Maliki has little sympathy for Allawi's efforts. To back Baathists is a "fatal mistake," he said. "They will be a threat to the country."
"The society will not be stable in Iraq until we purify the government of former Baathists," Maliki said. "We have information the Baathists and some former members of the regime have returned to their jobs and are leading the insurgency in the country. The security forces of the government are infiltrated."
A student writes on a blackboard during class at a school in Baghdad.
(Dana Smillie For The Washington Post)
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Maliki's assertion could not be verified. While many former Baathists clearly have joined the insurgency, others have accepted their fate.
Khalaf simply turned the keys to her 350-pupil school over to her deputy and went home in tears. She locked herself in her house for days, deep in depression, she said.
Maliki said all fired Baathists at Khalaf's level either had been given a pension or were among 9,000 granted an exemption to go back to work. Khalaf said she had gotten neither, though she had applied for the exception twice, with no reply.
Mishaan Jubouri, a Sunni tribal leader, said the de-Baathification commission thwarts those trying to get their jobs back by requiring a flurry of paperwork: signatures from former employers, witnesses saying the applicant committed no crimes, signatures from a variety of police and security agencies.
"They approve 500, 700, maybe 800 cases a month," Jubouri said. "At this rate, it will take 13 years before the last one is processed."
Maliki, however, contends that the Allawi government has returned people to work without approval from the commission, filling the security and intelligence services with former Baathists. "It's against the law. Perhaps after the election we will have a government that respects the law," Maliki said in an interview before Sunday's vote.
Some former Baathists have been mysteriously killed. According to Saad Jawad Qindeel, an official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite party that has a militia that fought Hussein from exile in Iran, such assassinations were "done by the people."
Qindeel said many Baathists -- even teachers, such as Khalaf -- cannot return to their jobs because former colleagues or students' parents do not want them there. "Although the government wants to put them back, the people rejected them," Qindeel said. "Lots of these [teachers] are criminals. Lots of people suffered under them and could not accept working next door."
Khalaf, however, said that she had submitted petitions from all of her former colleagues seeking her return and that parents of students regularly asked her when she would come back.
Her rent eats up the pension paid to her husband, who worked for 25 years as a policeman but is now disabled. A son with a college degree works as a laborer for $4 a day, when he can find work. The family survives on government food rations.
She stepped up from the lowest party ranks to a higher level two years before Hussein fell. She did it because the rank increased her pay by about $45 a month, and she needed the money, she said. Her only party functions were to collect monthly dues from her staff, assemble the children for state-mandated political rallies and hold monthly meetings for the teachers in the party.
"No one suffered because of me. I harmed no one," Khalaf said. "Now I am the one suffering. I loved my job. I dream about going back. I don't care if I am principal. I just want to stand in front of the students and teach again."
Correspondent Karl Vick contributed to this report.
