- NEW: Women make up a significant part of the Kurdish defense forces
- The United States has aided Kurdish defenders holding off ISIS in Kobani
- But for 30 years, militants from the Kurdish separatist movement fought a guerrilla war
- Their opponent in that fight has been the government in nearby Turkey
Derik, Kurdish-controlled northern Syria (CNN) -- Don't be fooled by the pretty songs they sing in their downtime -- these women are among ISIS' most deadly enemies.
Brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles and wearing military fatigues, the women perform military parade drills at a memorial ceremony for slain fighters in a dusty lot in northern Syria.
"Our martyrs do not die. They live on in memory!" their Kurdish commander, dressed in green camouflage and wearing a pistol on her belt, declares as the scores of uniformed female militants stand at attention.
Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG), they have fought the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on the ground for more than a year.
They are fighting and bleeding on the front lines of the battle to keep the terror group out of Kurdish-controlled parts of northern Syria -- and to keep this Kurdish movement's ideology, which was founded partly on a pillar of gender equality, intact.
"We as women defend and protect our people," said Hadiye Yusuf, the female co-president of the largest of the three Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria, in an address at the memorial ceremony.
"We carry weapons to protect our homes and avoid becoming slaves of ISIS," she added.
The fiercely secular YPG stands in sharp contrast to its bitter enemy, which has kidnapped thousands of women and hid them from public life in the areas that they control -- a chilling reminder of what could await Kurdish women if the war against ISIS is lost.
Assistance from the U.S.
It was only recently that the YPG started to receive help from the United States in the form of weapons drops and airstrikes designed to blunt the advance of ISIS, which now controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.
The much-needed aid was a surprising turn of events for the YPG -- a group that includes many fighters who have long battled Turkey, a key partner in the American-led NATO alliance.
But it wasn't until jihadist militants mounted a relentless siege of Kobani, the Syrian border town within sight of international television cameras, that much of the world realized ethnic Kurds were an effective fighting force within Syria.
'Statelets' within a country
As much of the rest of Syria ripped itself apart in a vicious civil war, Syria's Kurdish minority spent three years quietly building a series of mini-states in the north of the country.
They refer to these three enclaves as Rojava. Until recently, some outside observers saw them as something of a success.
"They tried to run them as pretty autonomous statelets that were actually rather admirable in some ways. They included many different ethnic groups, faith groups, and they tried to be inclusive," said Hugh Pope, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, a conflict mediation organization.
Bulletins pasted on walls on the streets of one Kurdish-controlled town urge business owners to post signs in the three official languages of Rojava: Kurdish, Arabic, and Syriac -- an ancient Christian language spoken in the Middle East for nearly 2,000 years.
"The municipality will help in preparation and translation," said the bulletins, printed by the municipality of Derik. "Our language is our identity, our history, our existence and our dignity."
Quiet enclaves
In some ways, the Kurdish-controlled zone feels a world away from many other battle-scarred towns in northern Syria.
These areas have barely been targeted by the Syrian government airstrikes and barrel bombs that pummel rebel-held cities and towns, killing at least 182 civilians last week alone, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Unlike the atmosphere in territory controlled by Islamist militias, women in Rojava walk freely on the streets, their hair and faces uncovered.
And everywhere, there are posters and graffiti celebrating the bravery and martyrdom of Kurdish fighters from the YPG.
YPG separate from PKK, leaders say
At the conclusion of the memorial ceremony last weekend, female fighters -- as well as the mothers and widows of YPG members killed fighting ISIS -- chanted "Biji sera Apo," or "Long Live Apo."
Apo is the nickname of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. For 30 years, militants from this Marxist-inspired Kurdish separatist movement fought a guerrilla war against the government in nearby Turkey. To this day, Turkey, as well as its NATO allies the United States and the European Union, officially label the PKK a terrorist organization.
YPG leaders insist the PKK is a fraternal, though distinctly separate organization.
The YPG's iconography and membership suggest otherwise.
Ocalan's portrait sits at the center of many posters of slain YPG fighters. In addition, during two trips CNN journalists made to Rojava, CNN encountered at least a dozen armed Kurdish militants of Turkish origin.
In an interview with CNN, Yusuf, the enclave co-president, said in her youth she had been a PKK fighter, before eventually becoming an activist in a women's association.
The Syrian Kurds' close links to the PKK put Rojava at odds with the Kurdish zone's neighbor to the north: Turkey.
That left the enclave of Kobani vulnerable when ISIS mounted its assault last month.
"When push came to shove in Kobani, the YPG fighters were terribly exposed and have been dealt very cruel blows," said the ICG's Hugh Pope.
More than 200,000 refugees fled across the border to Turkey to escape the ISIS advance. Meanwhile, Kobani's Kurdish defenders were pushed back almost to the border fence with Turkey in their grim struggle against the jihadi offensive.
American airstrikes, and a series of weapons and ammunition air drops, succeeded in loosening the ISIS siege. But the U.S. move to help the Syrian Kurds strained relations with Turkey, whose president called the American aid drops "a mistake."
Military action unites Kurds
While the Syrian Kurds have become a point of tension between two NATO allies, they are also enjoying soaring popularity among Kurds scattered across different countries in the Middle East.
Last August, YPG fighters mounted a daring rescue operation across the border into neighboring Iraq. They evacuated thousands of Iraqi Kurds from the Yazidi religious group, who were trapped by ISIS on a barren mountain.
Over the last month, the YPG's defense of Kobani has electrified and united Kurds often fractured by linguistic and political divisions.
But the popularity has come at great cost.
Hundreds of YPG members have been killed, and many more wounded, in the war against ISIS.
At the memorial ceremony, a widow named Khalisa Gharzi sat with her daughter and son, watching the speeches.
She was in the final month of her pregnancy with her daughter Zhanda last year when her husband Ramadan was killed in a battle with ISIS.
Gharzi said her husband's body, when it was recovered, had been mutilated -- one of his ears was severed.
"I am angry and sad about what happened to him, but I'm still proud because he was a fighter," Gharzi said. "If I didn't have these children, I myself would go and fight. Because this is a just war."
Not far away, her 3-year-old son Hogur played next to rows of female fighters who sat on the parade ground clutching their rifles.
The boy was dressed in the green camouflage uniform of a future Kurdish fighter.
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