From the base of the hill, Kurdish fighters gradually crept upwards, before flinging grenades and storming the crest, the echoes of gunfire and explosions filling the peaceful valley high in the northern Iraqi mountains near the Iranian border.

The "assault" was really just an exercise for these guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers Party at one of their bases in the Qandil mountains. But it all may become very real if the Iraqi government carries out a promise made to Turkish government to "finish" the PKK in less than a year.

"It's time this problem was resolved," Minister of State for National Security Shirwan al-Waili told the Turkish daily Al-Zaman.

"It is not going to take long this time. We are going to finish the PKK in less than a year."

In his stone hut on a mountain side, guerilla commander Sayda Hussein Afshin dismissed the minister's statements.

"He's just being political, and is lying both to the Turks and to himself," he said. "We are not afraid. In any case there are always possibilities of attacks in every part of Kurdistan, from all four sides."

"We are always preparing ourselves."

At first glance, though, it is difficult to see how this unit of a few dozen men is going to stand up to a concerted Iraqi attempt to retake their mountain fastness.

To conserve ammunition for the exercise they loaded their weapons with older bullets, causing many to jam during the hilltop assault, and at least one RPG round misfired.

It is hard to believe that this movement has survived the concerted assaults of the Turkish military, armed with modern helicopters and artillery, since launching a guerilla war for an independent Kurdish homeland in 1984.

Sozdar Serbiliz is commander of the camp's women fighters, who make up half the force. She maintains that their guerrilla tactics and ideology allow them to compete with modern armies.

"Our goal isn't to destroy other armies. We are trying to unify the Kurdish people and protect them," she said sipping tea following a session to critique the exercise. "We are not going to have a separate state."

She said the goal was to fight for the Kurds everywhere, not just in Turkey, to have the right to freedom of thought and express their Kurdish identity.

"We don't want war," said the hardened 25-year-old guerrilla who has been fighting Turks for the past decade. "The problem is that all four states attack the Kurds and they don't accept our identity."

The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, has fought for self-rule in mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.

Ankara has frequently threatened to intervene militarily at the Iraqi border against PKK camps if Baghdad and Washington failed to rein in the rebel group.

Thousands of PKK members have settled in northern Iraq's Kurdistan since 1999, when the group declared a ceasefire after the arrest of their chief, Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life prison sentence.

The group declared a unilateral ceasefire with Turkey in September.