With the city of Deir ez-Zor falling into the hands of the Assad regime army and allied forces Nov. 3, the city of Raqqa — newly liberated from the Islamic State (IS) by the Kurdish-led and US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — finds itself at a turning point. Surrounded by regional and local enemies with diverging geopolitical interests, Raqqa’s elites have to carefully navigate ethnic lines while tackling a difficult reconstruction effort and uprooting the jihadi threat once and for all.

With IS nearly eradicated in Syria, Raqqa will be facing an increasingly complex environment emerging in the post-IS phase.

After all, the governorate is surrounded by either hostile or unreliable regional players, such as Turkey, the Syrian regime and Iraqi Kurdistan, said Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert working at the Hoover Institution.

Turkey sees the expansion of the SDF territory in Syria as a direct threat to its national interest and will keep on isolating Syria’s north as a result. The SDF is backed by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). The PYD is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has fought a long insurgency against the Ankara government.