When ISIS ruled the Syrian city of Raqqa, Laila Mustafa could have been beaten or worse for appearing in public dressed as she is on this Sunday’s 60 Minutes. Today, the city’s former masters would be shocked and dismayed to see that she is the de facto mayor of their former stronghold. Mustafa appears in a Holly Williams report on how she is attempting to rebuild her war-torn city, as the U.S. coalition continues to find, capture and kill ISIS militants in Syria. It will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, October 28 at 7:00 p.m., ET/PT on CBS.
Mustafa is a civil engineer. Her skills and leadership qualities attracted her to community leaders who appointed her co-president of the Raqqa Civil Council. In this capacity, she leads efforts to rebuild the decimated city, but she’s short on funds. “The support we are getting isn’t enough to meet our needs,” she tells Williams. The U.S. State Department recently froze and then canceled $200 million in civilian aid.
Mustafa has supporters in the U.S. Senate who believe rebuilding the city is tantamount to keeping ISIS at bay. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, and Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, spoke to Williams for this report. Says Graham, “Her success is our success. So here’s what I would say to her: We’re all in to help you because if you’re in charge of Raqqa, ISIS won’t come back and you can live in peace with us.” Graham called Mustafa’s role in the former ISIS capital “poetic justice.”
The last thing Mustafa wants is a return to the way things were under ISIS. “They used to kill innocent civilians in Raqqa, put their heads on spikes for days,” she recalls. “They wanted to show brutality in order to make people obey them.” ISIS sleeper cells still linger within the city of Raqqa, says Mustafa, who also told 60 Minutes that if the city is not rebuilt, it will become fertile ground for the extremists to regroup.
For now, she and her supporters are a new order and a powerful rebuttal to ISIS’s time in charge. “A challenge to the mentality of ISIS. And a challenge for women to emerge from the struggles of injustice, violence, and exploitation,” says Mustafa.
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