Law ends Baath purge
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s Parliament on Saturday approved a law allowing members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to return to government jobs, overcoming months of paralysis to pass the first piece of the so-called benchmark legislation the United States has deemed critical to national reconciliation.
The Bush administration had claimed that its troop buildup in Iraq last year would give breathing room to Iraq’s warring factions, allowing them to make progress on the political front. The law was introduced initially by Parliament in March but had stalled until now.
Even as violence dropped in recent months, Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni leaders squabbled and failed to take any major steps toward ending the country’s sectarian war. Key legislation on dismantling militias, sharing the country’s oil wealth, election procedures and outlining the relationship between central and provincial powers continues to languish in government limbo.
The law approved Saturday is designed to allow thousands of low-level Baathists to be rehired more than four years after they were purged under a ban ordered by U.S. overseer L. Paul Bremer during Iraq’s occupation in 2003 and then enforced in the ensuing years by Iraq’s Shiite-led government. Approval of the law from the three-member presidential council is expected.
Critics have called the purging of the Baathists, many of them competent administrators, a major blunder of Bremer’s reign that helps fuel the Sunni revolt against U.S. forces and the ascendant Shiite majority.
Some politicians, particularly Shiites who suffered under the late dictator’s Sunni regime, fear the new law will open positions to Saddam supporters who could try to overthrow the government. Others believe the time has come to make peace after the upheaval of the past five years, which has seen abuses committed by all parties. President Bush, who is traveling in the region, called the law “an important step for Iraq.”
But sectarian divisions remain deep in Iraq, and it is unclear whether the new law will have much effect. Critics say the legislation is window dressing. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remained notably cautious, declining to comment until it finished reviewing the draft.
The Accountability and Justice law, as it is called, abolishes Iraq’s old de-Baathification committee, which its detractors accused of firing competent state employees with little reason and simply using membership in the Baath Party as an excuse for carrying out a political agenda. Some state employers were subject to blackmail in which a person threatened to name them to the committee unless they paid up.
The law calls for a seven-member national board and a general prosecutor, charged with investigating current cases, and for Iraq’s Justice Ministry to choose seven judges for an appeals court. In a show of tensions, the lawmakers struck down an amendment that would have required that the board be chosen by Parliament and include representatives of all Iraq’s sects.
The new law does not reverse Bremer’s original decree barring members of the top four echelons of the Baath Party from the government.
“This law deals with the Baathists as individuals. … It distinguishes between the criminal and the innocent,” government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said in an interview with the Al Arabiya satellite television channel. “This law is changing (the de-Baathification committee) into a professional judiciary authority far from any political positions.”