ZAKHU, Iraq—In a shiny new training complex outside this drab town near the Turkish border, hundreds of young men in green combat fatigues belt out a martial song and jog to its beat. It goes: "Hey, hey, Kurdistan, here come your heroes, here come your protectors."

The academy, set up last year to train a brand new army, is one of several signs that the areas of northern Iraq populated by ethnic Kurds are once again becoming a potential staging point for armed opposition to the Baghdad government of Saddam Hussein. The Kurdish factions that rule this region, sandwiched between Turkey and Iran, recently ended several years of feuding with a deal brokered by the United States. They have effectively reestablished an enclave outside Baghdad's control, and say they have been guaranteed U.S. protection against any Iraqi attack.

Their new army will absorb tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurdish warriors known as peshmerga, who, for decades, have battled Iraqi government forces. Along with military strategy, weapons skills and computer science, the 200-odd cadets enrolled at the academy are taught Kurdish history and culture. Unlike military trainees back in Baghdad, they learn nothing about the ideology of Iraq's ruling Baath party.

"I have joined to serve my country, to defend Kurdistan," said one of the cadets during a short break. Gen. Shahab Ahmed Dohuki, a former Iraqi army officer who is in charge of the military training academy, hastily intervened: "Kurdistan is a part of Iraq, and our activities here have nothing to do with seeking independence. Look: We are wearing Iraqi uniforms," he said, pointing to an eagle emblazoned on his belt buckle.

In fact, independence remains a long-cherished but elusive goal for the more than 25 million Kurds who are scattered across portions of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. Their history has been marked by a succession of unsuccessful rebellions against the governments they live under -- and by bloody and protracted feuding among themselves, egged on by those governments.

Today, however, a growing number of Iraqi Kurds say they believe statehood is within reach.

"I think it's going to take America's support, but independence could happen some day," said Saed Barzani, an Iraqi Kurd with U.S. citizenship who recently left his home in Vienna, Va., and gave up a job as a manager at a TGIF restaurant to "come back and put everything I have into my country."

In interviews throughout the Kurdish populated areas of northern Iraq in the days immediately preceding the U.S. and British airstrikes, optimism was palpable that Washington could be counted on to support the Kurds' aspirations. No one can say yet whether the allied military campaign will directly or indirectly further the Kurdish cause; the Pentagon has reported cruise missile and bomb attacks on Iraqi military targets in the north, but their effect is unknown.

Clinton administration officials say they oppose the dismemberment of Iraq and the creation of a Kurdish state. One of the chief reasons is that Washington does not want to undermine Turkey, a key NATO ally, which is fighting Kurdish rebels of its own. Turkey fears that the emergence of an independent Kurdish state on its borders would fuel separatist sentiment.

Yet, in a move that deeply angered Turkey, the United States endorsed the establishment of a future Kurdish federation within Iraq when it brought together the two leading Iraqi Kurdish leaders -- Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan -- in Washington in September to sign a peace agreement ending more than four years of factional fighting.

In addition to calling for elections next summer, the agreement contains guarantees of U.S. military protection in case Saddam Hussein strikes against the Kurds again, Massoud Barzani said in an interview at his remote mountain headquarters in Sari Rash, or Black Peak. "It's the first time the Americans have so openly said they won't allow Saddam to harm us," said Barzani, who is no relation to the former Vienna restaurateur.

From the Kurds' perspective, such encouragement can be a risky proposition.

When the 1991 Persian Gulf War ended with Iraq's retreat from Kuwait, Iraqi Kurds rose up in arms, encouraged by the United States and what they perceived to be the crippling of Saddam Hussein's government. Iraqi troops crushed the revolt, however, driving an estimated 1.5 million Kurdish refugees into Turkey and Iran.

But when the U.S., British and Turkish air forces declared a "no-fly" zone inside Iraq north of the 36th parallel, the refugees returned to what became a de facto Kurdish safe haven. Ever since, an estimated 3.5 million Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed an unprecedented degree of autonomy here in northern Iraq.

Clad in turban, baggy trousers and elaborate cummerbund, Barzani spoke of his "vision for Kurdistan."

"In our hearts, we the Kurdish people will always nurture dreams of independence," he said, "but we must be realistic. Our neighbors will forever oppose that, so we must do the best we can within the constraints posed by our geography -- fight for our cultural and political rights within Iraq."

In 1996, frustrated by what he described as Washington's policy of using the Kurds to unsettle Saddam's government without supporting their demands for independence, Barzani invited Iraqi tanks to help him drive Talabani's Iranian-backed forces from the enclave for a month. The move led to the destruction of a CIA-backed anti-Saddam coalition that was based in northern Iraq and forced U.S. personnel in the enclave to flee.

Many Kurdish officials say that coexisting with a weak Saddam Hussein, rather than confronting him, is in their best interests.

"The most we can do is to build on what we have, manage relations with our neighbors, not provoke the wounded bear in Baghdad, and place ourselves in the strongest bargaining position possible in time for when sanctions against Iraq are lifted," said Hoshyar Zebari, a key Barzani aide.

In some ways, life has never been better in the Kurds' Iraqi enclave. "Taxes" levied by the Iraqi Kurds on the thriving diesel fuel and consumer goods trade between Turkey and Iraq -- in violation of U.N. sanctions against Baghdad -- generate the equivalent of $500,000 a day, according to Kurdish officials. This revenue has raised living standards.

"People here are no longer buying gold and sitting on it. They are adding rooms to their houses, displaying a real sense of confidence in the future," said Stafford Clarry, a top U.N. official, who has served in the Kurdish safe haven since 1991.

Economic opportunities in what was once Iraq's most backward region are beginning to lure Arabs too. A U.S.-trained Arab computer technology professor, who declined to be identified by name, said: "In Baghdad, I was only making $30 a month and had no freedom. Here I make over $100 dollars, have free housing and all the freedom I want." The academic said as many as 25 Iraqi Arab professors had come to teach at Salahuddin University in Irbil over the past two years.

Because the two-year-old U.N. oil-for-food program brings food to the Kurdish areas, Iraqi Kurdish officials can spend proceeds from the border trade on projects such as the military academy, as well as new universities, roads, hospitals, and even a television channel that broadcasts across Europe and the Middle East via satellite.

But substantial sums of money also have wound up in the pockets of a new Kurdish elite, who drive flashy Mercedes-Benzes and sport diamond-studded Rolex watches in jarring contrast with thousands of Kurdish refugees still living in plastic tents.

In addition, the benefits of relative peace and prosperity are not spread evenly across the Kurdish enclave, which effectively is partitioned between Barzani's and Talabani's groups. Barzani's faction has long resisted sharing tax revenues with Talabani's group, which does not control any territory along the Turkish border and thus cannot collect its own. The economic disparity between the two zones is glaringly obvious -- notably in the fact that the military academy serves Barzani's followers but not Talabani's -- and so too is the lingering distrust between the two parties. Military checkpoints on the frontier demarcating the two sides remain in place.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to reconciliation is both leaders' insistence that one acknowledge the supremacy of the other. Barzani repeatedly has demanded that Talabani acknowledge his party's victory in elections the Iraqi Kurds held in 1992. Thumping his fist emphatically on his desk during an recent interview, Talabani said: "I will never, ever do that."

But such pragmatists as Zebari who have Barzani's ear acknowledge that Talabani's group "is a fact of life that we need to accept and live with."

"After all," Zebari said, "Washington agreed to defend us against Saddam only if we don't fight each other. That is something we need to keep in mind for the sake of all the Kurdish people."