He turned his head away, embarrassed. "Please try to understand. I have a family." Then he too left with the other bodyguards.

In the agonizing half hour that followed, our panicky driver raced at breakneck speed on a zigzag course through the Kirkuk streets. A mile short of the checkpoint where Kurdish troops manned barricades to the road north, we were brought to a halt by a traffic jam in the city's bazaar. The cars around us were full of young bearded men who fit the classic stereotype of a terrorist.

Paranoia? Less than 24 hours later, we were within 300 yards of a suicide bomber who blew himself up on the same street.

It was the bluntest possible reminder of what northern Iraq's Kurds see when they look to the south: a country awash in blood.

Since the aftermath of the 1991 gulf war, nearly four million Kurds have enjoyed complete auton-omy in the region of Iraqi Kurdistan—protected from Saddam under a "no-fly zone" north of the 36th parallel and behind the defensive wall of the Kurds' highly disciplined army, the pesh-merga. They have held region-wide elections, formed a legislature, and chosen a president, establishing a world entirely apart from Baghdad—a de facto independent state. For the first time in their long history, Kurds are wielding significant political power, successfully negotiating for control over their own military forces and authority over new oil discoveries in their own terrain. Under the federated Iraq being called for by the international community, they would have powers of autonomy that match—or even exceed—what they now enjoy.

But in the end, the essential Kurdish truth today is that they can't give up the dream of outright independence. After 14 years of self-rule, the Kurds can no longer imagine themselves as Iraqis. To travel through Kurdistan is to follow an intense national debate whose central issue is no longer the pros and cons of full, unambiguous separation from Iraq. It's how best to secure it. I came to think of it as a debate between Builders and Warriors.

A 13-year-old girl put the distinction into words. I met Mivan Majid in a mountain park above the city of Suleimaniya, where she was taking the evening air with her father and younger sister. To the north and east the jagged ridges of the Zagros Mountains, marking Iraqi Kurdistan's border with Iran, were receding into dusk. To the south, the immense Mesopotamian plain was a sunset-gilded carpet stretching toward Baghdad and the Persian Gulf.

I needed some air myself—we'd stopped at the park after our escape from the oil field—and I involuntarily flinched when a tall, gangly teenager in faded blue jeans tapped me on the arm.