In March, I crossed the Tigris River in a motorboat from Northern Iraq (home to Iraq's Kurds) to northern Syria, where the Syrian Kurds control large swaths of land. Long suppressed by the Assad regime, the Kurds took advantage of the chaotic civil war to establish a de facto government in three cantons. They have proposed that their region, which they call Rojava, should become one of five federal states in a future Syria. This would give the main warring factions - including the Assad regime - some turf of their own.