Civilian administrators in Saddam's provinces sense which way the wind is blowing. A local businessman told Kurdish intelligence agents that he had met with a top Iraqi official in a northern city. When the businessman asked for a travel certificate allowing movement from the Kurdish area to Iraqi territory, the official advised him to wait a month and receive the permission from the Kurds. "We've already discussed this and decided to stay in our homes when the war begins and wait to see whether you come to execute us or free us," the official confided.

Nearby, a grittier enemy is priming for battle. In a small pocket of northeastern Iraq, up to 700 well-trained, battle-hardened terrorists backed by al-Qaeda await U.S. forces, eager to enmesh them in a repeat of the Afghan confrontations in Tora Bora and the Shah-i-Kot Valley. They are the Kurdish Islamic militants of the Ansar al-Islam militia, fundamentalists who have imposed a Taliban-like order on the villages they now control. Western and local intelligence sources say the militants receive support from Saddam's state security agencies and hard-line Iranian interests as well as al-Qaeda veterans from Afghanistan and elsewhere.

For more than a year, Ansar has waged a bloody military campaign against the secular administration of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two political parties controlling the Kurdish region in northern Iraq. In the snow-clad mountains looming over the hamlet of Halabja, where 5,000 people were killed in a 1988 Iraqi chemical bombardment, Peshmerga front lines are hit almost daily by mortar barrages. The jihadists, known to decapitate and burn prisoners alive, overran a Kurdish position Dec. 4 of last year, massacring more than 40 men. Now their supply lines are feverishly channeling matériel forward, including new 120-mm mortars that have begun raining down on Kurdish trenches. In the past month, these extremists have been fortifying their bunkers, bolstering their numbers. Last week trucks visible through field binoculars delivered the latest batch of reinforcements.

General Sheik Jaffa, who directs the front-line Kurdish forces, believes Ansar is bent on war with America. He claims that the audiotape allegedly made by Osama bin Laden that aired on al-Jazeera Arabic satellite news network in February was aimed at these fighters. Their increased activity suggests they are answering bin Laden's call to assist Saddam in any U.S.-led war.

While the Pentagon is focused on overthrowing Saddam, it is not overlooking Ansar. In the Kurdish eastern city of Sulaymaniya, there is speculation in political and military circles that an American offensive against the Ansar redoubts may kick- start the broader war against Saddam. After Ansar thrashed the Kurds in December, a U.S. intelligence team toured the Peshmerga front lines. On a few occasions since then, Westerners have been seen coming and going from the Kurdish bases around Halabja. Last week soldiers told TIME that a convoy of pickups with tinted windows left General Jaffa's compound with an escort of local bodyguards that contained "U.S. officers."

For months the Peshmerga had opted not to go on the offensive, not daring to assault Ansar's mine-laden defensive positions. Last week that changed. On the eve of Feb. 15, 10 Kurdish commandos took the fight to the terrorists. They stole up on an isolated enemy bunker and briefly captured it, killing an unknown number of the 25 militants they found. Three nights later, they did it again. They have been emboldened by their belief that a U.S.-backed offensive is imminent. Jaffa won't be drawn out on any such plans and refuses to discuss the possibility of U.S. involvement in his operations. But he seems to be counting on it. "This is a war, and they attack us," he says. "We must fight them in many different ways until we launch the last great offensive."

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