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de-Ba'athification

Under Saddam Hussein, membership in the near-monolithic Ba'ath party was wide-spread, even among those who opposed him. The US-led coalition in Iraq achieved its goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power. The deposed leader was eventually found in 2003. He was tried in an Iraqi court, and hanged in December 2006. Some US senior officials viewed Iraq through the lens of Nazi Germany with Saddam as Hitler and the Ba’ath Party as the Nazis. Such analogies correctly point out the moral repugnancy of the Saddam Hussein regime, but they overlooked the particulars of Iraq.

In October 2001, the Department of State (DoS) began planning the post-Saddam Hussein transition in Iraq. The de-Ba’athification recommendations of the Democratic Principles and Procedures Working Group (DPWG) clearly stated that “De-Ba’athification cannot mean dismissing from their jobs all two million Iraqis who belong to the Ba’ath party, or conducting witch hunts based on rumors and allegations.”

Under Saddam Hussein, the Baath party extended its tentacles to all levels of society, and it controlled Iraq through an elaborate system of patronage and terror. With Saddam Hussein's ouster, the United States banned the party as part of a campaign to purge Iraq of the last vestiges of Baathism.

Iraqi Shi'ite politician Ahmad Chalabi, a key proponent of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, played a key role in de-Ba'athification, to sideline anyone with ties to the ousted Ba'ath party. A secular Shiite working in the interests of Iran, he pursued a sectarian agenda that alienated millions of potential Sunni Muslim supporters of a new regime by purging the government of almost anyone who had held a position of influence under Saddam. This de-Baathification – abetted by clueless American officials – fed Sunni grievances that opened the way for al-Qaida in Iraq and its successor, the group that calls itself the Islamic State.

The process is widely considered a major factor in the disastrous Sunni/Shi'ite sectarian split that continued to wreack havoc in Iraq and beyond. Sunni and Shi'ite political leaders continue to accuse each other of trying to manipulate the electoral process to skew the outcome of the parliamentary election. The “De-Baathification” process effectively removed the most seasoned career officers in Iraq, who were later fighting with the Islamic State.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld made it clear 15 April 2003 that future leadership choices will not include anyone who favors Iraq's division, represents foreign interests or was a member in Saddam Hussein's former ruling Baath Party. "It ought to be a country that sets itself on a path towards a government that is responsive to the people and respectful of minorities and different - the diversity in the country, of religious diversity and ethnic diversity. And if people want to have a different kind of government, then we'd prefer they not participate. ... There's no question but that this country has got to go through a de-Baathification process. The Baath Party does not fit the conditions I have described," he said. "We know what they think and, therefore, we know that they ought not to be participants.... we'd also prefer that people not participate who basically don't represent Iraq, but who think they represent some of the neighboring countries. And that would - that's an unhelpful thing, it seems to me.."

An order to de-Ba’athify Iraqi society was the first major official act of Ambassador L. Paul Bremer upon his arrival in that country to assume control of the newly created Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). On 16 May 2003 issued an order provided in draft form by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. Bremer said the 30,000 highest ranking Baathists will hold no jobs in the American-run provisional administration. "We have and will aggressively move to seek to identify these people and remove them from office. We have hunted down and will continue to deal with those members of the old regime who are sabotaging the country and the coalition's efforts," he said.

Charlie Sidell, the Baghdad Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Chief of Station during this period, stated, “Well if you do this, you’re going to drive 30,000 to 50,000 Ba’athists underground by nightfall, and the number is closer to 50,000 than it is to 30,000.”

Bremer also admitted the coalition may still have to rely on the skills of lower-ranking Baathists to help get Iraq back on its feet. "We have a very difficult problem. We are trying very hard to work with the Iraqis to restore essential services in health, education, water, electricity. We are working as hard as we can with the people in those ministries who are available and who are technically competent," he said. "In some cases we have found people who have offered to work with us have turned out to be members of the Baath party, and those people have been put out of office when we found that out. This will be a difficult problem."

Reidar Visser, Research Fellow, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, , in an interview conducted by the Council on Foreign Relations, dated 25 January 2010, explained that in practice, the Baath party under Sadam Hussein cut across sectarian lines but that the de-Baathification process had polarised Sunni and Shia groups: “... the realities are that before 2003, lots of Iraqis were in one way or another cooperating with the regime--Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds-- in the tens of thousands. It was not, as is frequently portrayed in the West, an extremely Sunni-dominated regime. It was certainly Sunni-dominated at the very top, but there were tens of thousands of Shiites who worked for the system... The politicians who came to dominate after 2003 were the exiled politicians, and those politicians had not collaborated with the regime simply because they were not in the country at the time. They imposed this narrative of a squeaky clean de-Ba'athified society and a complete break with the Ba'ath Party, which of course was impossible... What happened was that this was done in a very selective way. The Shiites and Kurds were silently un-Ba'athified, to put it that way. They were silently put back in service, whereas Sunnis were very often excluded. So, in practice, de-Ba'athification turned into an attack on the Sunnis. ...”

