The Kurds, in turn, have threatened to transform their native land into a graveyard for Turkish soldiers. Whether the United States will be able to keep them apart is an open question.
For both sides the stakes are enormous. Turkey fears that the emergence of a sovereign Kurdish entity across the order may inflame its own Kurds, a sizable minority that has long sought greater recognition of its national identity. Turkey has brought its own troops into a state of preparedness, both to keep Iraqi refugees out and pre-empt a Kurdish dash for Kirkuk. It already has several thousand troops stationed at a small airfield in northern Iraq - over the Kurds' vociferous protests - and tens of thousands more are set to pour into the area.
To the Kurds, the road to independence - or at least a much enhanced degree of autonomy in a post-Saddam Iraq - runs through Kirkuk.
Their sense of entitlement is immensely strong and needs to be better understood in the West. Denied statehood after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and spread among a number of countries, the Kurds became an instrument in the hands of more powerful players, led along a trail of broken promises and agreements with many attempts to assert their nationhood brutally suppressed.
Iraq's 1988 Anfal counter-insurgency campaign, in which an estimated 100,000 Kurdish men, women and children were systematically murdered by the Iraqi regime, is barely known to anyone but regional experts.
Nearly another 7 000 died in Saddam's much better known chemical strike on Halabja in March 1988, but the historical record has been contested by revisionists, despite the evidence, and the extent of the suffering not fully acknowledged.
The international community's inability to comprehend the transformative significance of Anfal and Halabja to the Kurds is roughly equivalent to failing to grasp how the events of Sept. 11 affected the American psyche.
It is out of such deep emotions and national traumas that identities are forged or reinforced and, sometimes, nations are born. If in the chaos of war the Kurds make a sprint for Kirkuk, it will be less out of an opportunistic calculation of probable gain than out of a profound urge for national survival.
Between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds stands the United States. The Bush administration has publicly expressed its commitment to the territorial integrity of Iraq, making it abundantly clear that independence for the Kurds is not for the United States an acceptable outcome.
But having now brought on the war, Washington must address two big challenges: to prevent a potentially catastrophic confrontation between Kurds and Turks while the war goes on, and to help put together a post-war structure for the Iraqi state that, while preserving its territorial integrity, really does address the legitimate aspirations of the Kurdish people.
To meet these challenges, three things must happen, all made extremely urgent by the imminence - as we write this - of not only war in Iraq but votes in the Turkish Parliament authorising the deployment both of US troops into Turkey and more Turkish troops into Iraq.
First, it is imperative that U.S. forces get to Kirkuk fast - before the Turks and before Kurdish forces.
Second, the United States must make abundantly clear to Turkey that it has to show restraint, avoiding any unilateral military moves in northern Iraq.
Third, Washington must simultaneously make clear to the Kurds that they should take no action that risks provoking Turkey: that they must refrain from unilateral military steps and consent to a temporary international presence in Kirkuk.
In exchange, America needs to give an explicit, public guarantee to the Kurds that it will protect them from attack (from either Turkey or a post-Saddam regime in Baghdad) and support their fair expectation of greater freedom to govern themselves during negotiations over the future of Iraq, including - crucially - an active Kurdish role in the central government.
The Kurdish parties have much deep suspicion to overcome, born of their historical dealings with the United States and the wider international community. If they are ever to live in peace and security and in full enjoyment of their human rights, they must agree to work with both for a better post-war Iraq.
But Iraqi Kurds can reasonably ask to be given some clearer and firmer grounds for confidence about the outcome than have so far emerged from Washington. (JH/GE/NM)
@* Gareth Evans is president and Joost Hiltermann is Middle East project director of the International Crisis Group. ICG's new report on Iraq's Kurds is available on its website, www.crisisweb.org
