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Nine months after US troops helped liberate the Islamic State’s former capital of Raqqa, the city's lethal mound of unexploded ordnance is challenging the Donald Trump administration’s hopes for a quick exit out of Syria.
The State Department has trumpeted the Raqqa effort as an opportunity to empower local partners to begin conducting a yearslong cleanup on their own. But as Trump publicly seeks to draw down the 2,000 US troops in the war-torn country, some demining experts worry the rehabilitation effort won’t be able to get Syrian trainees up to speed to clean up the booby traps, car bombs and mines left behind by the retreating jihadis.
