The cafe and everyone inside were exiles from Raqqa – the same chefs serving up Friday roast chicken and sweet tea, the same shishas and hubbub of politics – but all carried a gloss of tragedy and exhaustion.
The place had been moved wholesale, staff and menu, across the Turkish border to the city of Gaziantep after Islamic State cast its long shadow over their home town and their lives.
Most of the customers were graduates of the extremists’ brutal jails and the rest had fled Isis in fear or disgust. The arrival of a stranger triggered unease; a few weeks earlier two of their number had been murdered at home by a spy posing as another refugee.
“If we were not wanted by Isis, why would we be here?” said one fortysomething businessman, who asked to go by the name Abu Ahmad as both his sons are on the other side of a border; for him, that might as well be an ocean away. “We are here, but our hearts are there.”
With homes and families still in Isis’s de facto capital, few have more at stake in the fight against the extremist group. Yet most are wary about the prospect of Britain joining the air campaign against their bitter enemy after a year in which Isis fighters have been unsettled but not dislodged by hundreds of bombing raids.
“Can someone really be happy if his city is bombed by everyone? No,” Abu Ahmad said, with the bleak humour that many exiles share. “Everybody bombed Raqqa. Anyone who was just annoyed by their wife decided to come and bomb Raqqa. Jordan, UAE, US, Russia, France.”
They fear that more bombs will cost more innocent lives in a city where the civilian population is now held prisoner by Isis to serve as a human shield. Many are baffled and frustrated that the city’s fate is being decided in distant capitals and conference rooms where the people of Raqqa have no presence, in debates where they have no voice.
They worry there is only a slim chance of dislodging Isis without ground troops but no obvious options to march on the city, because the opposition is a jumble of weak local militias and Kurds unwelcome in a mostly Arab city.
“People don’t like Isis at all, but if Kurdish forces come with the coalition to displace them they are both bad, and maybe some will think the least bad is Isis, so you are pushing them to join Isis,” said a nurse who reluctantly left Raqqa this autumn after the group tried to arrest him, although he still doesn’t really know why he came under suspicion.
They see hypocrisy from an international community that ignored the deaths of tens of thousands of Syrians at the hands of their own government for years, then was apparently spurred into action by Isis killings of Europeans and Americans.
“Why is this just in response to Isis? Why was no one moved when the regime was bombing us in Syria? Is it just because [terror] came to western countries? For us, it doesn’t matter which bombs are killing us,” said Mona, a teacher and activist who fled from Isis James Bond-style over the rooftops of her neighbourhood.
Most of all, the Raqqa exiles worry that western and Russian definitions of victory will mean removing one tormentor to give free rein to another, President Bashar al-Assad. Many of Raqqa’s exiles spent time in his prisons as well as in Isis jails, and see him as the main cause of their misery.
“If I went to the UK parliament to make a speech, the first thing I would say is ask them to remove the cause [of our problems], which is Assad, not the symptom which is Isis,” said Abu Ahmad. “Hundreds of thousands of people died in the last few years, and no one came to bomb Damascus.”
They accuse Assad of tacitly supporting a group whose rise has conveniently shifted global attention away from the depredations that the Syrian army and state have visited on its people. They point to fuel sales recently criticised by Americans and say government bombings in Raqqa dropped off sharply after Isis took control of the city.
“It will not benefit us [for the coalition] to fight Isis [alone] because Assad has a good relationship with them,” said Feras, an activist and medical student who was one exam short of his medical degree when government forces jailed him. He later fled Isis, but says that fighting the group in isolation will not end the war: “The Assad regime is the main problem for us.”
Amid the politics and the fears, the first worry of those with family and loved ones still inside Raqqa is civilian casualties. No one who has spent time in areas under even carefully targeted bombardment has left without stories of the innocent dead.
“In the beginning people were happy [about western airstrikes] as the regime had been bombing randomly and the coalition was much more targeted. But after a while even the coalition killed civilians, including my neighbour,” said the former nurse. “He was a 12-year-old boy, he was biking in a civilian neighbourhood, and they hit an Isis vehicle and killed him by mistake. They were trying to hit the Emir for Security of Raqqa, but unfortunately he was not in the car.”
