Iraq votes to lift ban on former Baathists

Iraq’s parliament approved a bill Saturday 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 crucial to national reconciliation.

The Bush administration had argued that its troop buildup in Iraq last year would offer breathing room to the country’s warring factions, allowing them to make progress on the political front. The legislation was introduced in the parliament in March, but had remained stalled.

Even as violence declined in recent months, Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni leaders squabbled and failed to take major steps toward ending the country’s sectarian war. Key legislation on dismantling militias, sharing the country’s oil wealth, setting election procedures and outlining the relationship between central and provincial powers continues to languish.

The bill approved Saturday, which is all but certain to be signed into law by Iraq’s presidency council, is designed to allow thousands of low-level Baathists to be rehired. They were purged more than four years ago under a ban ordered by U.S. overseer L. Paul Bremer III during the occupation of Iraq in 2003 and enforced since by Iraq’s Shiite-led government.

Critics have called the purging of the Baathists, many of them competent administrators, a major blunder of Bremer’s leadership, which helped fuel the Sunni revolt against U.S.-led forces and the ascendant Shiite majority. The Baath Party, which dominated Iraqi society for decades, numbered 2 million to 6 million members and was often a prerequisite for professional advancement and success.

Some politicians, particularly Shiites who suffered under the late former dictator’s Sunni regime, fear that the new law will open up positions to Hussein supporters who could try to overthrow the government. Others believe the time has come to make peace after the upheaval of the last five years, which has seen abuses committed by all sides.

President Bush, who is traveling in the region, called the legislation “an important step toward reconciliation.” During a stop in Bahrain, Bush also said it was “an important sign that the leaders in that country must work together and meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people.”

But sectarian divisions remain deep in Iraq, and it is unclear whether the new law will have much effect. Critics charge that the legislation is window-dressing.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remained notably cautious, declining to comment until it finished reviewing the draft. The legislation has been through various versions as it made its way through Iraq’s halls of power.

The Accountability and Justice Law, as it is called, abolishes the de-Baathification committee, which its detractors accused of firing competent state employees for little reason and using membership in the Baath Party as an excuse for carrying out a political agenda. Some state employers were subject to blackmail by people who threatened to name them to the committee unless they paid up.

“If this law changes the process sufficiently from this inquisition process set up by the Coalition Provisional Authority, it would be a step forward,” said a U.S. diplomat who has worked on Iraq issues, referring to the quasi-government that Bremer headed.

The legislation calls for a seven-member national board and a general prosecutor who will investigate current cases, and for Iraq’s Justice Ministry to pick 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 representative of Iraq’s sects and ethnicities.

But the new law will not reverse Bremer’s original decree barring from the government members of the top four echelons of the Baath Party, though it provides them with pensions.

“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 Al Arabiya satellite television channel. “This law is changing [the de-Baathification committee] into a professional judiciary authority far from any political positions.”

Until recently, the committee continued to purge people from the ministries and the military on the basis of party membership. In the summer of 2006, even after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was selected to head a “national unity” government, some technocrats and security officials were fired from the interior, defense and agriculture ministries with little justification.

In one of the most famous cases, Adnan Janabi, a minister without portfolio in 2004 under then-interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, was blocked from serving in the current parliament on account of his Baath Party membership.

“The law is one thing. Another is how it will be implemented. As everyone knows, Maliki and those in his camp are not thrilled about having to do anything, but we’ve been pushing them hard,” the U.S. diplomat said.

Critics of the legislation suspect the new body will be manipulated by the same parties that dominated the old committee. They also worry that any Baathists who seek jobs will be targeted by paramilitary groups.

“I wouldn’t come back to my job because of this law,” Sunni parliament member Saleh Mutlak said. “It’s humiliating to the people. You have to condemn yourself, and then be investigated, and then you could be killed [by someone] after going to the committee.”

The vote itself showed how divided Iraqis remain on the matter. Barely 150 members of the 275-seat parliament attended the session.

Mutlak’s National Dialogue Front, with 11 seats, and some members of another Sunni bloc, the 44-seat Iraqi Accordance Front, boycotted the vote. All major Shiite parties in attendance voted for the legislation, including 30 lawmakers loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr. But if some endorsed the measure, others skipped the session rather than vote for a proposal they vehemently opposed.

“I consider this law as a pure American law aiming to restore the Baath Party to the political process,” said Sadr lawmaker Maha Adil Mehdi, who boycotted the session. “I refuse this law completely.”

Others whose parties have been associated with the mass purges and even attacks on former Baathists backed the law.

“From the beginning, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council was backing this law because there are many people suffering from this law and others are using this law to revenge and to gain more authority,” said parliament member Hamid Mualla, a member of the party.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni party in parliament, endorsed the legislation as a compromise. “We want to push the national reconciliation ahead and calm things down among the Iraqis, and this might not help a lot,” said Nureddine Hayali, a lawmaker with the party.

But the biggest question remains how the law will be applied and whether Shiite hard-liners will work to block former Baathists from returning.

“We know there are certain ministries who opposed this and are in a position to deny jobs to people who would benefit from legislation,” said analyst Wayne White, head of the State Department’s Iraq intelligence team from 2003 to 2005. “There are people at the local level who have the power to sabotage.”

ned.parker@latimes.com

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Times staff writers Raheem Salman, Saif Rasheed, Said Rifai and Caesar Ahmed in Baghdad and James Gerstenzang in Bahrain contributed to this report.