The Kurds Fight ISIS to Claim a Piece of Syria

A billboard of a 19-year-old Kurdish fighter brandishing a machine gun covers part of a bullet-marked building that once housed Syrian government offices. The building is abandoned and its officials long gone.

Both secular and al Qaeda-linked rebel groups fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were also chased out more than a year ago.

Control of this town now belongs to a Kurdish paramilitary force that boasts of having more than 30,000 fighters ready to help the U.S. and its allies drive Islamic State and other militants from a broad stretch of northern Syria. The force belongs to the same Kurdish group defending embattled Kobani with the assistance of U.S. airstrikes.

One of the many political complications facing the U.S. in the arrangement is that these Kurdish fighters—an offshoot of a group designated by the U.S. and Turkey as a terror organization—want to keep control of the territory they have seized to create their own vision of a utopian society.

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“We are ready to cooperate with anyone who respects the will of our people and accepts us as we are,” said Hussein Kocher, a 40-year-old local commander of the People’s Protection Units, or YPG. The Syrian Kurd has spent nearly half his life fighting for Kurdish independence, mostly against Turkey.

Hussein Kocher, the 40-year-old local commander 
of the People's Protection Units, or YPG.

“We are building a new system within the old regime,” he said in a recent interview, surrounded by framed portraits of slain YPG fighters at the group’s makeshift command center here.

YPG commanders and senior political leaders affiliated with the group said they were eager to join the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in return for recognition and support from Washington and its allies for the Kurdish-dominated self-rule administrations they have established in northern Syria. The ruling groups have already set up courts, passed laws and tapped oil revenues in the region, which is also populated by Syrian Arabs and Christians.

Oil wells dot a stretch of northern Syria under the control of a 
YPG that says it is ready to help the U.S. and its allies defeat 
ISIS and other Islamic militants in exchange for U.S. support 
of a plan to keep control of towns and villages. 
Sam Dagher/The Wall Street Journal

Mr. Kocher and other YPG commanders said in interviews during a recent visit that U.S. operatives inside Syria are exchanging intelligence and helping coordinate airstrikes against Islamic State—in northeast Syria near the Iraq border, as well as in nearby towns and villages by the Syria-Turkey border.

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