The New de-Baathification
The Guardian headlines Iraq opens door to Saddam's followers. The NYT says Iraq Eases Curb on Ex-Officials of Baath Party and McClatchey assures us that Iraq's parliament lets Baathists back into government.
A great victory for Bush who, himself responsible for the ill-conveived de-Baathification enacted under Paul Bremer, announced a year ago:
[T]o allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, ...
Not so!
The new law will do just the opposite. As Juan Cole questions:
If the new law was good for ex-Baathists, then the ex-Baathists in parliament will have voted for it and praised it, right? And likely the Sadrists (hard line anti-Baath Shiites) and Kurds would be a little upset.
Instead, parliament's version of this law was spearheaded by Sadrists, and the ex-Baathists in parliament criticized it.
Somehow that little drawback suggests to me that the law is not actually, as written, likely to be good for sectarian reconciliation.
Indeed the new law, which still needs approval by the Iraqi President and Vice Presidents, includes only marginal positive points:
Lami, [spokesman for the current de-Baathification commission,] estimated that 3,500 people from the third-highest Baathist rank, or Shubah members, would be allowed to apply for pension payments but would still be kept from their jobs. About 13,000 people from the fourth rank, known as Firqa members, would be eligible to return, but he expected that many would not.
"Most of them are either working outside the country and they don't want to go back to Iraq, or they're afraid somebody will take revenge on them ..."
...
The new measure would also prohibit Baathists who worked in Hussein's security services from returning to jobs, as well as ban their return to some of the most influential agencies, such as the Interior Ministry, Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry ...
The new law is allowing some Baathist to receive pensions and a few may get government jobs that likely don't fit their expertise.
But it is even worse. The law eliminates ex-Baathists who currently are in government functions from their jobs:
The new measure could lead to a new purge of members of the current Iraqi government, Lami said, including about 7,000 officers in the Interior Ministry. Even influential Iraqi security force officials who used to be Baathists could face removal.
"The commander of the Baghdad security plan and his assistants, according to the new law, they should retire," he said.
Unreported in the news accounts is how this law will effect the secret police force, build by the CIA out of Saddam's old security personal and still under its control. Could this have been the objective of the law?
The new law might even lead to elimination the opposition in the Iraqi parliament. As Cole translates from an Arab paper:
The law contains an article forbidding the Baath Party "from returning to power ideologically, administratively, politically or in practice, and under any other name."
...
[T]his objectionable passage seems to make it possible for the Sadrists, e.g., to keep people like Iyad Allawi from ever again enjoying high office. His secular, nationalist Iraqi National Dialogue party could easily just be branded too close to the original Baath Party and dissolved, and he could be excluded from high office by this new provision.
So while the "western" media hails the new law as success for one of Bush's benchmarks, it is actually the opposite.
It will deepen resentment in Iraq and reinforce the (ex-)Baathist part of the resistance.
Posted by b on January 13, 2008 at 12:04 UTC | Permalink
What Iraq has become is beyond dystopia, beyond Kafka, beyond Orwell, that is to say double good.
Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Jan 13 2008 17:19 utc | 3
What Iraq has become is beyond dystopia, beyond Kafka, beyond Orwell, that is to say double good.
Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Jan 13 2008 17:19 utc | 4
After reading this post it does seem that the new de-baathification (or "re-baathification"?) law is being pushed through perhaps to be able to allow Al Maliki (and Bush) to "check the box" and show more progress. (All due to the glorious and successful surge, or course.)
But none of the articles or blog posts address what was early on described as a really big problem with Bremer's order when he originally issued it, namely, that in addition to high-level government bureaucrats and officials, it through lots of ordinary people like schoolteachers, doctors and cops out of work because they were nominal, low-level Baath party members too. Any word on how these kind of former Baath party members might fare?
Also, sort of off topic, but I recall Bremer ostentatiously announcing a new Iraqi national flag one time that abandoned the old flag's colors (black, red, and green I think) for one that looked suspiciously similar to the Israeli national flag, light blue and white. What ever became of that stupid idea? Whenever I see Iraqi flags in pictures it looks like the old one. I don't recall ever seeing the new one in use, not even when Iraqi politicians are visiting the U.S.
