Reimagining Raqqa: of tradition and of wheat

A statue of former President Hafez al Assad, downtown Raqqa Culturally and economically Raqqa is no longer defined by its past. The nomadic Bedouin have settled. The crops have failed three years in a row now. Raqqa is in a state of transition, defined by upheavals in cultural identity and economic well-being. The region is shifting, the direction still unclear. The consideration we grant now, however, to Raqqa’s present questions and crises, will undoubtably shape the development of the region. Raqqa is no longer a symbol of the past; it is the space in which the future will be born.

East of Aleppo, its sprawling souqs and dense skyline carved in minarets, and just beneath the Turkish border, open, now, to trade and immigration. Slung along the low grassy banks of the Euphrates River. In the shadows of the Assad Dam. Raqqa is a province settled in the quiet rural plains of Syria’s eastern Jazeera, the semi-arid region just beyond the hum and bustle of cities like Damascus and Homs, Lattakia and Tartous.

It is a region largely unknown beyond national boundaries. And even Syrians dismiss Raqaa as a place gone by. Raqqa is their past, not their future. Dr. Faisal al Mostafa al Hasa of the Raqqa Tourism Ministry, concedes “There isn’t much here. Most of the people who come here are just passing through”.

But there is also a quiet and respectful admiration among Syrians for what Raqqa means. For those beyond its borders, those who do not cultivate its dry fields nor fish the rough currents of the Euphrates, Raqqa is symbol. It is tradition; it is quaint. It is an Arab Bedouin heritage that has all but been subsumed to more cosmopolitan concerns, to Western imports in all their cultural and material manifestations. A set of values; a way of living. It is a romanticized claim about the past and collective identity.

Raqqa is also lauded as the land of plenty. As the fields that feed and clothe a nation. Where they still work the land, still live by their hands. While more and more Syrians flock to the cities.

But neither cultural values nor rainfall nor economic needs are static, and at the confluence of political shifts, scientific innovation, and global climate change lies Raqqa and its fraught transitions. As cheap Chinese made goods replace traditional crafts the people of Raqqa both romanticize a heritage lost and reinvent their way of living. As three years of drought stretch on, farming families face widespread crop failure and a pernicious and unrelenting hunger that spreads beyond provincial borders.

Raqqa once represented the idealized past, an inherited cultural identity. But perhaps now Raqqa represents the future. It is here, in these lands, that Syrians navigate the new within the frameworks of the past; it is here that tribes become political constituencies, that traditional value systems are reconciled to new social configurations, and that technological innovations serve to meet transforming economic needs. The environmental devastation here and its concomitant economic suffering will affect Syria for decades to come; it will shape the consciousness of a generation as well as the economic and demographic challenges of the nation. It is in Raqqa that the Syrian past will come to define the Syrian future.

Pictures by Emma Leblanc, all photos copyright Makoto Photographic Agency and the photographer. Reproduction in any form without permission prohibited.