This Former Schoolteacher Is Building a U.S. Alliance With Syria's Kurds

Sinam Mohamed does not look like the kind of woman who would have much influence over America's quiet war in Syria. But this soft-faced former English teacher has emerged as a crucial liaison between the Barack Obama administration and the largely Kurdish army fighting alongside U.S. special operators to encircle the Islamic State's capital at Raqqa.

When I met with her at a private home in Arlington, Virginia, this week, she said she was asking the U.S. government to recognize the loose federation of Kurdish-majority cantons in northern Syria known as Rojava. As Rojava's unofficial foreign minister, Mohamed said her most important job is to build a strategic relationship with Washington. And in the past year, she has had a number of meetings with key U.S. officials planning the war against the Islamic State to do just that. On Friday she will brief hill staffers in Congress.