Ali Bapir

The Muslim warlord reclines in suburban opulence. He smiles mischievously despite his recent troubles. Over the last five years, his once heavily armed Kurdish militia has been disbanded, his mountainside base crushed by U.S. cruise missiles, his movement thrown into chaos. He was locked up at Baghdad's notorious Camp Cropper with his former blood enemies, including former President Saddam Hussein.

The Muslim warlord reclines in suburban opulence. He smiles mischievously despite his recent troubles. Over the last five years, his once heavily armed Kurdish militia has been disbanded, his mountainside base crushed by U.S. cruise missiles, his movement thrown into chaos. He was locked up at Baghdad's notorious Camp Cropper with his former blood enemies, including former President Saddam Hussein.

Nearly four months after bombing his compound and killing 43 of his armed Islamic followers, U.S. forces acknowledged Monday that they had arrested one of northern Iraq's most colorful and enigmatic Muslim leaders, a move likely to inflame tensions in a mountainous corridor along the Iranian border. Handcuffed and blindfolded, Ali Bapir and three members of his Komaly Islami militant group were whisked away Thursday on a U.S. helicopter.

Nearly four months after bombing his compound and killing 43 of his armed Islamic followers, U.S. forces acknowledged Monday that they had arrested one of northern Iraq's most colorful and enigmatic Muslim leaders, a move likely to inflame tensions in a mountainous corridor along the Iranian border. Handcuffed and blindfolded, Ali Bapir and three members of his Komaly Islami militant group were whisked away Thursday on a U.S. helicopter.

They speak of it in the mountains. Stories spread from village to village. Rumors are whispered through sips of tea. Old men pull close the guns of their younger days; boys want to be soldiers. A stray mortar shell explodes on a snowy field. Then another. A curl of smoke rises in the wind. "War is close," said Talaat Habeeb, the bookkeeper at the hospital here. "The news brings more panic every day. Sometimes we think war is coming right away, and in the next moment we're not so sure.

In a crude attempt at public relations, guerrillas draped in grenades and brandishing Kalashnikovs allowed journalists to inspect a compound in northern Iraq on Saturday that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell identified to the U.N. Security Council last week as a terrorist haven for manufacturing chemical agents.

As U.S. soldiers parachuted into Kurdish-held territory in northern Iraq on Wednesday, leaders here offered an amnesty deal to Muslim guerrillas that could help eliminate a threat to American troops in the region. And, after weeks of stern warnings from U.S. officials, Turkey announced that it would hold back on an incursion into northern Iraq -- at least for now -- thus avoiding the possibility of clashes with Kurds in the region. The developments came as U.S.

Hours after U.S. cruise missiles battered a stronghold of Islamic militants in northeastern Iraq, killing or wounding dozens of fighters, a car bomb exploded Saturday at a crowded checkpoint controlled by U.S.-backed Kurds. Five people were killed. The missile attacks and the suicide bombing, likely an act of retaliation, roiled a volatile front of the Iraq war, the Kurdish enclave protected by U.S. and British warplanes since 1991.

In the muddy alleys of this village, where geese skitter and children skip over puddles, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is known as a "big man" who made a big mistake. The 7,500 residents here live amid a patchwork of bean and wheat fields and don't often contemplate the larger forces beyond a wrinkle of encircling mountains. But the world arrived in a thunderous echo nearly two weeks ago when Powell showed a slide to the U.N.