[22][23][24] Independent organizations providing healthcare in the region include the Kurdish Red Crescent,[25] the Syrian American Medical Society,[26] the Free Burma Rangers,[27] and Doctors Without Borders.

[28] Since 2016, Turkish and Turkish-backed Syrian rebel forces have occupied parts of northern Syria through a series of military operations against the SDF, which has stated that they will defend the region from aggression.

As the region expanded and increasingly included areas dominated by non-Kurdish groups, mostly Arabs, "Rojava" was used less and less by the administration in hopes of deethnicising its appearance and making it more acceptable to other ethnicities.

[39] On 17 March 2016, northern Syria's administration self-declared the establishment of a federal system of government as the Democratic Federation of Rojava – Northern Syria (Kurdish: Federaliya Demokratîk a Rojava – Bakurê Sûriyê; Arabic: الفدرالية الديمقراطية لروج آفا – شمال سوريا, romanized: al-Fidirāliyya al-Dīmuqrāṭiyya li-Rūj ʾĀvā – Šamāl Suriyā; Classical Syriac: ܦܕܪܐܠܝܘܬ݂ܐ ܕܝܡܩܪܐܛܝܬܐ ܠܓܙܪܬܐ ܒܓܪܒܝܐ ܕܣܘܪܝܐ, romanized: Federaloyotho Demoqraṭoyto l'Gozarto b'Garbyo d'Suriya; sometimes abbreviated as NSR).

[54] Under the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire (312–63 BC), different tribal groups and mercenaries were settled in northern Syria as military colonists; these included Arabs[55] and possibly Kurds.

Some Circassian, Kurdish and Chechen tribes cooperated with the Ottoman (Turkish) authorities in the massacres of Armenian and Assyrian Christians in Upper Mesopotamia, between 1914 and 1920, with further attacks on unarmed fleeing civilians conducted by local Arab militias.

[71] The number of Turkish Kurds settled in al-Jazira province during the 1920s was estimated at 20,000 people, out of 100,000 inhabitants, with the remainder of the population being Christians (Syriac, Armenian, Assyrian) and Arabs.

[73][74] The region received little investment or development from the central government and laws discriminated against Kurds owning property, driving cars, working in certain professions and forming political parties.

The government monitored, though generally allowed this "sub-state activity" because the northern minorities including the Kurds rarely caused unrest with the exception of the 2004 Qamishli riots.

[90] Despite the Ba'athist internal policies which officially suppressed a Kurdish identity, the Syrian government allowed the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to set up training camps from 1980.

[94][95][96] Doing so, the YPG and its female wing, the Women's Protection Units (YPJ), mostly battled factions of the Free Syrian Army, and Islamist militias like the al-Nusra Front and Jabhat Ghuraba al-Sham.

In early 2018, Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch alongside Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army to capture the Kurdish-majority Afrin and oust the YPG/SDF from the region.

[118][119][120][121] Turkish and Turkish-backed Syrian rebel forces captured 68 settlements, including Ras al-Ayn, Tell Abyad, Suluk, Mabrouka and Manajir during the 9-day operation before a 120-hour ceasefire was announced.

[128] Media outlets labelled the attack "no surprise" because Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had for months warned that the presence of the YPG on the Turkish-Syrian border despite the Northern Syria Buffer Zone was unacceptable.

In contrast, the PKK central command was now willing to restart negotiations with Turkey, distrusted the United States, and emphasized the international success of its leftist ideology over the survival of Rojava as administrative entity.

The supporters of the region's administration state that it is an officially secular polity,[139][140][141] with direct democratic ambitions based on democratic confederalism and libertarian socialism,[142][143] promoting decentralization, gender equality,[144][145] environmental sustainability, social ecology, and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural, and political diversity, and that these values are mirrored in its constitution, society, and politics, stating it to be a model for a federalized Syria as a whole rather than outright independence.

[146][147][148][149][150] The region's administration has also been accused by partisan and non-partisan sources of authoritarianism, media censorship, forced disappearances, support of the Ba'athist regime,[d] Kurdification, and displacement.

The confident assertiveness of young people was striking.However, a 2016 paper from Chatham House stated that power is heavily centralized in the hands of the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

In 2019, residents of tens of villages in the eastern Deir ez-Zor Governorate demonstrated for two weeks, regarding the new regional leadership as Kurdish-dominated and non-inclusive, citing arrests of suspected ISIL members, looting of oil, lack of infrastructure as well as forced conscription into the SDF as reasons.

[185] The co-leaders selected to lead the SDC at its founding were prominent human rights activist Haytham Manna and TEV-DEM Executive Board member Îlham Ehmed.

[190][196][197][198] In August 2016, the Ourhi Centre was founded by the Assyrian community in the city of Qamishli, to educate teachers in order to make Syriac-Aramaic an additional language in public schools in Jazira Region,[199] which then started in the 2016/17 academic year.

Internet lines are operated by Syrian Telecom, which as of January 2017 is working on a major extension of the fibre optic cable network in southern Jazira Region.

[79][74][78] There have been calls to expel the settlers and return the land to its previous owners, which has led the political leadership of the region to press the Syrian government for a comprehensive solution.

[295] During the ongoing Syrian Civil War, organizations such as the Turkish government,[296] Amnesty International[297] and the Middle East Observer[298][299] have stated that SDF was forcibly displacing inhabitants of captured areas with predominantly Arab population such as Tell Abyad.

[300] However, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights rebutted these reports[301] and the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry find no evidence of YPG or SDF forces committing ethnic cleansing in order to change the demographic composition of territories under their control.

[346][347][348][349] Independent organizations providing healthcare in the region include the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Syrian American Medical Society, the Free Burma Rangers and Doctors Without Borders.

[370][371] In a public statement in March 2016, the day after the declaration of the regions autonomy, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter praised the People's Protection Units (YPG) militia as having "proven to be excellent partners of ours on the ground in fighting ISIL.

[379] In April 2018, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron dispatched troops to Manbij and Rmelan in a bid to assist Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militias and in order to defuse tensions with Turkey.

The official position of the European Union remained the same however, that the Autonomous Administration should be "respected" and included in talks while rejecting "any recognition in the national sense of the word" and that "the territorial integrity of Syria is fundamental".

This report uncovers clear evidence of a deliberate, co-ordinated campaign of collective punishment of civilians in villages previously captured by IS, or where a small minority were suspected of supporting the group.