A delegation from New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) visited Syria’s Kurdish regions, or Rojava, last week, where the Democratic Union Party (PYD) has declared a Kurdish autonomous government with the help of its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

In an important and detailed interview with Rudaw Fred Abrahams, a special advisor to HRW who was part of the delegation, spoke about whether the autonomous government declared by the PYD is truly inclusive as claimed, if local authorities are observing human rights, the status of women, the PYD’s legal reforms and its relations with the regime of Syria’s President Bashar Assad. Abrahams said that the greatest challenge for the PYD is transitioning “from a movement — an opposition group — into a governing body, or into creating authorities, systems and structures that would represent everyone.”

Editor’s note: Mutlu Civiroglu is a Washington, DC based-journalist and Kurdish affairs analyst focusing on Syria and Turkey. You can follow him @mutludc. The views expressed are the writer’s own.

The United States has been searching for an ally in Syria since the uprising began in March 2011. But while the exiled opposition coalitions have been dogged by infighting and a lack of real influence inside Syria, and the armed opposition within the country is rife with extremists, Washington has been ignoring a natural and potentially valuable ally: the Kurds.

QAMISHLI, SYRIA — In the past few weeks, Kurdish militias have cleared a growing number of towns in northeast Syria of al-Qaida-affiliated groups. But now they are trying to combat a jihadist bombing campaign.

Kurds in Qamishli, the biggest town in Syria’s Kurdish-dominated northeast, are relieved to have been liberated from a months-long jihadist reign of terror consisting of kidnappings for ransom and slayings.

Sitting with neighbors outside a shop in the downtown Souk district of Qamishli, 57-year-old Mikhtar said people felt a lot safer.     

“Before, there was a lot of fear because of the kidnapping. The main thing was the kidnapping and a lot of people were kidnapped for ransom and some of them never returned back,” he said.

It’s early evening at a farmhouse near Ras al-Ayn, Syria. The generator just ran out of fuel. The walkie-talkie starts buzzing and Sheelan grabs it in the pitch black darkness of the living room. On the other end of the static is Nooda, who’s on night duty with three other fighters.

Nothing unusual here about two women in arms talking. There are nine women out of the 25 or so fighters positioned at this strategic outpost.

The fighters all moved here three weeks ago when the YPG, the Kurdish militia fighting in Syria, forced radical Islamist groups to retreat from about two dozen villages.

QAMISHLI, SYRIA — In Syria's northeast, women are taking on unusually prominent roles in Kurdish security forces.

On the outskirts of the Kurdish town of Derik, close to the Iraqi border, a billboard displays the photographs of more than 300 Kurdish warriors who have died in the past few months in northeast Syria battling mainly jihadists. In the top left corner, 13 of the snapshots are of women.

No other ethnic or religious group in Syria’s brutal two-and-half year civil war has fielded so many female fighters, analysts say. Twenty percent of the Kurdish warriors grouped together in the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, are women.

Qamishli, Syria

It is a rare sight in war-torn Syria—children clutching bags or wearing small backpacks, walking singly or in groups to still-intact schools for a day of classes.

And yet, here in Qamishli and other towns and villages nearby, it is a common scene now that Kurdish militias have cleared the area of jihadists.

In other northern and eastern provinces, warfare between rebels battling to oust President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian government forces has wreaked such massive destruction on the countryside, there are no schools or teachers available to hold classes. Where jihadists hold sway, parents often don’t want to risk their children venturing out of the house.

A new interview with Sahil Muslim by M. Ali Çelebi has been published in Özgür Gündem. Below is a translation of certain segments, in which Muslim talks about efforts to prevent inter-communal fighting, relations between Arabs and Kurds, and the current situation in Rojava more generally.

Brussels, 22 November 2013 - Speaking at a conference in the Belgian Senate on the future of the Kurdish Region in Syria, the PYD co-chairman Salih Muslim asked the Western countries to support Kurds in the fight against Islamic extremists linked to Al Qaida. PYD leader also calls the West to send humanitarian aid to the Kurdish region before its going to be a humanitarian crisis and he got support from Belgian senator Karl Vanlouwe.

Rojava Human Rights Watch (KMM) has released a statement about the three Kurdish civilians who were murdered by Turkish special operation teams on the Qamishlo border of Mardin's Nusaybin district on 17 November.

The organization stated that the three people from Rojava who were buried in their homeland on Nov. 19th had torture marks on their bodies and fractures on their heads, arms and feet. Some parts of their bodies were also amputated.

BEIRUT — Syria’s Kurds have dramatically strengthened their hold on the far northeast reaches of the country, carving out territory as they drive out Islamic militant fighters allied to the rebellion and declaring their own civil administration in areas under their control this week amid the chaos of the civil war.

The moves could be a first step toward creating an autonomous region similar to one Kurds run across the border as virtually a separate country within Iraq. But the Kurds’ drive has angered rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. It even worries some Kurds, who suspect the main faction leading the fighting and the new administration is actually acting on behalf of Assad to undermine the rebellion.

Twenty-two years after their Iraqi Kurdish brethren proclaimed their autonomy against the backdrop of an uprising against Saddam Hussein, Syrian Kurds yesterday formally declared the creation of an autonomous government. The United States should embrace the move. Syrian Kurds have largely restored order to the territory they control in and around the town of Qamishli. Children go to school, hospitals are open, and the local government provides basic services. This was no mean feat: Syrian Kurdish militias had to defend their region from encroachments and attacks from the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

(Reuters) - With a string of military gains across northeastern Syria, a Kurdish militia is solidifying a geographic and political presence in the war-torn country, posing a dilemma for regional powers.

Long oppressed under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, Kurds view the civil war as an opportunity to gain the kind of autonomy enjoyed by their ethnic kin in neighboring Iraq.

But their offensive has stirred mixed feelings, globally, regionally and locally, even among some fellow Kurds, who say the Kurdish fighters have drifted into a regional axis supporting Assad, something they deny.