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Summary
Raqqa has been outside the regime control since March 2013, and considered to be the first governorate that is completely liberated from the regime forces after a fierce battles with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) which held the city for 9 months during which there were attempts to constitute a civil adminstration that provide and administrate basic services for the residents. These attempts succeeded in carrying on many service sectors such as health, education, agricuIture etc However, the battles again halted them, until eventually IS managed to seize the city and make changes to this administration and the existing regulations. IS attempted to establish various basic services institutions but all attempts failed due to the very strict regulations they applied by force in addition to that the main focus of the group was on the military aspect which led to lack of support to the other sectors as agriculture or trade for instance, on the contrary the IS imposed more taxes and restrictions on these sectors. Concerning the agriculture sector for example, there was a real absence of development projects of any related field i.e irrigation, livestock, seeds and fertilizers as well as the inability to maintain the agricultural machinery and the increasing prices of fuel; all this resulted in lesser invested lands and sharp production decrease especially in the strategic crops such as wheat, cotton and sugarbeet, The industrial sector also suffered from the lack of support and the increasing fuel costs let alone the closed borders of the governorate. Education was the most affected sector, that —attempting to restructure it- IS has imposed a new curriculum adapted from their extreme ideology, this prevented most parents from sending their children to schools and made most teachers quit which resulted in a collapse in education sector, The health sector was also very negatively affected by the status quo, there was a severe lack of health facilities, most of them were targeted and bombed, the majority of the people with chronical illness couldn't secure their medicine, many others couldn't access health services. This report aims at reaching a more profound comprehension of the real situation in Ar-Raqqa, depending on various resources of information such as the Central Statistics Office, different ministries and government bodies in addition to results of workshops and research concerned with the subject matter.