NATION/WORLD
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 7A
U.S.-backed forces celebrate fall of IS ‘capital,’ Raqqa
By SARAH EL DEEB
and ZEINA KARAM
Associated Press
BEIRUT — U.S.-backed
Syrian forces celebrated in the
devastated streets of Raqqa on
Tuesday after gaining control
of the northern city that once
was the heart of the Islamic
State’s self-styled caliphate,
dealing a major defeat to the
extremist group that has seen
its territory shrink ever smaller
since summer.
Militants took over the
vibrant metropolis on the
Euphrates River in 2014,
transforming it into the
epicenter of their brutal
rule, where opponents were
beheaded and terror plots
hatched.
It took thousands of bombs
dropped by the U.S.-led
coalition and more than four
months of grueling house-to-
house battles for the Syrian
Democratic Forces to recap-
ture Raqqa, marking a new
chapter in the fi ght against
the group whose once vast
territory has been reduced to a
handful of towns in Syria and
Iraq.
“Liberating Raqqa is a
triumph for humanity, espe-
cially women,” who suffered
the most under IS, said Ilham
Ahmed, a senior member of
the SDF political wing.
“It is a salvation for the will
to live an honorable life. It is
a defeat to the forces of dark-
ness,” said Ahmed, speaking
to The Associated Press from
Ein Issa, just north of Raqqa.
Fighters from the SDF
celebrated by chanting and
honking their horns as they
spun doughnuts with their
Hawar News Agency via AP
This frame grab from video released Tuesday, and provided by Hawar News Agency, a Syrian Kurdish activist-run
media group, shows fi ghters from the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces celebrating their victory in Raqqa, Syria.
Humvees
and
armored
personnel
carriers,
and
hoisting yellow SDF fl ags
around Naim, or Paradise
Square.
The infamous square was
the site of public beheadings
and other killings by the
militants. Bodies and severed
heads would be displayed
there for days, mounted on
posts and labeled with their
alleged crimes, according to
residents who later dubbed it
“Hell Square.”
Crumbled and fl attened
buildings stood behind the
fi ghters as they drove around
the square, a sign of the
massive destruction the city
has suffered since the militants
took over. It was in Naim
Square that the extremists
paraded tanks and military
hardware in 2014 in a chilling
show of force that foretold
what would come.
SDF commanders later
visited
Raqqa’s
sports
stadium, which IS had turned
into a notorious prison.
Dozens of militants who
refused to surrender made
their last stand earlier Tuesday
holed up inside.
“Immortal
martyrs!”
chanted the men and women
in SDF uniforms, saluting
their comrades who died
battling for the city. According
to the coalition, about 1,100
SDF forces have been killed
fi ghting IS in Raqqa and Deir
el-Zour.
“Military operations in
Raqqa have ceased and we
are now combing the city for
sleeper cells and cleaning it
from land mines,” Brig. Gen.
Talal Sillo told the AP earlier
in the day.
A formal declaration that
Raqqa has fallen would be
made soon, once troops fi nish
their clearing operations, Sillo
said.
Col. Ryan Dillon, the
Baghdad-based spokesman
for the U.S.-led coalition, was
more cautious, saying only
that “more than 90 percent”
of Raqqa had been cleared.
He estimated about 100 IS
militants were still in the city
and said he expects the SDF
to encounter “pockets of
resistance” during the clearing
operations.
The battle of Raqqa
has killed more than 1,000
civilians, many of them in
coalition airstrikes in recent
months, and displaced tens of
thousands of people who face
the prospect of returning to
ruined homes. The coalition
and residents who managed to
escape accused the militants
of using civilians as human
shields and tried to stop them
from leaving the city.
In a reminder of the
humanitarian
catastrophe
unleashed by the fi ghting,
the international charity
group Save the Children said
that camps housing tens of
thousands of people who fl ed
Raqqa are “bursting at the
seams.”
It said about 270,000
people from Raqqa are still
in critical need of aid. With
the high level of destruction
reported in and around Raqqa,
most families have nowhere
to go and are likely to be in
camps for months or years.
The World Food Program said
it was ready to send teams as
soon as the area was secure
enough.
Ahmed, the SDF offi cial,
said the hardest part will be
administering and rebuilding
Raqqa. The group has
appointed a civilian adminis-
tration of locals to rebuild the
city, but larger questions loom.
