> This draws into question exactly how 'autonomous' said autonomous zone was.
It seems like you're conflating sovereignty with economic dependence, which are two distinct concepts—being entirely economic independent seems highly geographically dependent. Few regions in the world are lucky enough to even have this option. For instance, you can be economically dependent on neighbors but still locally determine who runs the local courts. So it's not great evidence of how their society is run, particularly when other states—say, Afghanistan, where the current government has clearly exercised local sovereignty—have similarly been affected by the withdrawal of US troops and the seizing of assets.
To be fair, reality can often conflate those two concepts too. What I mean is that in some cases a lack of sovereignty can lead to economic catastrophe if people are willing to pillage your economy by force. As you note it depends on circumstance though - Lichtenstein can get away without having an army; Rojava can't.
Sure, but Rojava is very specifically cited by anarchists and left-libertarians in the west as an example of a principality that's self-sustaining and capable of existing apart from global capitalism. Until 2018, evidence suggested this was true. In fact, their economy, ie, the material basis upon which their society exists (which IMO suggests that there isn't a meaningful distinction here), appears to have been scaffolded by its status as a client of the US. None of this is really true of Afghanistan. It's not cast as some kind of role model, and it has no illusions of building a successor society.
It seems like you're conflating sovereignty with economic dependence, which are two distinct concepts—being entirely economic independent seems highly geographically dependent. Few regions in the world are lucky enough to even have this option. For instance, you can be economically dependent on neighbors but still locally determine who runs the local courts. So it's not great evidence of how their society is run, particularly when other states—say, Afghanistan, where the current government has clearly exercised local sovereignty—have similarly been affected by the withdrawal of US troops and the seizing of assets.