Kurds carve out their own region in northeastern Syria

Street names in Syria's far northeastern corner have been changed from Arabic to Kurdish, schools openly teach the Kurdish language and the country's most powerful Kurdish militia flies its flag from checkpoints on main roads.

Across northeastern Syria, the Kurds, the country's largest ethnic minority, have taken advantage of the vacuum left by the civil war to push for the autonomy long denied them by the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Their struggle does not fit neatly into the war between Assad's government and the rebels seeking his ousting, and different parts of the scattered Kurdish population have allied at times with forces on either side.

The fight for a measure of autonomy by Syria's Kurds is the newest conflict in a broader struggle in which Kurds, spread across Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran and oppressed for decades, are trying to take advantage of the chaos in the Middle East to achieve longstanding ambitions for self-government and democratic rights. Most Kurds say their ultimate aim is an independent state, which was first promised to them, and then denied, by the victors of the first world war. That perceived betrayal has sown deep grievances in the collective Kurdish psyche.

Kurdish political leaders say they are not seeking an independent Kurdish state in northern Syria, but are only pushing for greater Kurdish rights. They model their struggle in part on the status achieved by Kurds in Iraq, who run a region in the north that is essentially independent from Baghdad.

A recent trip by a reporter through the Kurdish area of Syria revealed many steps towards Kurdish autonomy as well as fighters who have taken up arms to obtain it.