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On Iraq, U.S. Turns to Onetime Dissenters
In 2003, Timothy Carney, right, and an American soldier displayed the cargo of a sport-utility vehicle: metal trunks containing just under $1 million in cash. The money was used to pay salaries at Iraq's ministries and government-run factories. Carney was in Iraq to run the Ministry of Industry and Minerals.
(Ahmed Dabboush)
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Bremer eventually concluded that the policy had been applied "unevenly and unjustly." But instead of rescinding his edict, he announced that appeals would be handled by a de-Baathification commission headed by Ahmed Chalabi, a controversial former exile whose informants had helped the Bush administration make the case for war. Chalabi, a Shiite, saw little need to accommodate former Baathists, most of whom are Sunnis.
By the summer of 2004, as the United States was relinquishing sovereignty of Iraq, many officials handling Iraq policy in Washington had concluded that Bremer's initial edict was a mistake. But it was too late for the Americans to do anything other than urge Iraq's Shiite-led interim government to rehire ex-Baathists. The CPA no longer had the power to issue edicts.
U.S. officials in Baghdad and in Washington leaned on the governments of prime ministers Ayad Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jafari, but the country's powerful Shiite and Kurdish leaders were unwilling to embrace the changes sought by the Bush administration. As far as they were concerned, Bremer enacted a sound policy in 2003, and there was little need to change it.
Finally, in 2005, the Shiites and Kurds agreed to reexamine the de-Baathification rules as part of a compromise to get Sunni political parties to support Iraq's new constitution. The agreement called for a revised de-Baathification law to be enacted by parliament.
But that still hasn't happened.
In an attempt to get the process moving, Bush used his televised address last week to call on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to embrace the reintegration of former Baathists. Maliki told Bush recently that he supports a revised de-Baathification law -- but the issue isn't in the prime minister's hands. It's still with Chalabi.
Chalabi is the chairman of the Supreme National Commission for De-Baathification, which continues to have ultimate authority to decide which ex-Baathists can return to work and which cannot. He has prepared draft legislation that calls for easing some elements of Bremer's policy, but he said parliament has been unable to act on it because a majority of the members of the legislature's de-Baathification committee belong to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political party, which walked out in November to protest a meeting between Maliki and Bush.
Speaking by telephone from Baghdad, Chalabi said he expects progress "pretty soon."
But he said the law will not contain a key demand of the U.S. government: a sunset clause that would abolish the commission, effectively depriving Chalabi of political influence. He called it unconstitutional.
Chalabi said he heard Bush's call for swift action on the de-Baathification law, but he emphasized that he and his fellow Iraqis, not U.S. officials, are in charge of the legislative timetable.
"We don't feel any pressure," he said.
