LIKE Kurds elsewhere, Syria’s 2.5m Kurds, have long been an ignored minority, repressed by Bashar Assad, Syria’s president, and shunned by other Kurds spread out across Turkey, Iraq and Iran, with whom unity has been elusive. But now that Syria’s Kurds are leading the fight in northern Syria against the jihadists calling themselves Islamic State (IS), they are gaining support. The American air force has repeatedly bombed IS forces besieging the Kurdish border town of Kobane (Ain al-Arab in Arabic, pictured above) and is providing weapons to Syria’s Kurds to help the fight, dropping the first supplies by parachute on October 21st. And the Peshmerga, the armed forces of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, were deployed on October 28th, after America convinced a reluctant Turkey to open a supply route through its territory.

All this could boost Syrian Kurds' campaign to establish greater self-rule over the three Kurdish-majority enclaves in northern Syria. These were largely abandoned by Mr Assad’s regime in 2012—reportedly handed over to the leading Democratic Union Party (PYD)–and swiftly filled by a Kurdish administration. In January this year, Iraqi Kurds refused to give even symbolic recognition to the Syrian Kurds' autonomous enclaves as a result of what they viewed as the PYD’s unilateral declaration of autonomy. But on October 15th Iraq’s Kurdish parliament said it recognised Syria’s Kurdish regions as autonomous and urged the Kurdish regional government to do the same.

The Syrian Kurds' ability to go it alone is in large part due to the skill of its fighters against IS. The People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed forces of the PYD, are reckoned to include some 40,000 men and women, although the majority are part-time fighters. Minorities, including Christians, as well as Arabs have joined them. Across the region immense billboards hail fallen soldiers and military camps are named after the “martyrs”. Syria’s Kurds have done rather a good job of governing themselves more generally (helped by the fact that Mr Assad refrains from bombing Kurdish areas as he does zones held by mainstream Sunni Arab rebels). Syria’s three Kurdish enclaves of Jazeera, Afrin and Kobane, home to an estimated 10% of the Syrian population, are ruled over by the Democratic Society Movement, a sort of interim government (Kurdish officials say they plan to hold elections for a new government within the next two months.) The region has set up ministries dealing with the economy, agriculture, natural resources and foreign affairs. It has brought the YPG's fighters under control of civilian bodies. Each enclave is run by two elected leaders—one man and one woman—and cities have local councils. Schools are open and although lessons are still taught in Arabic, the administration plans to introduce a new curriculum—possibly to be taught in Kurdish, Arabic and Syriac. Water supplies can be patchy, but there is no lack of food or fuel, unlike many areas in Syria. Syria’s Kurdish areas need only 30% of the wheat they grow, so the agriculture ministry says it has stored a large reserve. A new flour factory (the region’s fifth) is being built in Jazira, which will give the region a surplus, which may be sold on the black market to Syria and Iraq. Oil supply outstrips demand too. The Kurdish-controlled oil refinery in Jazira is only working at around 5% of its capacity. In short, the Kurds have started to create a viable economy. Yet the region is riven by divisions between Syrian Kurdish political factions. The region’s councils are dominated by the PYD, which is affiliated with Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which fought a thirty-year war with Ankara (a ceasefire still holds, just). Although the PYD is popular—graffiti hailing PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan can be seen across Syria’s Kurdish regions—some claim the party has authoritarian tendencies. It has sidelined smaller, weaker political forces such as the Kurdish National Council (KNC), a collection of parties that lacks armed forces but is close to Iraq’s Kurds. In June Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby, documented several cases in which the PYD security forces arbitrarily arrested people for their political activities.

On October 22nd, after nine days of talks, the PYD and the KNC agreed to cooperate so as to attract further international support in the battle against IS. Massoud Barzani, Iraqi Kurdistan’s president, is also calling for a closer relationship between the Syrian Kurds and the Iraqi Kurdish area, which has had its own regional government since 1992. He has proposed a joint army called the Protection Units of Kurdistan. This level of cooperation is unlikely to happen partly as a result of the ideological differences between the two, with the KDP’s tribal ideology clashing with the PYD’s largely socialist policies. Furthermore Syria’s Kurds say they have no intention of seeking full independence from Syria unlike their Iraqi counterparts who strive for complete autonomy from Baghdad.

The PYD has benefited from a hushed coexistence with Mr Assad, whose portrait still hangs in districts of Qamishli. Some areas of the city are visibly controlled by regime soldiers and locals say that the Syrian regime still pays the salaries of local doctors and teachers. But as the PYD finds ways to move civil servants onto its payroll by employing them in Kurdish-controlled oil refineries, tar factories, agriculture and flour mills, the area is moving inexorably towards self-rule.