Iraq's New Law on Ex-Baathists Could Bring Another Purge

Kareem, 53, and his family moved to Amman, Jordan, where they live in a sparsely furnished basement apartment. He has one abiding wish: to return to Iraq. But sitting at his kitchen table last week, flipping through a draft of the law, he was despondent.

"This is a bomb on the road of reconciliation," said Kareem, a former director general in the ministry. "This law does not bring anything new. This does not serve national reconciliation that all Iraqis are hoping for. On the contrary, it envisions hostility, hatred, discrimination and sectarian strife."

Kareem, along with other Baathists who were purged from their jobs after the invasion, argues that the law typifies the animosity that Iraq's Shiite-led government has for the bureaucrats of Hussein's regime. They say the climate is nowhere near safe enough for them to identify themselves to the government as former Baathists.

Kareem, who was a senior Baath Party member, said the new law does grant him the right to a pension, which would greatly benefit his family. He has not had a steady salary in five years, and has been living off the charity of friends and relatives, but said he would not attempt to claim the pension.

"This law is bait," he said. "I have to go back to Basra and apply for the pension through several measures. If I get killed, nobody will know who did it."

Kareem and other former Baathists advocate nullifying the law and the concept of de-Baathification in general. They say it discriminates against their political party at a time when other parties have also been associated with militias, death squads and major crimes. Trying to abolish an ideology and outlaw a political party seems to him both impossible and undemocratic.

"Aren't I the son of an Iraqi? Aren't I an Iraqi myself? Don't I have the right to live in Iraq?" he added. "This law is a punishment not only to the Baathists but to his sons and grandsons. So where is the justice in it?"

The Shiite-Sunni Divide

The very first decree of the U.S.-led occupation government was to disband the Baath Party and purge its members from the government. Issued May 16, 2003, Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 1 also banned the top four ranks of the Baath Party from public-sector jobs.

U.S. officials believed the order would remove about 20,000 Baathists, or 1 percent of the 2 million people in Iraq said to be party members, according to L. Paul Bremer, then the occupation administrator.

In an interview, Bremer said the decree was meant to retain the core of the bureaucracy and allow those who joined the party out of necessity during Hussein's rule to keep their jobs. Because it was difficult for non-Iraqis to discern who was or was not a true believer, Bremer said, he hastened to turn the implementation over to the Iraqis on the appointed Governing Council. "And there I made my mistake," Bremer said.

He blamed the Iraqi politicians who oversaw the de-Baathification process in mid-2003 for going beyond the intention of the order and purging thousands of additional people, including about 11,000 teachers.

The Iraqis tell a different story. According to Ali Faisal al-Lami, executive director of the de-Baathification commission, Bremer's order pushed 140,000 Iraqis out of their jobs. In addition to banning all members of the top four ranks of the party, it also forced out the senior government managers who belonged to the next two levels of the party.