BAGHOUZ, Syria—A year after the last black flag of the Islamic State group (ISIS) was lowered in the Syrian village of Baghouz, local farmer Hamad al-Ibrahim is trying to restore his scorched land.
There is little to mark the grim occasion, just a screeching metal frame holding the town’s name at the entrance of a road leading into fields littered with twisted metal that appears as though it fell from space onto an eerie lunar terrain.
At the foot of a craggy hill, the 75-year-old Ibrahim paces, picking up the litter left on his property: discarded explosives belts, a gas mask, tattered military vests, and a crumpled book on shariah law, covered in dust.
"We are fixing the wreckage so we can sow this land with wheat for bread," says Ibrahim, who heads an extended family of 75. "We want to revive this plot and plant crops we can eat."
Before he can plant seeds in the earth, he must first clear away the remnants where ISIS fighters put up their last stand and where the US-led coalition declared the ISIS proto-state defeated in March 2019 after a blistering months-long assault.
Nearby, an empty bullet casing rusts and the mangled remains of charred vehicles dot the landscape. Still all around him in this small and remote village near the Iraqi border, the militants no longer have a caliphate — instead, they have gone underground.
Ibrahim returned to Baghouz a few months ago, having fled to other parts of Deir ez-Zor province and later to the northern province of Raqqa as the fight against ISIS raged.
In a battered encampment on the edge of the village, once crammed with thousands of ISIS jihadists and their relatives, Ibrahim's family now works to clean up the detritus of war.
They have found landmines planted where Ibrahim hopes his wheat crops will grow and, on some occasions, weapons buried beneath the ground.
"When we came back and saw what had happened to our land, my son was going to go mad. I was scared he was going to have a stroke," Ibrahim says.
"This wreckage feels like a wound in my body."
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