three electors, despite having no voting members in Congress.

The Constitution leaves it to states to decide how their electors' votes should be cast. In every state but two (Nebraska and Maine, which award some electors by congressional district), the candidate winning the most votes theoretically is allotted all that state's electors.

- Controversial institution -

In November 2016, Trump won 306 electoral votes, well more than the 270 needed.

The extraordinary situation of losing the popular vote but winning the White House was not unprecedented.

Five presidents have risen to the office this way, the first being John Quincy Adams in 1824.

More recently, the 2000 election resulted in an epic Florida entanglement between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.

Gore won nearly 500,000 more votes nationwide, but when Florida -- ultimately following a US Supreme Court intervention -- was awarded to Bush, it pushed his Electoral College total to 271 and a hair's-breadth victory.

- True vote or simple formality? -

Nothing in the Constitution obliges electors to vote one way or another.

If some states required them to respect the popular vote and they failed to do so, they were subjected to a simple fine. But in July 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that states could impose punishments on such "faithless electors."

To date, faithless electors have never determined a US election outcome.

- Electoral College schedule -

Electors will gather in their state capitals on December 17 and cast votes for president and vice president. US law states they "meet and cast their vote on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December."

On January 6, 2025, Congress will convene to certify the winner -- a nervously watched event this cycle, four years after a mob of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol attempting to block certification.

But there is a difference. Last time, it was Republican vice president Mike Pence who, as president of the Senate, was responsible for overseeing the certification. Defying heavy pressure from Trump and the mob, he certified Biden's victory.

This time, the president of the Senate -- overseeing what normally would be the pro forma certification -- will be none other than today's vice president: Kamala Harris.

On January 20, the new president is to be sworn in.