BAGHDAD, Iraq -- One year ago, Mola Bakhtiyar wrapped the cummerbund of the Kurdish Peshmerga warrior around his waist and prepared to fight Saddam Hussein's army.

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With the help of invading U.S. military forces, Bakhtiyar and his men soon captured his hometown of Khaneqin, one of many oil-rich settlements in northern Iraq where Saddam had removed the native Kurds and replaced them with loyal Sunni Arabs.

Today, as Iraq's ethnic and religious groups prepare to forge a new multi-ethnic state out of the wreckage of post-war Iraq, the Kurdish warrior and politician is gearing up for a political battle to claim the spoils of war and retain for the Kurds as much control as possible over northern Iraq.

"The western mentality can't understand our mentality, that my suffering is much greater than the [Arab] who came to live in my house," Bakhtiyar said. "I was humiliated and my land usurped. The problem of what to do with the Arab who has taken my land is a very small problem. I just want him to go back to where he came from."

Bakhtiyar is serving notice: As U.S. authorities prepare to hand control of Iraq to Iraqis after a year of war and harrowing occupation, Iraqis are preparing for a long struggle among themselves.

In northern Kurdistan, in the pious Shiite south, in the simmering Sunni center and in the largely secular capital of Baghdad, Iraq has begun the political, social and territorial horse-trading that will define the character of a nation that has never really been one, having been hastily patched together by the British after the World War I collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Success will be measured by the extent to which the Iraqis can resolve their differences within the political system they construct, as opposed to violently in the streets or fields. The autonomous Kurds and the majority Shiites, subjugated for decades by Saddam and his Sunni Arab allies, seek land and power and figure it's their turn to take control. The Sunnis, along with an array of other ethnic and religious minorities, such as the Turkoman and Christians, hope to have their voices heard and their rights protected.

At the heart of the conflict are basic questions about what it means to be an Iraqi, about what common denominators really tie together the 25 million people in Iraq's hectic cities, sleepy oasis towns, mountain villages and river-valley farms.

"Up until now an Iraqi has not been a citizen in the technical sense of the word, someone who wants to take part in the civic culture and administration of the country while respecting the rights of others," said Prof. Albert Issa, an Iraqi Christian who heads the political science department at the University of Sulaymaniyah.

Sometimes the battle to shape that identity is playing out peacefully in Iraq's Governing Council, where 25 politicians handpicked by the U.S. occupation authorities try to bully, cajole and compromise with one another over Iraq's future structure.

Other times, the battleground is the Iraqi street, where the spectre of sectarian and ethnic violence looms.

Since the bombings of Shiite religious ceremonies in Karbala and Baghdad in late February, at least six Sunni mosques have been attacked throughout Iraq, according to Hareth Alwar, spokesman for the Sunni Committee of Islamic Clerics.

In northeastern Baghdad this past week, men in pickup tricks opened fire and tossed a grenade into the courtyard at the Badria Dulaymi mosque just as worshippers finished evening prayers. A 32-year-old man was killed; two people were injured. The next morning, on the way to work after attending the victim's funeral, another parishioner was shot to death.

At the mosques, elders urge young congregants to remain calm. They blame the attacks on Americans, Iranians, foreign al-Qaida operatives and even the Israelis, anyone but fellow Iraqis. Still, the worshippers seethed with anger at the majority Shiites, oppressed under Saddam but now holding the political and cultural upper hand.

"If they want to fight we will fight," said Mohammad Najid, a young Sunni outside the Badria Dulaymi mosque. "The reason we didn't get these guys in the first place is that we don't have enough rifles."

Decades of war and violent political repression have bled Iraqis pale; few now have the stomach to partake in civil war. After bombings of mosques or political party offices, leaders of all factions quickly step in to calm their followers.

"Our greatest fear and worry is sectarian war," said Alwar.

But among Iraq's majority Shiites, who suffered so long under Saddam's thumb, there's a sense that they are now entitled to take charge of Iraq.

At the recent Ashoura religious celebrations, Shiites led their once-banned processions into Sunni neighborhoods. Many community leaders privately worry such triumphalism could push the country into civil war, no matter how much they try to avoid it.

On the other hand, to channel, shape and reap political profit from Iraqis' burgeoning identity politics, these leaders have been forming political organizations, associations and civil militias, or taking control of those that sprang up in the disorder that began with the start of the war last year.

