Footage of those refugees finally spurred America and Britain to act, and soon they established no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, halting the butchery and allowing the Kurds to return to their homes. Under that military umbrella, the Kurds have created a remarkable civil society in Iraqi Kurdistan.

In the recent Gulf war, the Kurds were America's best friends in Iraq. The Peshmerga, or Kurdish militia, fought the Baath in the north, and the jubilant Kurdish crowds celebrating Saddam's fall provided some of the war's most triumphant scenes.

"The Kurds truly feel liberated by the United States," says Mike Amitay, executive director of the Washington Kurdish Institute. "The Kurds, since the end of the Gulf War, have acknowledged that their very survival and the progress they've made is a direct result of U.S. protection. Of all of the people in Iraq who were subjected to Saddam Hussein's cruelty, the Kurds more than anyone have welcomed the U.S. with open arms. It would be absolutely tragic if this goodwill was wasted."

Almost everyone agrees that the Kurds aren't going to turn on the Americans. The danger is that they might turn away from them. "The Kurds wouldn't turn on U.S. forces; they'd just withdraw their support," says Peters. "The Kurds in Baghdad would be so suspicious of any move America makes. You would see the Kurds trying to build up more armaments in case they had to fight the Turks. It would just create an atmosphere and mentality you don't need."

Just how bad the friction becomes depends in part on the details of the Turkish deployment. The Turks want their soldiers deployed just south of Iraqi Kurdistan, while the Americans are pushing to have them stationed west of Baghdad, in the heart of the violence-wracked "Sunni triangle." There is also debate about how free a hand the Turks will have to go after members of the PKK, a Turkish Kurd guerrilla force thought to have several thousand members in Iraqi Kurdistan. Although the PKK doesn't have good relations with either of the leading Iraqi Kurdish parties, most experts say that ordinary Kurds will be incensed if the Turks hunt fellow Kurds on their territory.

To judge by its rhetoric, Turkey doesn't intend to stay out of Kurdish affairs. It's selling its involvement to its own reluctant people as a way to keep the Kurds in check and to protect Iraq's Turkoman minority, who live in Iraq's north and who are ethnically related to the Turks. (It is also widely believed in Turkey, and elsewhere, that the Turkish troop commitment is repayment for a U.S. loan of $8.5 billion -- part of the delicate line Turkey must walk between enraging its people, who overwhelmingly opposed the U.S. invasion, and harming relations with the U.S., which has propped up its staggering economy.)

"What the Kurds fear most is that Turkish troops will be stationed just south of the autonomous region," says Amitay. "Turkey's prime minister told the Parliament that Turkish troops were needed in Iraq to prevent the establishment of any Kurdish autonomous entity. The thinking is that things are going poorly in Iraq and the instability could lead to civil war and a declaration of Kurdish autonomy, which is something Turkey has rejected strenuously. If that happened, Turkey would be in a position to move in troops from north and south to quash any Kurdish move toward independence."

It's not just full Kurdish independence that the Turks want to prevent, though. They're against any kind of ethnic nationalism that might inspire their own oppressed Kurds. "The Turks have been very outspoken that not only should you not have a federal system, but you should not have any program to help any minority," says Jim Prince, president of the Democracy Council, a non-governmental organization that promotes democracy in developing countries.

Prince, who worked in Kurdistan throughout the 1990s, says, "The Turks' main objective is keeping the country ruled from Baghdad rather than giving any of the minorities disproportionate power." By coming to America's aid in Iraq now, he says, the Turks hope to have a say about the structure of the new Iraqi state.

Of course, that's months away. The real problems might start much sooner. After all, wherever the troops are stationed, it's likely that the Turks will have to create a land corridor through Kurdistan. On Monday, the BBC reported that Americans were unfazed by Kurdish objections to having Turkish troops travel through their territory, quoting an American general who said, "The United States, which is the authority in Iraq, does not have reservations on the issue."

Having such fierce enemies in such close proximity creates all sorts of risks, say many observers. Henri Barkey, a former member of the State Department's policy planning staff on Turkey and Iraq who now chairs the International Relations Department at Lehigh University, says there are several groups who might try to ignite a fight.

"Imagine if suddenly you had serious clashes between Turkomen and Kurds, provoked by hotheads, agent provocateurs, even provoked by al-Qaida. What will the Turkish military do?" he asks. "If they do nothing, it will put the Turkish government under tremendous pressure at home. You have the potential for conflagration between Kurds and Turkomen or Kurds and Turks, not to mention some Kurdish hothead taking potshots at the Turkish military."

That's why many say it's not just America's relationship with the Kurds that would be jeopardized by a Turkish deployment. America's relationship with Turkey, already damaged by Turkey's refusal to allow U.S. forces to use its territory to invade Iraq despite a massive bribe, could be further weakened. "If it ends up in serious internal conflict between Turkish troops and Iraqi Kurds, the United States will then be caught in the middle of this, and that makes Iraq all the more complex," Fuller says.

Still, these scenarios are theoretical. What's assured is that, by bringing Turkish troops in, America will be spurning its allies within Iraq and demonstrating the impotence of the Iraqi Governing Council. "Members of the Iraqi Governing Council, they don't want Turkish troops; they know how divisive it would be," says Peters. "What's our response? Washington tells the IGC, who we're touting as representatives of the Iraqi people, to shut up."

The irony here is that the United States has pressured the rest of the world to recognize the Iraqi Governing Council's legitimacy, and now the Governing Council is asking the rest of the world to support it against the United States. On Sunday, Massoud Barzani, a Kurdish leader and member of the governing council, asked the Arab League to oppose America's attempt to bring in Turkish troops. That same day, Zebari held a press conference in London to say that Iraq's "governing council does not want any of Iraq's immediate neighbors to take part in peacekeeping missions."

"Look at the contradiction here," says Barkey. "The Iraqis now have an interim foreign minister who's a Kurd, who's attending the Arab League meeting in Cairo. He's there to represent Iraq, and we say he has full power. Some Arab countries did not want to even accept him. We put pressure on them. And then we say what these guys think is not important, we're going to decide who comes in" to Iraq.

For once, then, Iraqi people really are asking for protection from America's blundering dominion. This time, though, no one's marching for them. "This is an issue the left and right should unite on," says Peters. "The left should be against Turkish troops going to Iraq because of Turkey's appalling record of human rights abuses against the Kurds, and the right should be against it because it threatens to undo the very real gains we've made in Iraq."

Instead, the left and right are united in silence. "I'm appalled that there's not more attention paid to this," says Peters. It might be naive, though, to expect otherwise. Once again, the old Kurdish saying is born out: They really have no friends but the mountains.

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