Sgt. Taifur Majid, 15 years a soldier, stands under a cold grey sky and watches Kurdish commandos jog past, their young faces streaked with black.

The parade is a symbol of the unrecognized independence the Kurds of northern Iraq have enjoyed since 1991.

Protected by US and British warplanes, aided by the United Nations, and largely left alone by President Saddam Hussein's government, the two Kurdish political parties that administer Iraq's three northern provinces collect revenues, maintain armies, and hold elections on their own.

Iraqi Kurdistan is the closest thing that some 25 million Kurds- spread mainly across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey - have to a state. But the 3.8 million residents of northern Iraq inhabit a political never-never land that they say is "not in the sky and not on the ground." With war and the overthrow of Mr. Hussein in the offing, Kurds are wondering whether they will soar or crash in a new Iraq.

"God willing," says Sergeant Majid, a gaunt-faced, mustachioed man in faded fatigues and a tattered ammunition belt, "we will not lose this independence if America supports us."

But trusting America is not a simple prospect for Iraq's Kurds, whose history includes a succession of betrayals by outside powers, including the US. Neither is something else their future will ask of them: unity.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two groups that run northern Iraq, fought a civil war in the 1990s that killed thousands. This sundering left the KDP in control of the western portion of northern Iraq, which borders Syria and Turkey; the PUK controls the eastern part, which abuts Iran.

In a new Iraq, says Fouad Baban, an activist and physician, "there should be a united Kurdistan administration and Kurdish voice, or there will be total chaos." The two parties are discussing integration, but they have a long way to go.

The military compound where Majid watches his juniors is outside Sulaymaniyah, a city of 650,000 people fringed by rumpled, taupe-colored mountains that is the capital of the PUK region. In the compound, a traffic roundabout displays portraits of four PUK martyrs. None was killed by Hussein's regime. All were killed by the KDP.

The Kurds can count many betrayals. The victors of World War I promised the Kurds autonomy as a prelude to independence, and then reneged. The founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Attaturk, promised to treat the Kurds "as brothers and equals," and then repressed Turkey's vast Kurdish minority.

In the early 1970s, the US and Iran backed a Kurdish rebellion as a means of pressuring Iraq. But in 1975 the US helped broker a deal between Iran and Iraq. The Iranians abandoned Kurdish fighters overnight.

In 1991, Iraqi Kurds heeded US encouragement to rebel against Hussein. When Iraqi forces stamped out the uprising, the US stood idle.

While the US today seems to support what Iraq's Kurds want - a democratic, pluralistic, and federal Iraq that would preserve Kurdish autonomy - occasionally officials here vent their anxieties. They worry in particular about the role the US will afford Turkey in an invasion of Iraq.

The Turks say they want to enter northern Iraq to defend their border and keep refugees from fleeing into Turkey. But Turkish officials may also want to roll back Kurdish self-rule because of the inspiration it offers Turkey's Kurds.

Sami Abdurrahman, deputy prime minister of the KDP zone, last month told the BBC: "There is real fear that if Turkish forces come in they will suppress our people and demolish all the achievements of the last 10 years.

"In my lifetime, twice the US government has betrayed us," the British-trained engineer added, speaking of the events of 1975 and 1991. "Now if this goes ahead," he continued, referring to a Turkish incursion, "it will be a third betrayal in one generation."

The argument used to tamp down such fears is that US and Kurdish interests are now aligned - both are against Hussein and terrorism and in favor of democracy in Iraq. "Now we trust America," says Majid, the veteran fighter at the parade ground. "Because we have a joint enemy."

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