Masoud Barzani, leader and military commander of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), has no plans to join them. Over a glass of tea at his headquarters, high on the ridge east of this resort town, he is quietly relishing the prospect of the imminent downfall of his people's most bitter enemy.

He does not share his countrymen's fears that Saddam Hussein will launch a chemical weapons attack here, although he acknowledges it cannot be ruled out. "In any case, I won't wear a gas mask as long as there is one Kurdish child without a gas mask," he says. It is hypothetical, since there are virtually no gas masks in Kurdistan.

Imminent threats aside, there is already a scent of victory in the Kurdish camp. Barzani believes he has seen off the threat of a Turkish invasion of the autonomous Kurdish zone and is now looking forward to the speedy defeat of Saddam Hussein.

There have been other false springs for the Kurds, when euphoria rapidly turned to despair. From the same mountain ridge on March 29, 1991, Barzani contemplated the collapse of the Kurdish rebellion that followed Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War. George W. Bush's father had urged the Kurds to revolt and then failed to come to their aid after they had seized control of more territory than at any time in 70 years of nationalist struggle.

Kirkuk had fallen to government forces the previous night. Arbil, visible on the plain below, was covered on two sides by Saddam Hussein's forces. Millions of Kurds were on the move towards safety in Turkey and Iran.

In an uncharacteristic tone of anger, Barzani joined his sometime rival Jalal Talabani in accusing the elder Bush of betrayal. "You personally called upon the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship," he said in a message to the former US president.

The Kurdish defeat was total. Talabani notoriously travelled to Baghdad to kiss Saddam on the cheek and Barzani led the negotiations for what amounted to surrender.

But 2003 will be different, says Barzani. This time, for once, the Kurds have the good fortune of not having the great powers against them.

But how does a 56-year-old who has been a peshmerga fighter - meaning one who faces death - since the age of 15 succeed in keeping faith with the struggle for so long?"When a people have a cause and they believe in it, they should always have hope," he says. "In the end, if you behave correctly, you will gain your rights. But you must remain optimistic."

His optimism has been sorely tested on numerous occasions. In 1975, the rebellion against Baghdad led by his father, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, ended when the US and the Shah of Iran suspended their support abruptly to allow a rapprochement between Iran and Iraq. Mullah Mustafa died in exile in the US soon afterwards.

In 1988, the nationalist cause was at its lowest ebb. Masoud Barzani was back in exile after Saddam Hussein struck back at the Kurds for their support of Iran during the first Gulf War. More than 100,000 Kurds were killed in Saddam's bloody Anfal campaign. Some 8,000 men from Barzani's tribe were captured and simply disappeared.

Perhaps the nearest he came to giving up leadership of the struggle was at that time, when the west ignored his pleas to respond to the Kurds' plight.

Barzani was born into the nationalist struggle that was spearheaded by his late father - born on the same day in August 1946 that the KDP was founded. The stout turbanned figure of Mullah Mustafa, a dagger poking from the bandolier wrapped around his Kurdish battle tunic, stares down from the walls of almost every public building in this western part of Iraqi Kurdistan. His picture is more common than those of his fourth son and successor, a shy and modest man.

But Masoud Barzani is a warm host and smiles easily, perhaps more easily than usual these days. He is quite short and stocky, with a round youthful face and a neatly trimmed moustache. When he is in Europe, he wears a suit. Here, in his mountain stronghold, he sports an impeccably ironed khaki Kurdish suit, with its distinctive baggy trousers and battledress top. A grey cummerbund is plaited around his waist in the Kurdish style and he wears a turban fashioned from a red and white chequered square that is the mark of the Barzanis and the KDP.

He is the head of a family that has been at the forefront of the Kurdish nationalist struggle since before the days when the British empire had the bright idea to meld the predominantly Kurdish-populated former Ottoman province of Mosul with the Arab-populated provinces of Baghdad and Basra to the south to create Iraq.

Sheikh Abd al Salam Barzani rose up against the young Turks who took power in Istanbul in the first decade of the last century, because he opposed both their lack of religion and their tendency to enforce tax collection among the Ottoman empire's Kurds.

In the mid-19th century, Masoud Barzani's ancestors were religious sheikhs who gathered a growing following among peasants oppressed by Kurdish tribal leaders. The resulting conflicts with the tribal lords of the region have lasted, in some cases, until the present day, with some tribes continuing to support Saddam Hussein principally because of their historic enmity with the Barzanis.

Political rivals of the Barzanis still seek to portray them as tribal and conservative in contrast to "modernisers" such as Talabani, who split from Mullah Mustafa's KDP to form the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The two men have often been at odds in the past. In 1996, Barzani even called on support from Saddam Hussein in a civil war against his rival's movement for control of the autonomous zone. Barzani's KDP said it was a desperate measure to forestall a planned Iranian invasion to ensure Talabani's victory, but his enemies saw it as a betrayal.

There is perhaps something faintly feudal about the Barzani stronghold at Salahuddin, with its aides and bodyguards in traditional dress and its walled compounds that look down towards the dusty plain of Arbil. There are those who consider that Masoud Barzani is aloof, more of a Kurdish monarch than a politician. But his followers say this is a false impression, a product of his natural reserve.

He is pragmatic about the political future of the Kurds. The KDP's goal is to safeguard the autonomy that Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed during 12 years of allied protection within the context of a federal Iraqi state. Independence for the Kurds of Iraq or for their fellow Kurds in Turkey, Iran and Syria is not on the agenda.

Although the Kurds, with more than 25m people spread across three countries, are the largest nation without a state of their own, the reality is that they inhabit powerful countries that are determined not to allow them to split away.

Barzani may consider himself firstly as a Kurd, but he is also an Iraqi and the prospect of a democratic Iraq opens up the possibility that he might be called on to take a more prominent role on the national scene.

He shows no enthusiasm for the idea. He has never been to Baghdad but says he would like to go, "as a visitor", when the time is right. "I'd like to set an example that when people are liberated, they don't have to take official posts. It's not necessary.

"I want to prove to the Kurdish people that the struggle was for the liberation of the Kurdish people, not to gain positions, and that now it's for the liberation of the Iraqi people. If I was offered something, I would resist."

Harvey Morris is the FT bureau chief in Jerusalem, and co-author of No Friends But The Mountains: The Tragic History of the Kurds