BEIRUT, Lebanon — Depending on who you ask, the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad sits at the meeting point of two or three states.

According to internationally recognized maps, it is a crossing point between Syria and Turkey. But with the Syrian civil war came a new set of facts on the ground and a new set of borders. More recently it has marked the point at which the Islamic State (IS) met with Turkey to the north, and the Jazira canton of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Syria.

This past week, fighters with YPG — a Kurdish militia — together with Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels, retook the town from Islamic State fighters.

In the early days of the war, the border was used by rebel groups affiliated with the FSA to ferry arms and supplies to its northern stronghold. IS took the town in January 2014, and it became a vital link to its capital, Raqqa.

That the city has changed hands so many times says something about its strategic importance. It only takes one look at a map to see how damaging the loss of the town will be to IS. No longer will the group be able to smuggle supplies and fighters from Turkey to Raqqa.

The capture of Tal Abyad doesn’t just cut off a vital IS supply line. It's also a major coup for the Kurds. They are now able to link two of the three “cantons” that Syrian Kurds have sought to administer autonomously for many years.

The quest for autonomy

While IS has sought to consolidate and expand the borders of its own territory, the Kurds have been busy building a sort of parallel sub-state of their own.

“For now the first priority and plan against Daesh is to bring and maintain security and peace for the two Jazira and Kobane cantons, which now see Gire Spi [Tal Abyad] between themselves,” a Kurdish militia spokesman told GlobalPost on Thursday. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for IS, also known as ISIL.

Just as IS success was brought about in part by the chaos of the Syrian civil war, so too has the conflict helped consolidate Kurdish control in areas where Kurds are the majority.

As far back as November 2013, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) — the largest Kurdish party in Syria, affiliated with the YPG — announced plans to create a transitional government in the three cantons in the north of the country.

Syrian refugees wait for supplies near the Turkish border post of Akcakale, province of Sanliurfa, on June 17, 2015. Some hundreds of Syrian refugees are returning to Tal Abyad from Turkey a day after Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG fighters evicted Islamic State group fighters from the area.

The plan called for the creation of a parliament of 82 members elected from the three cantons, which will each have their own local assemblies — a far cry from the caliphate’s way of doing things.

“This administration will be democratically elected and we think it will be integral in the future for democratic Syria,” a PYD spokesman told The Independent.

The final aim would not be to create a Kurdish state, as such, but to bring power to a local level, away from the central government. This is something Kurdish groups in other countries such as Turkey also advocate. 

“It will not be affected by whoever will run Damascus,” the spokesman said at the time.

Since that announcement, significant parts of these areas have fallen out of Kurdish control — and then fallen back in again. While the YPG were present in the Kurdish areas in late 2013, events that followed would demonstrate they were by no means secure there.

Gaining a friend 

Today, however, things are different.

The US has withheld directly supplying the YPG with arms due to its close links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish militia that fights for greater autonomy and Kurdish rights in Turkey. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and Turkey, where it has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.

Turkish officials consistently refer to the YPG in the same terms as the Islamic State, seeing it as another terrorist group on its doorstep. Speaking as the offensive against Tal Abyad was underway on Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of the "creation of a structure that threatens our borders."

In an effort not to alienate Turkey — a NATO ally and an essential partner in the bid to remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power — the US has tread carefully in its dealings with the YPG.  

But the US-led coalition that was formed to fight IS has given the YPG something arguably more useful than arms in the form of airstrikes. These airstrikes proved effective in helping the YPG defeat IS in the much-publicized battle for Kobani, and helped the group capture Tal Abyad last week. The coalition said it conducted five airstrikes against IS targets near Tal Abyad on the day before it fell, striking “ three large and two small ISIL tactical units, destroying three ISIL vehicles.”

This air support has been accompanied by kind words about Kurdish forces from US military officials that belies the government’s official position on the YPG.

“Kurdish successes, enabled by Coalition airstrikes, are exposing Daesh military capabilities and terrorists for subsequent removal from the battlefield,” said Col. Wayne Marotto, chief of public affairs for the US-led anti-IS coalition, referring to operations in Iraq and Syria.

Brig. Gen. Thomas Weidley, the coalition’s chief of staff, said on Monday: “Coalition airstrikes are exacting a high price on Daesh terrorists across Iraq and Syria. Since fall 2014, Kurdish forces in both Iraq and Syria, enabled by the Coalition, have only taken territory from Daesh, never ceding it.”

The comments reflect a realization among US military officials that the Kurds in Syria, namely the YPG, have been one of the most effective forces in pushing back IS.

A long road

A number of significant roadblocks stand in the way of the Kurds' quest for autonomy. As long as they are fighting IS, the US is likely to continue to support them in one way or another. The difficulty comes further down the line, when US and other groups’ designs for Syria clash with those of the Kurds.

The US has stated repeatedly stated that it opposes the creation of a semi-autonomous Kurdish state: “We hope that everyone in Syria works together on a national unified project,” as one senior State Department official put it.

Herein lies one of the many foibles of US policy in Syria: it aids the Kurds in consolidating control of Kurdish-majority areas, while publicly opposing what the Kurds plan to do with that land in the future. It praises the fighting ability of the Kurds, while ignoring what many of them are fighting for.

Like the US, the vast array of Syrian rebel groups — from the moderates to the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al Nusra — vehemently oppose the creation of an autonomous Kurdish region. Yet many of them, too, have come to rely on and cooperate with Kurdish forces in beating back IS.

Despite increased cooperation between the rebels and Kurdish forces, tensions still exist. Accusations of ethnic cleansing in recent weeks, as YPG forces have pushed IS out of mixed Arab and Kurdish areas that they claim as part of their territory, are likely to deepen mistrust further.

Even if the rebels and the Kurds are able to come to some sort of arrangement on the future of the Kurdish cantons, where does that leave Turkey?

Cale Salih, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a Kurdish affairs analyst, wrote the day after Tal Abyad’s fall: “Ultimately, the key to normalizing the coalition's relationship with the YPG would be progress in the Turkey-PKK peace process, which would allow Turkey — and thus its Western allies — to engage the PYD/YPG with greater flexibility.”

Commenting on the likelihood of the YPG and the PYD seeing through its quest for autonomy, she told GlobalPost: “We don't know where Turkey or the US will stand on the PKK in the future.”

But, when the fighting ends and the real nuts and bolts of the project have to be discussed, Salih said the group may face opposition from an unlikely source.

“The group has won over many Kurds across Kurdish geography (not only in Syria and Turkey but also Iraq and Iran) because of its now legendary military victories against jihadists — but when the war subsides, and the political playing field evens out a bit, the group may find that not all Syrian Kurds are on board with its autonomy project.”

For now though, fighting the Islamic State remains a priority.

“For us a single blow that is inflicted on ISIS terrorists is a pain relief for all the people of region who together have suffered from ISIS’ brutality, and it profits all humanity at the same time,” the YPG spokesman said. “We work hard so that there would be not a single inch of ground occupied by ISIS, for [their] poisonous creed has done harm to all human values as their simple existence does to the region.”