RAQA, Syria: Once the last IS group fighters are ousted from Syria’s Raqa, the unconventional forces battling the militants say they’ll have batteries and masking tape to thank for their victory.
The Syrian Democratic Forces on the verge of seizing IS’s former bastion Raqa have received sophisticated support from the US-led coalition, including air strikes, weaponry, and intelligence.
But winning their months-long offensive against the militants, they say, required going back to basics.
In a cavernous warehouse just east of Raqa’s Old City, SDF fighters sit cross-legged on a dusty rug piled high with cylinder-shaped three-volt batteries, masking tape, empty cigarette packs and loose wires.
The materials are used to make primitive powerbanks to charge the walkie-talkies that SDF commanders rely on to communicate with each other across Raqa’s frontlines.
As artillery fire and air strikes echo in the background, the assembly line gets to work.
One fighter stacks eight batteries into a brick-like shape while another prepares the tape that will hold them together.
A third peels the aluminium foil from white cigarette packs — perfect for a conductor — and begins taping it to the wires he snipped from the walls of the battered building.
“Our positions have to be in touch 24 hours per day with these walkie-talkies, but they’re not that great,” says local SDF commander Sevger Himo.
Built-in batteries last just three hours, which forced SDF commanders to switch them off between coordinating storming operations, defensive rocket fire, or civilian rescues.
But with the hand-made battery packs, walkie-talkies stay charged for up to two straight days.
The powerbanks are ubiquitous in battle-ravaged Raqa, including in frontline positions near the city’s hospital and football stadiums, two of IS’s last redoubts in the city.
SDF fighters advancing there are often isolated for days from rear bases, making fully-charged walkie-talkies their only link to the outside world.
“This has saved lives more than once. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say,” says Himo, a young fighter with a boyish face.
“National armies have their own factories, but we’re a military force without much international support — so we rely on things we can get in the market and then adjust.”
Founded in late 2015, the SDF is not a conventional army and many of its young Arab and Kurdish fighters have received no previous military training.
In Raqa, they fight in dusty sneakers or even plastic sandals and sustain themselves on a diet of water, bread, and extremely sugary tea.
SDF forces have even developed creative tripwire systems in the multi-storey apartments they are using as bases near the frontline. — AFP
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