The next battlefield

WOMEN, their faces wrapped in scarves to protect them from the sun, bend over in the fields to pick cotton. Flocks of sheep kick up dust from tilled wheat fields, as young boys herd them along. Here in Raqqa province, east of Aleppo, life has gone on largely as normal for the last 19 months as the rest of Syria has descended into bloodshed. But since rebels seized the border town of Tal Abyad last month, the province has turned into a budding battleground.