From the vast size of his office and the breadth of his responsibilities, you would think Akram Hesso was a head of state.
He talks of economic policies and export taxes, while his armed forces are guarding borders and keeping law and order for his millions of compatriots.
Those armed forces - men and women alike - have been lionised across the West for their fight against the jihadists of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant .
In fact, Rojava is a territory few people outside the Middle East could place on a map. Mr Hesso is merely one of several leaders of a new type of entity with which the world is having to come to terms as the Middle East falls apart: the unacknowledged, unauthorised, statelet.
Rojava is the name Syrian Kurds give to the three Kurdish occupied zones of the north of the country, which have wrested self-rule out of the collapse of the Syrian state. They have then had to defend them against assault from Isil - most dramatically seen in the battle for Kobane, the border town with Turkey.
The recent conquest of Tal Abyad has meant two of the three “cantons” - Kobane and Jazeera, to the east - now touch on each other, allowing for an even greater measure of autonomy.
“From the start of our self-administration there’s been coordination between the heads of the three cantons,” Mr Hasso, who runs Jazeera, says. “Opening this corridor will make the coordination better.”
He has, at his finger-tips, many of the advantages of a state. He exacts taxes from exports - as the long queues of trucks laden with sheep and produce waiting to cross the Tigris into the neighbouring Kurdistan Region of Iraq bear witness.
The government buys wheat and other agricultural produce from local farmers, and stores it or sell it on elsewhere in Syria, or to Iraq .
It also has its own oil supplies, from the nodding donkeys that line the region’s roads. Though just five per cent are currently operational, thanks to the fighting, it is a start.
The desperate battle for Kobane meant that for the first time, the Syrian Kurds’ dominant political party, the PYD, and their male and female fighting forces - the YPG and YPJ - achieved international renown - particularly the female fighters.
Obscured were their origins as a semi-Marxist spin-off from the PKK, the group that has fought the government in neighbouring Turkey for decades and is still a proscribed terrorist organisation.
It is partly to ensure good relations with the West that the PYD refuses to say it seeks an independent state, which would infuriate Turkey.
That may change as chaos further engulfs Syria, said Michael Stephens, an analyst with the Royal United Services Institute. “It may well be that as Syria continues to fragment the PYD ends up with even more than it aims for, a de facto independent state entity,” he said.
That threatens its own political fall-out. While the fighting continues, there is little challenge to the dominance of the PYD. If the region, with its 2.5 million inhabitants who include Arabs and Christians as well as largely Sunni Muslim Kurds, becomes more settled, its claims to be democratic and pluralistic will be put to the test.
The Kurds pride themselves on what they see as their ethnic and religiously inclusive policies – in Jazeera, Mr Hesso’s deputy is Elizabeth Gawrie, a Catholic Syriac woman.
However, recent reports accuse the YPG of expelling non-Kurdish citizens from their towns in an act of ethnic cleansing.
One of the many western volunteers to help them in their fight, a man from Germany, admitted he had seen Kurds vandalising Arab towns.There is huge suspicion that local Arabs have helped Isil in the war.
The PYD and the YPG have also gained a reputation for stifling dissent. In 2014, the local administration ordered staff at the local radio station Arta FM to stop their sometimes critical news reporting and only broadcast music.
“We have had agreements to share the administration but the PYD does not stick to them,” protested Anwar Nasso, a member of one opposition party, Yekiti.
Even the mainstream Kurdish National Council (KNC), which is in coalition with the PYD, is becoming increasingly resentful.
“It would be difficult for the PYD to ignore the multiple constituencies in Rojava without there being a significant level of domestic unrest,” Mr Stephens said. “It is in the PYD’s interests to be as inclusive as possible, and there is much to lose if it is not.”
That remains for the future. Apart from Isil, one other large obstacle remains to the PYD’s dream of uniting Jazeera, Kobane and the third canton, Afrin to the west - the continued presence of the regime.
Damascus continues to run check-points and bases in both the region’s two main cities, Qamishli and Hassakeh. In return, it continues to pay teachers’ and doctors’ salaries
But Mr Hesso is insistent that his administration is as self-reliant as can be expected in a chaotic environment. “We’ve been buying and selling locally and the money that is coming in is not from the regime,” he said.
This article was written by Sofia Barbarani in Rojava from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: 6 scientifically proven features men find attractive in women