A proud, often conquered people, still hoping for a national homeland, is once again emerging as a major factor in America's vague plans to change Iraq and guarantee a new political balance in the Middle East for decades to come.

The factor is the 7,000,000 Kurds of Iraq but the quest is centuries old. Geography is with the Kurds - or against them. Anything they do will affect conditions in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey and the Muslim republics of central Asia, the other countries with substantial Kurdish minorities. Allied and competing Kurdish groups have used the inaccessibility of their territory and their ability to play countries against each other in a way which influenced regional politics to make and break alliances with the superpowers who wanted to occupy a strategic position astride the oil-rich Gulf .

As late as 1991 and 1996, the Kurds rose against Saddam Hussein and started marches to Baghdad only to be stopped by the United States. Then, as now, America had no firm plans for Iraq and fears that the country might dismember along ethnie and religious lines prevailed. Nowadays, though less vehement to challenge the central government than before the temptation is still there. But so are the reasons to be careful.

This time the Kurds have controlled northern Iraq since the end of the first War in 1991. The United States, Britain and the United Nations stopped Saddam from re-occupying their mountain region, often called Kurdistan, while declaring their support for a united Iraq. It was not the first time contradictory Western policies governed the future of the Kurds. In fact, the very same contradiction has dogged America's approach to Iraq for many years.

The UN, under pressure from America and Britain gave the Kurds part of the money Iraq realizes from selling oil under the oil or food program. Combined with smugghing and other activities the money reaching them improved their living conditions. More, for most of the years since, the Kurds have enjoyed a higher standard of living than the rest of Iraq. The parts under Saddam, even when his sons tried to indulge themselves, did not have an income from smuglging and didn't have to bear the expense of maintening a standing army of the 500,000.

Now the Kurds have to decide whether to support or oppose the plans to recast Iraq being developed after the fact by the Bush administration. Not having clear plans for a post-Saddam Iraq increases the dangers of not being able to live up the promises made to the Kurds because in the past they were a strategic area from which America could operate against Saddam's power base in Baghdad, something they no longer need.

With Saddam gone and no longer used as a justification, America cannot begin to give the Kurds northern Iraq without contributing to the dismemburent of the country and of being disloyal to Turkey, the West's major ally in the Middle East. And living up to the promise of keeping Iraq a single state means ceding back to a central Iraqi government some of the controls over Kurdistan envoyed by the Kurds today. Furthermore, beyond the Kurds themselves, the Iraqis are united in rejecting the traditional Kurdish demands.

A year ago, Jallal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and one of the main leaders of the Kurds of northern Iraq visited Saudi Arabia and met with the crown prince Abdallah several times. Talabani wanted to know where the Saudi strongman stood vis-à-vis a federal system or similar plans for a new American-backed government for Iraq. Beyond telling Talabani that he personally had no opinion on the subject, Abdallah confessed that the United States no longer listened to Saudi Arabia. That Abdallah was unable to suggest what should follow Saddam's removal revealed a situation which needed more than what America was capable of enforcing. Nowadays, some of America's policy makers believe the Kurds have more than they should control.

America's ability to make or unmake the Kurds is greater than ever before. The United States is the principle decider of what money reaches the Kurds. And, but for Britain, the rest of the United Nations Security council members, have never supported separating the Kurds from Iraq's central government. Moreover, others who have helped the Kurds in the past no longer need them.

Israel no longer gives the Kurds money because there is no Saddam to harass. Saudi Arabia stopped helping them because it opposed their ambitions to fragment Iraq and fears an independent or autonomous Kurdistan becoming a model for Saudi and other minorities in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has problems with its Shias, nearly 15 percent of its population. Even Kuwait stopped its occasional payment and fears a wholly Shia country emerging in southern Iraq and encouraging the Shoias of Kuwait to demand greater rights. Of course there is no longer a Soviet Union to use the Kurds as a strategic commodity the way they did in the past.

To say that the future of the Kurds of Iraq is dependent upon the unsteady policies of the Bush administration is to understate their predicament and indeed that of the American government. Having lost so much in prestige, control and good will, the American government has few things it can use offer the Iraqi people. With the future of the Iraqi nation state supremely at stake, supporting a central government in Baghdad against the Kurds may be one of them.

© Said K Aburish