The SDF is a multi-ethnic
force, but its Kurdish lead-
ership harbors ambitions
of autonomous rule over a
Kurdish region in Syria that
now includes the Arab-ma-
jority Raqqa, leading to
concerns of a possible back-
lash among the city’s Sunni
Arab population.
Oregon cuts 3,800 jobs in September
Voters will decide fate of health care tax
PORTLAND (AP) —
Oregon shed jobs for the
second month in the row,
though its unemployment
rate remained essentially
unchanged,
the
state
Employment Department
said Tuesday.
Oregon’s
nonfarm
payroll
employment
dropped by 3,800 jobs in
September, following a
revised loss of 7,000 jobs
in August, according to the
monthly jobs report. The
late-summer
slowdown
came after six months
of robust hiring, when
employers added 42,600
jobs.
The jobless rate for
September stood at 4.2
By CHRIS LEHMAN
Oregon Public Broadcasting
percent, up from 4.1 percent
in August.
The leisure-and-hospi-
tality industry cut 3,700 jobs
in September, its second
consecutive month of weak
hiring after a spike in June
and July. State employment
economist Nick Beleiciks
said employers probably
got the workers they needed
in early summer and didn’t
need as many as the season
wore on.
Oregon’s construction
industry,
consistently
strong over the past year,
added 2,900 jobs. No other
industry added half that
many.
Beleiciks said the forest
fi res that charred the state
in September did not impact
the jobs report.
“Although some people
were out of work because of
the forest fi res, I don’t think
enough people were out of
work long enough,” he said.
“So, basically, if someone
was out of work early in
September because of the
fi res — but they ended
up going back to work in
September — they’d still be
counted as having a job in
these fi gures.”
A total of 2.05 million
Oregonians were employed
in September, an increase of
more than 68,000 workers
from this time last year,
when the jobless rate was
4.9 percent.
Oregonians will be
voting on a tax on hospital
and
health
insurance
companies next January.
The Oregon Secretary
of State’s Offi ce announced
Monday that opponents of
the tax had successfully
gathered enough valid
signatures to force a vote.
It means that all regis-
tered voters in Oregon
will receive a ballot in
early January for a rare
mid-winter special election.
Lawmakers who created
the tax and other supporters
have said it’s needed to fund
health care for low-income
Oregonians.
“If this measure fails,
cuts to health care and
critical services will be
devastating,” said Demo-
cratic Party of Oregon chair
Jeanne Atkins in a state-
ment supporting the taxes.
But the three Republican
state lawmakers who are
spearheading the refer-
endum effort said the taxes
aren’t needed.
They
said
Oregon
instead needs systemic
changes to the way it
provides health care to
low-income residents.
“I think the successful
results of this petition effort
shows just what Oregonians
really think about what
kind of job politicians are
doing, and they aren’t very
happy with the bills coming
out of Salem,” said Rep. Sal
Esquivel, R-Medford, who
served as one of the chief
petitioners.
The Jan. 23 election date
for what will be known as
Measure 101 was chosen by
Democrats in the Oregon
Legislature. They argued
that if the tax is overturned,
lawmakers will have to act
immediately to ensure that
people who receive health
care that’s paid for by the
tax aren’t left in the cold.
Lawmakers will be
meeting in February for
their regularly scheduled
legislative session.
BRIEFLY
A short-term health
deal by senators; but
Trump a question
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Republican and Democratic
senators joined in announcing a
plan Tuesday aimed at stabilizing
America’s health insurance
markets in the wake of President
Donald Trump’s order to terminate
“Obamacare” subsidies. The
president, at fi rst, spoke approvingly
of the deal, but as conservatives
rebelled, the White House insisted
Trump actually opposed the plan as
a bailout of insurance companies.
The agreement followed weeks
of negotiations between Republican
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee
and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray
of Washington that sought to
address health insurance markets
that have been in limbo following
GOP failures to repeal and replace
the Affordable Care Act. The talks
took on added urgency when Trump
announced last week that he would
end monthly “cost sharing reduc-
tion” payments the government
makes to help insurance companies
reduce costs for lower-income
people.
Without that money, premiums
for some people buying individual
health plans would spike, and some
insurers would fl ee the markets,
industry offi cials warn.
The Alexander-Murray deal
would continue the insurer
payments for two years, while
establishing new fl exibility for
states under former President
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Barack Obama’s law.
