Fourteen years ago, Dolani was a renowned peshmerga officer. In 1991, when the old Iraqi army moved to crush Kurdish resistance in these mountains, Dolani and one of his lieutenants, Ahkmed Mohamed Kamal -- now a colonel under Dolani in the new Iraqi army -- were there to stop them. On a mountain road near the celebrations, the rusting hulk of a destroyed Iraqi tank marks the spot where Dolani and Kamal's soldiers stopped the Iraqis cold. It was a heady moment in the decades-long Kurdish resistance, and sweet revenge for a defining atrocity that had occurred only three years earlier.

It was March 16, 1988: Iraqi fighter jets swooped low over the Kurdish town of Halabja, a peshmerga stronghold, dropping the lethal agents sarin, tabun and VX, and canisters of mustard gas. Thousands died instantly. Thousands more clawed to rivers and streams seeking relief from the burning only to die in the water. Kamal and his troops cautiously approached the town. When they sensed the gas, they turned and fled back into the mountains that had protected them for so many years.

In 2003, after the fall of Baghdad and the liberation of Kurdistan, survivors of the Halabja attack built a memorial in the ruined town. Inside, there's a black wall inscribed with the names of all 5,000 victims. Outside, there's a cemetery with rows of identical headstones under a sign that reads "It's not allowed for Baaths to enter."

Today, Kamal and K.G. stand among the headstones, Kamal alone with his thoughts, K.G. recalling the day in 1991 when his family fled Kurdistan ahead of Saddam's army. After years of flight that claimed the life of his father, K.G. settled in Texas in 1997 and took a job translating for the Defense Department. (Translators in Iraq have been threatened by insurgents for collaborating with U.S. forces; K.G., who works in Sulaymaniyah for the Army, asked that his full name be withheld.) K.G. says he's proud of America's work in Kurdistan -- but in spite of all the local goodwill today, the United States still shares the blame for the area's troubled past. "The U.S. helped out Saddam," he says, referring to the Reagan administration's support of Saddam during the Iraq-Iran war two decades ago -- which included helping supply the Iraqi dictator's chemical weapons program.

Nevertheless, Kamal is back home now -- one of his homes, at least -- and it's all about "freedom," he says.

In light of the region's wealth and progress, Kurdistan's freedom may be Iraq's loss. After lunch, Dolani sounds a conciliatory note. "We Kurds are never against anyone," he says. "On earth, a human's a human. We want to have a unified Iraq."

But on the way back to Camp Stone after a pensive afternoon at Halabja, Kamal sings a different song. "There are 40 million Kurds in the world. This is the 21st century. Everyone's getting educated, getting technology," he says. "But we don't even have a country."

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