Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launch an offensive to capture the city of Raqqa from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The Syrian civil war began with the Syrian revolution in March 2011, when popular discontent with the Ba'athist regime ruled by Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring. The Assad regime responded to the protests with lethal force, sparking a civil war. The Syrian revolution lasted almost 14 years and culminated in the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. Many sources regard this as the end of the civil war.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is a Kurdish-led coalition of U.S.-backed left-wing ethnic militias and rebel groups, and serves as the official military wing of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Founded on 10 October 2015, the stated mission of the SDF is to create a secular, democratic, and federalized Syria. The SDF is opposed by Turkey, who view the group as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which it has designated a terrorist group. On 10 March 2025, the SDF agreed to integrate into Syrian state institutions under the Syrian caretaker government. Mazloum Abdi met with the committee formed by Ahmed al-Sharaa to implement the deal; further meetings were planned for April.

The Raqqa campaign was a military operation launched in November 2016 during the Rojava–Islamist conflict by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the Islamic State (IS) in the Raqqa Governorate, with the goal of isolating and eventually capturing the Islamic State's capital city, Raqqa. The SDF's subsidiary goals included capturing the Tabqa Dam, the nearby city of al-Thawrah, and the Baath Dam further downstream. The campaign ended successfully in October 2017, with the capture of the city of Raqqa.

Raqqa is a city in Syria on the North bank of the Euphrates River, about 160 kilometres east of Aleppo. It is located 40 kilometres east of the Tabqa Dam, Syria's largest dam. The Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine city and bishopric Callinicum was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate between 796 and 809, under the reign of Harun al-Rashid. It was also the capital of the Islamic State from 2014 to 2017. With a population of 531,952 based on the 2021 official census, Raqqa is the sixth largest city in Syria.