At a dusty checkpoint on the front line facing ISIL in northern Syria, a steady trickle of cars, vans and trucks passes by on their way from Raqqa, the extremist group’s main stronghold.
The checkpoint near the town of Ain Issa is no more than an abandoned building beside a dirt track, shielded by a waist-high berm piled up along the entire front and held by a group of poorly armed and disorganised Arab fighters in loose alliance with the Kurds who control north-eastern Syria.
As a truck laden with household items emerges from the hazy no man’s land, one of the fighters climbs onto the berm and fires a warning shot into the sandy ground ahead. Another jumps onto a motorbike and careers towards the truck to check the driver’s paperwork before he is allowed to pass.
A little later, a van pulls up, laden with civilians. Inside, 65 year-old Obeid Al Assi, an Arab from a village near Kurdish-controlled Tel Abyad, is returning from a doctor’s appointment in Raqqa, where he has paid 3,000 Syrian pounds (Dh60) to have his heart checked.
“There are not enough hospitals in Tel Abyad,” he says with a shrug, referring to the Syrian town on the Turkish border that was taken by Kurdish forces in July.
Hamad Dijaz, the father of a four-month-old girl, agrees. He took his daughter to Raqqa when she fell ill, he says, boarding one of the shuttle busses that ferries people to and from the city serving as ISIL’s headquarters. His wife has accompanied him, and sits quietly in the van wearing a long black abaya, though she has removed her veil, part of the required dress code for women in ISIL territory.
“In the Kobani and Tel Abyad countryside, most of the people go to the doctor in Raqqa,” said Abu Hamed Ansari, the leader of the motley group manning the checkpoint. A permission from his brigade commander is required to make the journey for civilians to travel to Raqqa, while the front can also be crossed at another checkpoint further down the line, he says.
The van rumbles on, soon to be followed by more vehicles, driving alone or in small convoys. The fighters lose interest in their guard duty, and most vehicles pass through without even a perfunctory security check. Occasionally, Mr Ansari waves at a driver he recognises.
When the Kurds took Tel Abyad, they deprived ISIL of a vital supply line to Turkey. But in turn, the autonomous region suffers from an economic blockade imposed by Turkey.
Ankara is against self-rule in Rojava, as the predominantly Kurdish territory in Syria’s north-east is known, fearing it would galvanise its own Kurdish minority towards secession. It is also mistrustful of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) that rules Rojava and has close ties with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who resumed their decades-old insurgency against the Turkish state after a ceasefire fell apart earlier this year.
The flow of people and goods across the desert front is known to the administration in Rojava, which tries to keep tabs on who is coming in and out.
“We have some checkpoints for people who travel to Raqqa and we record the names of the people going and coming back,” says Bozan Khali, interior minister of the Kobani canton, one of the three administrative districts that make up Rojava.
Mr Khali acknowledges that these efforts are insufficient. “There are many ways to go to Raqqa, too many ways to try and control.”
Encumbered by the blockade and the widespread destruction caused by the fierce conflict with ISIL, Rojava’s economy is struggling, and the infrastructure is on its knees. Four years of civil war has prompted many to leave the region, a drain on qualified staff.
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