--- description: Syrian Kurds take a town 30 miles from ISIS capital, but ambitions for own nation complicate the fight title: Against ISIS, Kurds are best fighters, but a problem ally image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt52fd7986555da1e8/6988580e524fc0f87fdf3421/kurds-isis.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [World](/section/world/) ## World Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [ISIS](/tag/isis/) ## ISIS Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # The Kurds Are Building a Country With Every Victory Over ISIS  by [Karl Vick](/author/karl-vick/)  ## Karl Vick Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Editor at Large Jun 23, 2015 11:03 PM CUT  Members of Kurdish People Defense Units (YPG) guard during a sunset near Tel Abyad border gate in northern Syria on June 23, 2015. Members of Kurdish People Defense Units (YPG) guard during a sunset near Tel Abyad border gate in northern Syria on June 23, 2015.Sedat Suna—EPA  by [Karl Vick](/author/karl-vick/)  ## Karl Vick Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Editor at Large Jun 23, 2015 11:03 PM CUT Ethnic Kurds—who on Tuesday scored their second and third significant victories over ISIS in the space of eight days—are by far the most effective force fighting ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. But they appear to intent on keeping all the ground they’ve taken from the militant group for their own national project, endangering the larger cause of keeping these two battered nation-states in one piece, and raising the prospect of another war patiently waiting at the conclusion of the current one. The recent run of victories in Syria illustrates the Kurds’ battlefield capabilities. Six months after winning in [Kobani](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/01/kobane-beginning-isil-201512782724826681.html "undefined"), the Turkish border town where as many as 1,000 ISIS fighters died, Syrian Kurd fighters on June 15 took another border town, Tel Abyad, [creating a corrido](https://time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/28e9c-syria-control-map-18-jun-15%5Fhigh.png "undefined")r on Syria’s northern border and—far more important—cutting off the main supply line to Raqqah, ISIS’s capital 60 miles due south. On Tuesday, the Kurd forces—a Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK—[seized a military base ](http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/06/23/kurds-capture-is-base-north-of-syrias-raqqa "undefined")known as Brigade 93, as well as the[ town adjoining](http://www.syriahr.com/en/2015/06/ypg-and-rebel-factions-enter-the-city-of-ayn-isa-after-seizing-the-brigade-93-in-the-north-of-al-raqqa-2/ "undefined") it, Ain Issa. The victories put them within 30 miles of Raqqah. The Kurds fight so well largely because, in addition to trying to defeat an extremist enemy, they’re fighting _for s_omething—a country of their own. The future Kurdistan may be severely buffeted across Arab portions of the Middle East—neither Yemen nor Libya have functioning central governments, and both Syria and Iraq exist largely as shards of sect, tribe and ethnicity. But the Kurds, despite their large numbers (about 30 million worldwide), as well as their shared language, culture and identity, have never had a nation. But they’re getting closer to one with every battle. In Iraq, Kurdish forces armed by both Iran and the U.S. have taken [perhaps](http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/iraq-kurdistan-peshmerga-wait-islamic-state.html "undefined") 10,000 square miles from ISIS since last fall. They also snapped up the disputed city of Kirkuk, rich in oil and cultural significance to Kurds and Arabs alike—and are preventing Arabs from returning to some villages. Houses[ are marked ](http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/25/iraqi-kurdistan-arabs-displaced-cordoned-detained "undefined")“Reserved for Kurds,” and Kurdish checkpoints declare, “No Arabs Allowed.” These acts on the ground are clearly intended to create “facts on the ground,” A political reality that Kurdish leaders will point as they navigate their relationship with the Iraqi central government in Baghdad, to which they are currently bound by oil-revenue contracts, if little else. As valiantly as the Kurds have fought, losing an estimated 1,000 men and women over the last year against ISIS, they see the conflict in terms of national liberation. Massoud Barzani, who leads the Kurdistan Regional Government, has repeatedly said Kurds will not fight for [the rest of Iraq](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/fight-lives "undefined"), or for the idea of it. “Relying on Iraqi Kurds to act as coalition boots on the ground may eliminate some \[ISIS\] safe havens, but it is fueling Kurdish land grabs,”[ warns](http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/01/iraq-kurdistan-land-grab-resentment-sunni.html "undefined") Denise Natali, a senior research fellow at National Defense University in Washington. “Iraqi Kurds are using U.S. airstrikes and the political vacuum in northern Iraq not only to push back ISIS, but also to recapture disputed territories and oil fields—some of the very measures that have fueled Sunni Arab resentment since 2003.” Human Rights Watch documented instances of Kurds confining Sunni Arabs to specific areas to prevent their return, actions that Natali says undermine the attempts by the U.S. and Baghdad to lure Iraq’s Sunni Arabs away from the orbit of ISIS and back into Iraq’s national enterprise: “It’s all about addressing the Sunni Arabs’ grievances,” she tells TIME. Iraq’s Kurds have tried this before, but more gently. