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.
To Assad and his Shi'ite allies, their gains mean more territory out of Sunni rebel hands two and a half years into a revolt against his rule.
Foreign powers supporting the opposition, meanwhile, hope they will deliver a blow to al Qaeda-linked fighters, whose rising power in northern Syria had gone unchecked for months.
"The advance has basically been accepted by all," said Piroz Perik, a Kurdish activist from the town of Qamishli.
Such statements overlook widespread concerns over the impact of the Kurdish militia gains in a conflict that not only threatens Syria's unity, but the stability of neighboring countries with similar ethnic and sectarian divisions.
Numbering more than 25 million, non-Arab Kurds are often described as the world's largest ethnic group without a state. Territories where they predominate, which they call Kurdistan, span parts of Turkey and Iran as well as Syria and Iraq.
Source: Reuters