Posted by: Maxcrat | Jan 13 2008 23:23 utc | 5
It was the Governing Council that introduced the Israeli style flag in 2004, but that was dropped. I think they use the old flags or a slightly modified one.
Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Jan 14 2008 1:53 utc | 6
Booted Lord Bremer - an ass or a deliberate destructive legislative force. Or both. Or worse.
That was the time, remember, that Iraq would have cool subversive artists, sexy women, MacDos on every corner in Baghdad, no import tax on cars, girls with silicone breasts winning Eurovision; the oil fields properly developed, the Iraqis getting rich from that, well marginally or minimally what with PSAs, “paying for reconstruction” as if they were responsible for the destruction, etc. Slowly joining the middle class, eating beef, and probably using perfume every day and exploiting Indians, Phillippinas, and soon Ethiopians. Tooting car horns, chomping dates, pistachios, voting on Diebold machines.
The de-baath program was built on de-nazification; enemies, and supporters or enemies, always to be excluded. Bad guys and gals - the US didn’t actually apply that schema after ww2. No matter, enemies have to be rooted out; new ones can always be found.
Benchmarks! Brilliant! That is the way forward!
Posted by: Tangerine | Jan 14 2008 16:02 utc | 7
The NYT today has the glimmerings of a shadow of a doubt:
Ex-Baathists Get a Break. Or Do They?
Posted by: Alamet | Jan 14 2008 18:47 utc | 8
More politics... Sounds hopeful, but will it go anywhere?
New alliance to confront sectarian quota system
Parliamentary blocs and political figures on Sunday announced a new alliance called the national project to confront the sectarian quota system and support the national reconciliation.
(snip)
Earlier, an Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) MP, Nour al-Din al-Hayali, in statements to Aswat al-Iraq – Voice of Iraq – (VOI), said a new alliance of 10 political blocs, including the National Dialogue Council; the (Sunni) National Dialogue Front (NDF) of Saleh al-Motlak; the Iraqi National List (INL) of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, the (Shiite) Fadhila (Virtue) Party and the Islamic Dawa Party, to which incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki belongs, would be set up."
Describing the alliance as a response to a trilateral agreement between the IAF's Iraqi Islamic Party and the two major Kurdish parties in Iraq, Hayali explained that the new coalition will also encompass the Sadrist bloc of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, in addition to the Iraqi People's Congress of Adnan al-Dulaimi.
(snip)
Posted by: Alamet | Jan 14 2008 18:52 utc | 9
It's a wonder that Iran posts diplomats in Iraq anymore:
Iraqi army arrested four Iranian diplomats
Posted by: Alamet | Jan 14 2008 18:55 utc | 10
Coalition aircraft behind Sheiaba refinery's blaze - ministry
(snip)
"A chopper belonging to the coalition forces was behind the huge blaze that ripped through al-Sheiaba oil refinery in southern Iraq on Tuesday," Aasem Jihad told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI).
"The ministry had repeatedly asked the coalition forces to change the passage of their aircrafts and to avoid hovering over oil facilities," Jihad indicated.
"Gas emissions resulting from oil production and refinement stimulate the spark of fire in the presence of any contributory factor," the spokesman explained.
(snip)
It's also mentioned in this AP piece on Rice's visit.
Posted by: Alamet | Jan 15 2008 19:40 utc | 11
From Aswat today:
Female bomber kills, wounds 15 in Baaquba
At least Eight persons were killed and seven others were injured on Wednesday when a female suicide bomber blew herself up amid a popular marketplace in Baaquba, an official security source said.
(snip)
Green Zone comes under mortar attack
The fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad came under mortar shells attack on Tuesday, an interior ministry's source said.
"Five mortar rounds fell into the Green Zone on Tuesday," the Interior ministry source told Aswat al- Iraq - Voices of Iraq (VOI).
The source did not provide information about casualties or material damage.
