IRAQ:Former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party who lost their jobs after the 2003 invasion will be allowed to take up posts in the government and security forces under a new law designed to foster reconciliation between Iraq's Shia and Sunni Arabs.
The US has been putting intense pressure on the Shia-led government to meet benchmarks designed to bring Iraq's once all-powerful Sunni Arabs back into the fold and take the sting out of the insurgency raging in many Sunni areas of the capital and beyond.
Leading Sunni figures hope the Bill will also encourage the return to Iraq of thousands of Sunnis who have fled abroad since 2003. Under the new legislation, to be sent to parliament by Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani (a Sunni Kurd), and prime minister Nuri al-Maliki (a Shia Arab), those who do not find new jobs will be eligible for state pensions.
The Bill covers Baath party members who served in Saddam's civil service and military organisations. But it excludes Baathists who have been charged with or are wanted for crimes committed under the former regime. According to the law, there would be a three-month challenge period after which former Baath party loyalists would be immune from legal punishment.
Saleh al-Mutlaq, a leading Sunni politician who has links to the former Baath party, said he backed the new law. "It is a belated opportunity to correct the mistakes made by Paul Bremer," he said. In May 2003 US administrator Paul Bremer sacked the army and all civil servants and officials above the Baath party's lowest levels. Critics of this "de-Baathification" process say it has been one of the main factors in Iraq's current turmoil.
"You have to understand how much we feared the Baath party," said one government official, a Shia, who supported Mr Bremer's measures in 2003. "The wholesale removal of the pillars of Iraq's administrative and security structures paralysed institutions and created half a million discontented and jobless people, many of them Sunni." One of the main problems, said a western diplomat, was that the legal process to decide who was eligible for dismissal was too murky.
"Despite the fact there were also many Shia Baathists, Sunnis saw de-Baathification merely as revenge against them on behalf of the Shia," he said.
"Dealing with all Baathists the same way was wrong. Membership of the Baath party was unavoidable for many people. Should they punish them for that?"
Despite the new proposals, it is unclear how many former Baath members will apply for their jobs back. With militias and death squads linked to the ruling Shia alliance operating with relative ease in the capital and infiltrating the ministries, some former Baathists may simply opt to lie low.
Meanwhile, yesterday bomb attacks killed 77 people, including 50 who died in twin truck bombings in the northwestern town of Tal Afar. - ( Guardian service )