Further north, near the border town of Tal Abyad, a vehicle full of women farmers heading out to harvest their fields was wiped out by a missile, says Abu Ahmad. Local people think they were targeted because they had wrapped their faces against sun and dust and a coalition jet mistook them for jihadis in disguise.
“Absolutely no, please tell the British parliament,” said one woman who fled Raqqa little over a month ago, unable to bear life crushed between the danger of the bombings and the privations imposed by Isis. “You cannot handle life there at all, for many reasons. The bombing in general, then Isis with their horrible rules, and the economy is destroyed, so we have no work – and it’s not just about the money, you can’t sit at home all day doing nothing like an animal.”
Parents barred their children from going out and most work was off limits to women, so whole families stayed at home going slowly crazy, said the woman, a recent chemistry graduate who asked not to be named as several relatives were still at home in Raqqa.
“You never knew what time the bombs would hit, so we preferred to stay at home most of the time. At least if they make a mistake you can die with your family, not alone in the street where no one will know who you are.”
It took her nearly 24 hours, many spent trekking in the dark with smugglers, to make the 55-mile journey to Turkey. The journey was so difficult because, after scattering among the ordinary people of Raqqa to escape the bombs, Isis has banned them from leaving, turning them into human shields.
“My family tried to leave about three times, but it is forbidden,” said Feras. “If you are very sick you can go, but there is a German doctor with Isis who must diagnose your disease; if there is no treatment available in Isis areas, he will let you go.”
That ruthless shutdown of roads out of the city is one of the clearest signs that the air campaign begun by the US and its allies last year, and combined with support for opposition troops in Iraq and Syria, has been making inroads into Isis’s grip on the city.
Raqqa has been slowly emptying of Isis families and tens of elite members of its top ranks. “Lots of commanders have sent their families to Mosul, they think the links will be cut,” said another exile, a former local official, who asked to be named as Abu Mohammed.
He would cautiously accept Britain joining airstrikes because, unusually, he wants to get rid of Isis even without a clear plan to replace them: “First get rid of Isis, we can decide after that.” But many others who have risked their lives to take on the group and are desperate for its demise, still warn that a campaign focusing only on the destruction of Isis will not end Raqqa’s suffering if Assad’s forces are able to fight on.
Russian and Iranian support for Assad has left many frightened that western powers who once described him as a tyrant are now resigned to his survival in power. “Are [airstrikes] going to help us go back to our home and destroy the regime and Isis together? They are both terrorists. How can you bomb one and leave the other, who are bombing every day, to go free?” Mona demanded.
The final worry of the citizens of Raqqa, as they dream of returning home, is that the powers bombing Isis have not given enough thought to who will replace the group.
The relatively moderate factions making up the Free Syrian Army in the area are weak and disorganised, and the Kurdish forces who have pushed Isis out of other towns are hated and feared by many in Raqqa who suspect an ethnic edge to their campaign against the extremist group. Reports of human rights abuses after they took the majority Arab border town of Ayn al-Arab have spread quickly, leading to widespread worries about the same group advancing on Raqqa under cover of coalition airstrikes.
“If they want to help, they have to choose the right partner, not Kurdish forces. Picking the wrong partner might make people react against them,” the former nurse said. “Tal Abyad is a perfect example. They used Kurdish forces as their partner and they displaced a lot of people.”
Most of all, people traumatised by a conflict that began as a revolution of hope and spiralled far beyond anyone’s worst nightmares, are wary that violence will just beget more violence.
Unsure themselves about who might be able to tackle Isis on the ground when airstrikes intensify, they have little faith that a coalition of countries which stood by as their war escalated have any better idea.
“In this situation people won’t even support the Free Syrian Army as they are not credible,” the nurse said. Abu Mohammad agreed: “I like the FSA, but we need a real one; they are not organised and don’t have supplies.”