“This would allow the Senate to
continue its debate about the long
term of health care, but over the
next two years I think Americans
won’t have to worry about the
possibility of being able to buy
insurance in counties where they
live,” Alexander said in announcing
the deal after a closed-door lunch
where he presented it to GOP
senators.
Californians head back
home to altered lives,
communities
PETALUMA, Calif. (AP) —
Some have lost loved ones. Many
have survived near-death experi-
ences. Others have lost their homes
and a lifetime of possessions.
A week after fl eeing raging
wildfi res, tens of thousands of
emotionally ravaged Californians
have drifted back home to fi nd
their lives and their communities
dramatically altered.
At a Red Cross shelter in
Petaluma on Tuesday, 69-year-old
Sue Wortman recalled the words
that raced through her mind when
she fl ed the fl ames near her home in
Sonoma.
“We’re all going up in smoke,”
she thought at the time. Since then,
she’s been walking around in a
daze.
Firefi ghters gained more control
Tuesday of the massive wine
country wildfi res, even as other
blazes erupted in mountains near
Los Angeles and Santa Cruz.
of military members killed in
war. They accused him of “inane
cruelty” and a “sick game.”
Xi says China’s
prospects are bright
but challenges severe
WASHINGTON (AP) —
President Donald Trump has pulled
bereaved military families into a
painful political fi ght of his own
making, going so far Tuesday as to
cite the death of his chief of staff’s
son in Afghanistan to question
whether Barack Obama and other
presidents did enough to honor the
military dead.
He’s boasted that “I think I’ve
called every family of someone
who’s died,” though The Associated
Press found relatives of two soldiers
who died overseas during Trump’s
presidency who said they never
received a call or a letter from him,
as well as relatives of a third who
did not get a call from him.
The White House said Trump
did telephone on Tuesday the
families of four soldiers who were
killed in Niger nearly two weeks
ago, the issue that had spawned the
controversy this week.
“He offered condolences on
behalf of a grateful nation and
assured them their family’s extraor-
dinary sacrifi ce to the country will
never be forgotten,” said a White
House statement.
Contending that Trump’s
propensity for a political fi ght
has drifted into “sacred” territory,
Democrats and some former
government offi cials have
expressed anger at his comments
that he, almost alone among
presidents, called the families
Files reveal details
of U.S. support for
Indonesian massacre
BEIJING (AP) — Chinese
President Xi Jinping proclaimed
his nation’s prospects as bright
but made a rare acknowledgement
of severe economic challenges as
he opened the ruling Communist
Party’s twice-a-decade national
congress on Wednesday.
Other Chinese leaders
have regularly warned since
the 2008 fi nancial crisis that
China’s economic growth faces
“downward pressure” due to weak
global demand that threatens
export industries in the world’s
second-largest economy. But
Xi’s comments in the massive
Great Hall of the People near
Tiananmen Square were unusual
in a keynote speech meant to
highlight the party’s confi dence
and long-range vision.
Among the grave issues Xi
said were insuffi ciently addressed
are a widening income gap
and problems in employment,
education, medical care and other
areas.
“The great rejuvenation of the
Chinese nation is no walk in the
park or mere drum-beating and
gong-clanging. The whole party
must be prepared to make ever
more diffi cult and harder efforts,”
Xi said. “To achieve great dreams
there must be a great struggle.”
He added that the party
would have to take big risks and
overcome “major resistance.”
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JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) —
Declassifi ed fi les have revealed
new details of U.S. government
knowledge and support of an
Indonesian army extermination
campaign that killed several
hundred thousand civilians during
anti-communist hysteria in the
mid-1960s.
The thousands of fi les from the
U.S. Embassy in Jakarta covering
1963-66 were made public Tuesday
after a declassifi cation review
that began under the Obama
administration. The Associated
Press reviewed key documents in
the collection in advance of their
release.
The fi les fi ll out the picture of
a devastating reign of terror by
the Indonesian army and Muslim
groups that has been sketched
by historians and in a U.S. State
Department volume that was
declassifi ed in 2001 despite a
last-minute CIA effort to block its
distribution.
In 1965, Indonesia had the
world’s third-largest communist
party after China and the Soviet
Union, with several million
members, and the country’s
president, the charismatic Sukarno,
was vociferously socialist and
anti-American.
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