Reuters Women walk past a billboard that carries a verse from Koran urging women to wear a hijab in Raqqa.

TEL ABYAD, Syria — The woman took her sons and paid a smuggler's exorbitant fee to escape her impossible trap in Raqqa: stuck between the ISIS militants she hates and the pounding of international airstrikes.



On Thursday night, the family arrived in the safest city outside Raqqa, Tel Abyad, where she believed the ethnic Kurdish forces who run it would help her. She had agonized over leaving for months. For Raqqa residents like her, it's far from easy to leave — despite the "misery" of living in the city, as the woman described it, fear of the militants and economic desperation often keep them there. "People in Raqqa are against their ideology," she said, wearing a black shawl and heavy coat, and too afraid of reprisals to give her name. "But where will they go? It's a miserable life, but people feel they don't have another choice." Following the Paris attacks, a spike in international airstrikes had compounded the suffering in Raqqa — and finally convinced her to flee. "They hide among civilians so civilians will die. It's not important to them if we're killed," she said.



Leaving meant paying a smuggler 9,000 Syrian pounds (approximately $47.50), a huge sum for the family. Her husband stayed behind in hopes of keeping the jihadis from taking their possessions and home — a common fate for those who escape. The woman said her family was poor, like many who remain. "They don't have the ability to leave," she said.



Mike Giglio / BuzzFeed This woman paid a smuggler to flee Raqqa with her sons.

ISIS also demonizes those fleeing the city, and the woman feared reprisals if they were caught. Sitting next to her at a community center in Tel Abyad on Friday was her 11-year-old son, who described his fears that the militants would take him if they caught the family leaving. He believed this has happened to one of his friends. "People are mainly afraid of the road from Raqqa," he said. "ISIS takes their kids."



Amid a renewed international focus on stopping ISIS in the wake of the Paris attacks, the first step has been a ramping up of French and U.S. airstrikes on Raqqa, the Syrian capital of the jihadis. Some in the West have said less care should be taken to avoid civilian casualties in hopes of making the strikes more effective — and some have even suggested that anyone still living in the city must support the extremists. One sign of the increasing acceptance of civilian casualties in Washington comes in its coordination with Russia, which has far less qualms about collateral damage, as a partner in the anti-ISIS strikes. "I choose to fight them in their backyard. I choose to fight them in Raqqa, not on the streets of the Western capitals of the word or American cities,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.



Reuters Residents walk along the market in central Raqqa.