With just hours before the expected US-led invasion, among the only signs of life were men patrolling with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, waiting for Iraqi deserters to cross the nearby "border" into the Kurdish-controlled north.

The houses, collected at the bottom of a hill overlooking the village, sit just 200 metres (yards) from Iraqi troops. One can see with the naked eye their trenches, the patrols marching back and forth, and approaching vehicles.

In the only remaining lighted square, some 30 police pace back and forth on the deserted streets, met by scattered patrols of men carrying Russian or Chinese-built Kalashnikov rifles and rocket launchers.

They say they are waiting for the soldiers on the other side to start deserting, like 18 Iraqi border guards who crossed into the Kuwaiti desert earlier in the day and surrendered to US troops.

For several days, young shepherds whose flocks of sheep graze in the area have been talking with the Iraqi conscripts, they add. The only thing they want to do now is run away.

"The boys have talked with them," said Idriss Ahmed, a 32-year-old worker.

"They said their officers have confiscated their radios to cut off all their communications and that they are preparing civilian clothes to run away in."

The men in Kalak joke about that.

"We will tell them 'welcome,' and we will welcome them. We are all Iraqis," said Hekmat Mohammad, a policeman.

"They will not fight. They don't believe in this conflict. Everyone of them has a brother or father who has died fighting in the wars carried out by Saddam Hussein since he came to power," said another policeman who did not want his name used, referring to Baghdad's 1980-88 war with Iran and the 1991 Gulf War sparked by its invasion of Kuwait.

After Bush gave Saddam a 48-hour ultimatum on Monday to go into exile or face war, Kalak's women, children and elderly fled for mountain villages.

Out of a total population of some 4,000 people, only about 300 men are left in the village.

It was a scene repeated across Iraqi Kurdistan, which has been effectively off-limits to Baghdad for 12 years.

The enclave has been protected by US and British warplanes since the 1991 war. A Kurdish rebellion after that conflict was crushed by Saddam's forces after the US administration of former president George Bush went back on promises to support the uprising.

As the lights went out late Wednesday, Kalak remained calm. At the Goulan grocery store, about a dozen men listened to the news while nibbling on sesame seeds.

They promised they would stay awake until 4:00 am -- when Bush's deadline for Saddam expires.

WAR.WIRE