US revs up reversal of Iraq's Baath purge
Members of Saddam Hussein's party were ousted from Iraq's ministries and military in 2003. Now the US wants to reintegrate many disenfranchised former Baathists.
from the April 23, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
Several Iraqi officials say that the Shiite-dominated parliament has already decided to water down a de-Baathification reform bill sent to it last month by Mr. Talabani and Maliki to render it meaningless. Others say that even if lawmakers were to pass it as is, it would, contrary to claims by the Bush administration, have little impact on promoting reconciliation because it's too late.
"It looks to be a little late. It has become very tough," says Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish parliamentarian close to Talabani. "Even after the hanging of Saddam [Hussein], there are those who have become tougher and say 'nothing Baathist will come back.' "
On his visit to Iraq last week, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Maliki during a meeting Friday that Iraqi lawmakers should not take their summer recess until they passed a series of laws, including the one dealing with de-Baathification reform titled The Reconciliation and Accountability Law.
"It's clear to me from the beginning that an enormous priority for Iraq, and for all of us, is a national reconciliation process that brings all Iraqis together in a single nation working for common purposes," Ryan Crocker, the new US ambassador in Baghdad, told state-owned Iraqiya TV last week. "I see this whole process of de-Baathification reform as leading to that end … we need to push forward."
The Monitor has obtained an English-language draft of the bill, identical to the one sent to parliament in Arabic, with the following headline: "Mahdi Debaath version 3, March 21, 2007."
The US denies that it wrote the draft law, but says it "facilitated dialogue and briefed key leaders on US government goals for reform."
The bill makes it easier for senior members of the party who committed no crimes to obtain pensions. It also offers those who worked in Mr. Hussein's myriad security agencies the chance to either get a job in the present Army or police or receive a pension. It also clips the wings of the controversial de-Baathification Commission, a special government agency, by vesting more powers in independent judges and would fold the commission altogether in six months.
But the executive director of the de-Baathification Commission, Ali al-Lami, calls "unconstitutional" elements of the reform bill, such as dissolving the commission and setting a three-month statute of limitation for all claims against former Baathists.
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