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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)
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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.”

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The US Election by Numbers

Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
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The US Election by Numbers

Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)

Swing states, electoral college votes, candidates up and down the ballot, and millions of potential voters: Here is the US election, broken down by numbers.

- Two -

Several independents ran -- and at least one, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, stumbled into a number of eyebrow-raising headlines.

But in the end, the presidential race comes down to a binary choice, with the two candidates from the major parties -- Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump -- seeking to lead a polarized America.

- Five -

November 5 -- Election Day, traditionally held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November.

- Seven -

The number of swing states -- those which don't clearly favor one party over the other, meaning they are up for grabs.

Harris and Trump are courting voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, concentrating their campaign efforts there in a push to ensure victory.

In a razor-tight election, just a handful of votes in any of those states could decide the outcome.

- 34 and 435 -

Voters won't just decide the White House occupant on Election Day -- they will also hit refresh on the US Congress.

Thirty-four Senate seats and all 435 spots in the House of Representatives are up for grabs.

In the House, members serve a two-year term. Republicans currently have the majority, and Harris's Democrats will be hoping for a turnaround.

In the Senate, 34 seats out of 100 are available, for a six-year term. Republicans are hoping to overturn the narrow Democratic majority.

- 538 -

Welcome to the Electoral College, the indirect system of universal suffrage that governs presidential elections in the United States.

Each state has a different number of electors -- calculated by adding the number of their elected representatives in the House, which varies according to population, to the number of senators (two per state).

Rural Vermont, for example, has just three electoral votes. Giant California, meanwhile, has 54.

There are 538 electors in total scattered across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. To take the White House, a candidate must win 270 votes.

- 774,000 -

The number of poll workers who made sure the 2020 election ran smoothly, according to the Pew Research Center.

There are three types of election staff in the United States.

The majority are poll workers -- recruited to do things like greet voters, help with languages, set up voting equipment, and verify voter IDs and registrations.

Election officials are elected, hired or appointed to carry out more specialized duties such as training poll workers, according to Pew.

Poll watchers are usually appointed by political parties to observe the ballot count -- expected to be particularly contentious this year, thanks to Trump's refusal to agree to unconditionally accept the result.

Many election workers have already spoken to AFP about the pressure and threats they are receiving ahead of the November 5 vote.

- 75 million -

As of November 2, more than 75 million Americans had voted early, according to a University of Florida database.

Most US states permit in-person voting or mail-in voting to allow people to deal with scheduling conflicts or an inability to cast their ballots on election day itself on November 5.

- 244 million -

The number of Americans who will be eligible to vote in 2024, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

How many of those will actually cast their ballot remains to be seen, of course. But the Pew Research Center says that the midterm elections of 2018 and 2022, and the presidential vote of 2020, produced three of the highest turnouts of their kind seen in the United States in decades.

"About two-thirds (66 percent) of the voting-eligible population turned out for the 2020 presidential election -- the highest rate for any national election since 1900," Pew says on its website.

That translated to nearly 155 million voters, according to the Census Bureau.