During the major military phase of the war, Alwiri was an imam at a mosque in the Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad. As the Saddam regime's authority in the capital collapsed, he and others began providing security for schools, telephone terminals, mosques and health clinics, bolstering their roles as community leaders.

Alwiri now promotes Sunni political interests, organizing meetings at mosques in order to present a united Sunni front at meetings with Governing Council members and occupation authorities.

"Religion here deals with politics as well as moral guidance," he said. "We believe that God Almighty must be obeyed whether in praying or living. We will not organize ourselves as a political front. But we'll intervene in politics."

Moderate, secular political groups without allegiance to ethnic groups or religious denominations exist in Iraq, but they are mostly led by exiles and appear to have little popular support among the vast majority of Iraqis who suffered under Saddam's regime.

"The liberals are challenged," said Barham Salih, a Kurdish political leader. "They have a lack of resources, organization and, in some cases, leadership."

'Time to collect'

In the poor Shiite slums of west Baghdad, 2 million Iraqis live amid crumbling buildings. Portraits of Shiite saints martyred 1,300 years ago hang side-by-side with posters of contemporary political and religious leaders. Here, politics and Islamic identity have become one, welded together by a sense that Iraq's Shiites have endured centuries of immense suffering.

Abdul Kareem Sheqeet's tale is instructive. A decorated Navy officer who once lived in Canada, Sheqeet was tortured and spent four years in jail for conducting unapproved political activities during the reign of Saddam. He was freed a year ago after the U.S. invasion.

Under Saddam, Sheqeet lost his career, his savings and many of his relatives. Though he insists he has nothing against the Sunni Arabs from which Saddam drew his political support, he can't hide his resentment.

"It's time for the Shiite to collect," said Sheqeet, a member of Mahdi's Army, a Shiite organization loyal to firebrand preacher Moqtada al-Sadr.

As for the Kurds, their territorial demands for an autonomous federal Kurdish state now encompass a huge swath of northern Iraq. It includes not only the largely Kurdish region defined by Kirkuk, Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, but also stretches toward Saddam's largely Sunni hometown of Tikrit to the south and through Mosul and Sinjar to the west.

Earlier this month, Kurds attacked minority Turkoman offices in Kirkuk, smashing windows and hurling rocks. They've festooned the city with flags of the ill-fated Mahabad Republic, a Kurdish autonomous government established in Iran following World War II. Last month they delivered a petition with 1.7 million signatures to the United Nations, calling for a referendum on the future of Kurdistan.

"Basically, Kurdish people got a lot out of the toppling of the regime," said Bakhtiyar. "Our problem is not whether we can survive or not. It's what more we can get."

The U.S. war plans for Iraq depended on the participation of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurds and the acquiescence of its Shiite majority. But a year into the occupation, the demand of these U.S. partners for cultural, economic and political power threaten to alienate Iraq's other groups.

Abdul Razzaq Abdul Fatah al Rawi, a businessman from the militant Sunni Arab stronghold of Fallujah, said he was disgusted by the sectarian turn his country's political culture was taking. Saddam's Baathist regime was decidedly secular, while Iraq's new interim constitution, at the insistence of the Shiite majority, cities Islam as a central source of inspiration for the country's future legal system.

"This will divide Iraq into five sections," he said. "All of this political posturing will lead to a partitioning of Iraq. What about unity? What about Iraq for Iraqis?"

Through history, Iraqis have both united and disunited after being freed from tyranny.

Following the collapse of Ottoman rule, Shiites and Sunnis joined to fight the British occupiers in the 1920s. But once free of Saddam's chokehold in 1991 after the Persian Gulf War, Kurds in the autonomous north quickly descended into four years of bloody civil war over territory and economic resources. At least a thousand combatants died.

On the other hand, the Kurds have since tempered their divisions and have begun the process of unifying their own two competing governments.

Kurdish leader Nechirwan Mustafa studied in Baghdad during the 1960s and proudly considers himself an Iraqi as well as a Kurd. He is cautiously optimistic about Iraq's ability to hold itself together.

The rise of identity politics and the triumphalism of Iraq's Kurds and Shiites under the U.S. occupation are signs of an immature political culture, he said.

"After 35 years of totalitarian government, we need at least two years to reorganize this society."