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq removed Saddam Hussein, Kurds left the autonomous region that had been protected by U.S. warplanes for the previous decade, and moved into the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk—not with armor, which they don’t have, but with garbage trucks and street cleaners. The idea was to start providing essential government services to the oil-rich city, which is also claimed by Iraq’s Sunni population, and thereby assume control in the softest possible manner. Kurdish leaders wanted everyone on their best behavior: They ordered looters to return 300 cars looted after the fall of the city, and fretted openly about acts of revenge, including rapes, being perpetrated against Arabs who had pushed them off their land. It didn’t work. U.S. forces ordered the garbage trucks sent home, and for the next decade Iraq’s Kurds were forced to employ more gradual methods, mostly moving their people into the city, in order to win any referendum on its future. Then ISIS made its blitzkrieg, taking Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul a year ago, then Tikrit and moving toward Kirkuk. But the Kurds [got there first](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/12/kurdish-peshmerga-kirkuk-iraq-maliki "undefined"), and aim to hold on to it, and every other square mile they’ve won—including territory claimed by Arabs. “We have to be careful that in our pushing back ISIS, we are not setting the stage for the next conflict,” says Natali. So far, the U.S. has had the leverage to hold the situation together, with help from Turkey, home to half the world’s Kurds. The maddening paradox is that the situation grows more difficult to manage with every gain against ISIS, the shared enemy. ### Meet the Kurdish Women Taking the Battle to ISIS  18-year-old YPJ (Women's Protection Unit) fighter Torin Khairegi: “We live in a world where women are dominated by men. We are here to take control of our future. I injured an ISIS jihadi in Kobani. When he was wounded, all his friends left him behind and ran away. Later I went there and buried his body. I now feel that I am very powerful and can defend my home, my friends, my country, and myself. Many of us have been martyred and I see no path other than the continuation of their path." Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  YPJ fighters on their base at the border between Syria and Iraq. Young female fighters are indoctrinated to the ideology of their charismatic leader, Abdullah Ocalan, head of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), who promotes marxist thought and empowerment of women. Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  18 year-old YPJ fighter Saria Zilan from Amuda, Syria: "I fought ISIS in Serikani. I captured one of them and wanted to kill him, but my comrades did not let me. He kept staring at the ground and would not look at me, because he said it was forbidden by his religion to look at a woman." Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  20-year old YPJ fighter Aijan Denis from Amuda, Syria: "Where I am now, men and women are equal and we all have the same thought, which is fighting for our ideology and the rights of women. My three sisters and I are all in YPJ." Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  YPJ members take part in daily combat training at their base in Serikani. Syria. Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  Three YPJ fighters sit in an armed vehicle at their base in eastern Syria, days after returning from the front. Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  YPJ members, including one who was wounded fighting against ISIS in Kobani, Syria, at the all-women Asayesh Security Base in Derek, Syria. Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  16 year-old YPJ fighter Barkhodan Kochar from Darbasi, Syria: "The war influenced me a lot. Before joining YPJ, whenever I asked my family about politics, they'd say 'that's not your business, you're just a girl'. But when I saw how the women of YPJ gave their lives for what they believed in, I knew that I wanted to be one of them." Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  A billboard showing fallen YPJ solders, reading, “With you we live on and life continues.” Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  In Western Kurdistan, the Syrian autonomous region Kurds call Rojava, young people are taught the ideology of the PYD (the Democratic Union Party of Syria), an affiliate of PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). Many of these young people will soon be drafted into YPJ and YPG armies to fight ISIS. Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  in Syria, graves of YPJ members who were killed fighting ISIS. In the foreground, female fighters are buried together. Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  A picture of 17 year-old Cicek Derek, who died in the besieged city of Kobani, Syria, where her fellow fighters were unable to retrieve her body. Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  Rojin, the sister of 17 year-old YPJ fighter Cicek Derek who died fighting in Kobani, Syria. "When my mother told Cicek, 'Please stay with your mother', she answered 'I left to fight for all the mothers of the world. I cannot stay here'." Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  A scarf belonging to 17-year-old YPJ fighter Cicek Derek, who was killed in Kobani, Syria, was all that could be brought back to her family. Her body remains in Kobani. Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  A wedding dress outside a bridal shop in a town near Qamishlou, Syria. YPG graffiti can be seen on the walls of adjacent buildings. YPJ and YPG members are neither allowed to marry, nor can they have sexual relationships, according their ideology. Newsha Tavakolian for TIME  20 year-old YPJ fighter Beritan Khabat from Derek, Syria. She joined the YPJ four years ago to protect her homeland and put an end to the suppression of women. "I fought ISIS in Jezza and Serikani. Women of YPJ are not scared of ISIS." 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