Life In A Rebuilding Syrian Town
ANDERSON: Welcome back. Quarter to 8:00 in the evening here and what is the last of the working week in the Middle East or certainly some parts of it. Twenty-four hours ago, Russia posted a summit on the future of Syria but on the ground, towns swept clean of ISIS are already grappling with how to face the days ahead and where to look for help. CNN's Arwa Damon visited one of those towns near the Turkish border. She filed this report.</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And around about where ISIS used to display the heads of its victims there is brand-new Turkish post office. It's complete with an ATM. A man we meet takes us just around the corner to his cousin's home. He was one of ISIS' first victims but the family here does not want to be relive the unspeakable pain if the past. They place her brother's head just at the front of the door. It was Syrian rebels backed by Turkish military that drove ISIS out of Jarablus well over a year ago. And since then, Turkey has gone all in with reminders of that everywhere. Turkey is funding a fully functioning hospital with Turkish expertise to bolster the Syrian towns. It's also supplying the town with electricity and water, and working out for the local police force and as they call themselves the free Syrian army rebel units that are in the area. Turkey has multiple recent warnings to both militarily and financially invest here. It wants to secure its own borders that wants to stop the Syrian-Kurdish at advance and it is hoping that by creating safe zone, their relatively prosperous, Syrian refugees will perhaps begin returning to their home land. Jarablus' population has swell to around 70,000, about three times its original inhabitants and Turkey hopes to use Jarablus as an example to prove others that its patronage brings progress. Along with everything else, Turkey is also funding schools, cramped with children from all over Syria, eager to learn after having been deprived for so long. This school used to be an ISIS camp for the caliphate training site and a prison. Five-year-old Wahab (ph) may never understand why her parents deserted her.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Speaking Foreign Language)</s>DAMON: She said that her father left when the ISIS fighters left along with them, abandoned her in the rest of the family.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Speaking Foreign Language)</s>DAMON: Furious scars run deep and there is no certainty that its future will be any kinder to its people from its past. Arwa Damon, CNN, Jarablus, Syria.</s>ANDERSON: Life coming back to that town. A long way to go there. You are watching Connect the World. I'm Becky Anderson to you live fro, Abu Dhabi just after quarter 8:00 here. Coming up, nobody has Thanksgiving quite like New Yorkers. Well' take you there next.