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"Fortunately, the Kurds of northern Iraq increasingly seem to understand this fact," he said, "and understand the importance of thinking of themselves as Iraqis who will participate fully in the political life of a future democratic Iraq."
Still, many Kurds would prefer not to take on Mr. Hussein. Those who take this view cite an equilibrium — brittle, but surprisingly enduring through the past five years — that has developed between the Kurdish territory and Mr. Hussein's Iraq. The relationship has become as much one of cooperation as confrontation.
A Strange Coexistence
The proof is available at crossing points like Chamchamal, on the desert floor about 40 miles outside Sulaimaniya. Here, Kurds travel south to Baghdad or Kirkuk, an oil city, for medical treatment that is not available in the Kurdish region, or to trade truckloads of fresh fruit and vegetables. Northbound, traders in battered trucks and cars carry auto parts, furniture, toys, household equipment and a host of other products.
Both sides charge customs duties, and bribes are common. Kurdish officials check northbound Iraqi travelers against lists of known Iraqi agents. "We Kurds will never trust the Iraqis, as long as Saddam is in power," said Latif Hamid, a border guard checking and rechecking the identity cards of Arab Iraqis arriving at Chamchamal. "We can never forget what they have done."
But identity checks aside, it is mostly an open frontier for anybody on either side who dares to cross it.
To the west, tanker trucks loaded with Iraqi oil run north to Turkey, cutting through the Kurdish region. In one 15-minute period, a traveler counted more than 60 trucks heading up the highway from Mosul to the Turkish border, part of a traffic that United Nations officials estimate at 1,500 tankers a day. This traffic runs in defiance of United Nations sanctions that place all Iraqi oil sales under United Nations supervision, with the revenues to be spent on things like food, medicines and reparations to Kuwait.
For Mr. Hussein, the illicit oil yields huge sums — as much as $2 billion a year, by some estimates. The money sustains the pampered lifestyle of the Baghdad elite, and Western intelligence agencies believe that it also pays for some of Mr. Hussein's weapons programs.
But the oil traffic is no less a bonanza for the Kurds, who receive an Iraqi toll on every truck. Before Baghdad cut its oil production sharply this year as part of the dispute over the United Nations sanctions, the tolls brought Kurds as much as $1 million a day.
Some Kurdish officials believe it has suited Mr. Hussein to help the Kurdish territories survive. He has enough problems, they say, without having to govern the restive Kurds because he needs to concentrate on his power base — the Kirkuk oil fields just south of the Kurdish territory, the Iraqi heartland around Baghdad, and the rich oil fields of the south, around Basra. "He gave a part to save the whole," Mr. Abdurrahman said. "But if he'd foreseen how successful we've been, he wouldn't have done it."
Now, Kurds say, with almost two-thirds of the Kurdish population under the age of 25 and increasingly accustomed to their freedoms, any Iraqi government would have trouble curtailing them.
But sheltered as they are from Mr. Hussein, the Kurds seldom criticize him openly, wary that he might one day return. Although Mr. Hussein is loathed, said Mr. Salih, of the Patriotic Union, "he remains our constant shadow."
"When we turn around, he is always there," he said. "The last thing we want to do is to provoke him, and invite another onslaught against our people."
