11 years into Syria's civil war, this is what everyday life looks like

Syrian women shop at Raqqa’s central market in May 2021. Under Islamic State rule, all women were prevented from leaving home without a male chaperone, and only covered head-to-toe.

Shahad, centre, 13, sought refuge in the Washokani refugee camp after fleeing the city of Ras Al-Ain, a Syrian city on the Turkish border, with her two brothers—and without her parents—after a Turkish offensive in 2019. The Washokani camp, near Hasakah in the northeast corner of Syria, houses more than 10,000 people. Others in refugee camps also requested their full names not be published.

Halim, 35, with her daughter, was also a resident of the Washokani camp in 2019. Originally from Ras-Al-Ain, she was afraid of unspecified repercussions she may suffer if she is recognised.

Yasmine, a Belgian national photographed in 2019, is one of more than 70,000 people at the al-Hol camp in Syria, where the families of Islamic State fighters are interred. Many countries are reluctant to bring Islamic State-affiliated citizens back to their home countries.

Hussein, 31, and son Ali, four months old, fled Ras-Al-Ain after the 2019 Turkish offensive in northern Syria and found shelter some 25 miles away in Hasaka at a school converted into a refugee centre for internally displaced people.

Abdel Aziz, 47, a Kurd living near the front line of the 2019 offensive at Tall Tamr in northeastern Syria, was shot in the groin during the fighting. He died in a hospital in Hasakah one day after this photo was taken.

Kurdish intelligence service members patrol the devastated city of Raqqa in May 2021. The fall of the Islamic State in Syria in 2019 promised a new era of stabilization, but the reality has been far different.

A mass grave is prepared in Qamishli, Syria’s largest Kurdish city, in 2019 for civilian victims of a car bomb attack claimed by the Islamic State. At least five people died and more than 20 were injured.

Mourners stand alongside graves of civilians killed during a 2019 Turkish offensive in Qamishli, Syria.

Members of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) prepare to fight Turkish troops as a Turkish fighter jet looms in the distance north of Tel Tamr, Syria, in 2019. Shelling in the area has recently increased following a prison escape by Islamic State fighters in January 2022.

Members of the SDF, made up mostly of fighters from Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), arrest two suspected Islamic State members in Deir Ez-Zor in May 2021. Deir Ez-Zor remains one of the most dangerous areas in the region, with Islamic State forces present and active.

YPG commander Hezat (center) speaks with his troops in Deir Ez-Zor in May 2021. The Kurdish fighter also commands anti-terrorist units of the SDF trained by U.S. Special Forces and the CIA.

Residents of Qamishli gather for ice cream during Eid in May 2021. The holiday, one of the most important of the Muslim year, offered a brief interlude to the chaos of life in northeastern Syria.

Children play in Raqqa’s Naim Square, where the Islamic State once held public executions. Places that once served as symbols of unthinkable brutality can find new purpose, but the hard work of reconstruction may take generations.

Children play soccer in a school converted into a shelter for civilians displaced by war in Hasakah in 2019. During the Turkish offensive in northern Syria that year, more than 160,000 civilians fled the fighting, including 31 families housed at the school.

People find respite from the heat beneath the shade of a tree in Raqqa in 2021. Russian financial support for the Syrian regime may be impacted by sanctions put on Moscow due to its recent re-invasion of Ukraine, plunging the Middle East country into a new round of conflict and humanitarian disaster.