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

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The party has not given up its ambition to return to power, he says, through both armed and political means.

Lami says that he has lists that prove that all the heads of the main Sunni Arab insurgency groups are senior Baathists.

While most lawmakers backed the commission's work, he says, some Iraqi politicians were "misguided" in their effort to link reconciliation to the commission's work and that the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) parliamentary bloc, to which Maliki belongs, must remember that it was only able to sweep into power because of an anti-Baath platform.

"If they appear to be retreating from their campaign promises, then they would be committing treason toward the people that voted for them," Lami says.

He nonetheless admits that his commission is helpless when it comes to reining in provincial authorities, mainly Shiite ones, and making sure they pursued a more balanced approach to de-Baathification.

He recounts how his commission, which is chaired by former Washington favorite Ahmed Chalabi, recently recommended that a group of former school teachers be returned to their jobs in Karbala after it was proven that they committed no crimes and after they had been de-Baathified.

But the province refused after leaflets were circulated on the city's streets warning that the teachers would be killed if they came back.

 

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