A new chapter
After the US invaded Iraq in 2003, one of the first orders of business was a collective judgment on Baath Party members, who were dismissed en masse from their employment. In a somewhat messy compromise, the Iraqi parliament just passed a bill intended to make it easier for former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to return to government jobs and collect their pensions. Washington Post:
When the U.S. military overthrew Hussein in 2003, the first order of business for the Coalition Provisional Authority was to disband the Baath Party that Hussein had fashioned into his personal empire over more than three decades in power.
CPA Order 1, or the “De-Baathification of Iraqi Society,” ordered members of the Baath Party’s top four echelons “removed from their positions and banned from future employment in the public sector.” The number of Baathists purged is in dispute, but Ali al-Lami, spokesman for the current de-Baathification commission, said 150,000 people were removed between May and September 2003.
Since early 2004, when the de-Baathification commission began its work overseeing who could come back, about 102,000 former Baathists have returned to their jobs, Lami said. Existing rules prohibit members from the top three levels from government work but allowed people on the fourth level to return in some circumstances, he said.
It remains unclear how many former Baath Party members would be eligible to return under the new legislation. Lami 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.
As with so many things in the fledgling attempt at self-government in Iraq, there will no doubt be conflict, perhaps violent, as implementation becomes the issue. Yet it is hard not to think this represents progress. We tend to agree with the prominent Shiite politician Humam Hamoudi, who said, “The most important thing about this new law is that it is an Iraqi law.”