The attack coincided with the snap visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Iraq on Tuesday.
Posted by: Alamet | Jan 16 2008 16:00 utc | 12
This is to correct a mistake taken by Amb. Bremer in 2003. The contract to ban the Baath party that was signed by Amb. Bremer stated that Baathist politicans were forever banned by law from holding any public position. That meant all of the influential politicians were permanently out of a job, and with no other skills or prospects of gaining them because they were banned from public schools and universities (not to mention the violence), they and their families were out of money and their livelihood. The public ban also meant all Baath Party teachers were out of jobs.
A large number of the Baathists only joined the party to stay on Saddam's good side. As you may know, one of the reasons the US preferred Saddam to Iran from 1980-1988 (Iran-Iraq War) was not only because Saddam was a Sunni, but because the Baathist movement was founded on secular socialist roots. Disenfranchised, the former Baathists were among the first to contribute to the insurgency, while others fled to Syria.
The U.S. would rather have Sunni Baathists in the government at this point than opposition party Shiites. They are also likely hoping to make it easier for Sunni minority governments to have an easier time making more stable coalitions if they do not have to bridge the Sunni-Shiite divides.
Posted by: | Jan 17 2008 5:03 utc | 13
This is to correct a mistake taken by Amb. Bremer in 2003. The contract to ban the Baath party that was signed by Amb. Bremer stated that Baathist politicans were forever banned by law from holding any public position. That meant all of the influential politicians were permanently out of a job, and with no other skills or prospects of gaining them because they were banned from public schools and universities (not to mention the violence), they and their families were out of money and their livelihood. The public ban also meant all Baath Party teachers were out of jobs.
A large number of the Baathists only joined the party to stay on Saddam's good side. As you may know, one of the reasons the US preferred Saddam to Iran from 1980-1988 (Iran-Iraq War) was not only because Saddam was a Sunni, but because the Baathist movement was founded on secular socialist roots. Disenfranchised, the former Baathists were among the first to contribute to the insurgency, while others fled to Syria.
The U.S. would rather have Sunni Baathists in the government at this point than opposition party Shiites. They are also likely hoping to make it easier for Sunni minority governments to have an easier time making more stable coalitions if they do not have to bridge the Sunni-Shiite divides.
Posted by: DB | Jan 17 2008 5:03 utc | 14
Another day, another barrage:
Baghdad's heavily-fortified green zone came under attack with mortar shells on Wednesday, an interior ministry source said.
"Two rounds of mortar shells landed into the green zone on Wednesday," the source told Aswat al- Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).
The source did not provide information about casualties or material damage.
Earlier, the sealed-off zone came under attack on Tuesday that coincided with the a short visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Iraq.
Posted by: Alamet | Jan 17 2008 18:06 utc | 15
Only ten days later WaPo catches up: Iraq's New Law on Ex-Baathists Could Bring Another Purge
under new legislation promoted as way to return former Baathists to public life, the 56-year-old and thousands like him could be forced out of jobs they have been allowed to hold, according to Iraqi lawmakers and the government agency that oversees ex-Baathists."This new law is very confusing," Awadi said. "I don't really know what it means for me."
He is not alone. More than a dozen Iraqi lawmakers, U.S. officials and former Baathists here and in exile expressed concern in interviews that the law could set off a new purge of ex-Baathists, the opposite of U.S. hopes for the legislation.
Approved by parliament this month under pressure from U.S. officials, the law was heralded by President Bush and Iraqi leaders as a way to soothe the deep anger of many ex-Baathists -- primarily Sunnis but also many Shiites such as Awadi -- toward the Shiite-led government.
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Interestingly, the newspaper closest to the government reports on passage of the new legislation in a piece highlighting unrelated events including changing the some colors on the Iraqi flag, and doesn't go to the trouble of explaining either the substance of the law, or for that matter who voted for it. Possibly it is a wash in practical terms, and a showpiece politically, part of a mostly cosmetic process whose nature I don't think we understand yet...
Posted by: | Jan 13 2008 15:50 utc | 1