Bremer claimed in his book that he expected the de-Ba’athification order to be applied to only about 20,000 people, or what he identified as 1 percent of all party members. The program would therefore include the ranks officially designated as “Senior Party Members.” Bremer also claimed to have been sensitive to the needs of lower-ranking Ba’ath Party members to join the organization to make a living. He later maintained that his order was applied in ways that he never intended, and that many more people were purged than he had envisioned under the original program.

On 03 November 2003 the responsibility for implementing de-Ba’athification was passed from the CPA to the US-created Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). The IGC made de-Ba’athification the responsibility of Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, who was placed in charge of the newly-created “Supreme National Commission for De-Ba’athification.” Chalabi had been an advocate for wide-ranging de-Ba’athification well before the war against Saddam had begun in 2003. In a February 19, 2002, Wall Street Journal editorial, Chalabi stated that, “Iraq needs a comprehensive program of de-Ba’athification even more extensive than the de-Nazification effort in Germany after World War II.”

Chalabi was supported in his efforts at deep de-Ba’athification by the Shi’ite religious parties such as Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI, later the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) and by various Kurdish groups.

The de-Baathification policy issued in May 2003 and implemented by Iraqi officials in January 2004 prohibited senior Baath Party officials who had close ties to the Saddam Hussein regime from obtaining positions within the new Iraqi government. An extensive vetting process was used to separate Iraqis who'd merely been party members from hardcore Baathists with "blood on their hands." The policy didn't disqualify all former Baath Party members from applying for jobs, as only senior-level functionaries are barred. However, it was soon discovered that some Iraqis who'd once been Baathists - especially those in the education field - had been waiting too long to resolve their appeals for jobs or retirement pensions.

Many US officials in Iraq later saw problems with de-Ba’athification, but they had difficulties softening or correcting the process once it had become firmly established in Iraqi hands. Other US policymakers were slower in recognizing the politicized nature of de-Ba’athification and its devolution into a process in which both its Iraqi supporters and opponents viewed it as an instrument of Shi’ite revenge and political domination of Sunni Arabs.

Many Sunni Arabs belonged to the Baath party and were left unemployed by the de-Baathification program administered by the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority after Saddam Hussein was ousted in April 2003. That program was widely blamed for leaving many former members of the military and security forces armed and out of work, stoking the country's insurgency.

Restrictions on Baathists were put in place after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. But over time, the White House realized they were exacerbating tensions between Iraq's majority Shi'ites and once-dominant Sunnis. As a result, Washington urged Shi'ite leaders in parliament to lift the restrictions and make a gesture that could bring more Sunnis into the political process.

In April 2004, Bremer moved to narrow de-Ba’athification in response to the abuse of the system and to establish a more reasonable set of policies to reverse Iraq’s escalating violence. He stated that the policy had been applied “unevenly and unfairly.” By this time, the crisis between the Sunnis and Shi’ites was exceptionally serious, and the outlines of a potential civil war were becoming increasingly clear.

During an April 2005 visit to Baghdad, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urged the new Iraqi leaders not to purge their security forces of all pre-war Ba’ath party officials. Many US analysts viewed this as the most crucial issue facing Iraq’s first democratically elected government in 50 years. Washington’s earlier decision to disband the Iraqi army and its de-Ba’athification process were regarded by many as major mistakes.

The Freedom House Report entitled Freedom in the World 2010, Iraq, covering events in 2009, published May 2010 (Freedom House Report 2010) explained that following the US-led invasion, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) set about disbanding the Iraqi military and prevented members of the Baath party from serving in government or the new security forces.

“Sunni Arabs, who constitute roughly 20 percent of the population, were disproportionately affected by de-Baathification policies and wary of participating in a political transition that could hand power to the Shiite majority. Exploiting these sentiments, loose networks of former Baathist officials, Sunni Arab tribe members, and Islamist militants associated with Al-Qaeda [an international terrorist organisation] began organizing and funding an insurgency that rapidly gained strength in late 2003 and 2004... Insurgents threatened Sunni Arabs and ensured that they boycotted the 2005 elections for a Transitional National Assembly (TNA) and provincial governments. As a result, Shiite and Kurdish parties won a landslide victory, and Sunni Arabs were not well represented in the new Iraqi Transitional Government (ITG) or the drafting process for a permanent constitution. The charter was approved by referendum in October 2005, though more than two-thirds of voters in two largely Sunni Arab provinces rejected it...”

Sunni Arabs participated in the December 2005 elections, increasing their political representation. However, further political progress remained elusive.

Iraqi officials said 07 November 2006 that authorities had drafted a law to allow former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party back into government jobs,The head of the Supreme National Council for De-Baathification said that the proposed reform could reinstate thousands of purged Baath Party activists.

The move came a day after the former president was sentenced to death. Two of Saddam's co-defendants also were sentenced to death, including his half brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, and the former chief judge of Saddam's Revolutionary Court Awad Hamed al-Bander. Former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was sentenced to life in prison, and three other former Ba'ath party officials received sentences of 15 years in prison.

Some Shi’ite leaders consistently sought to convey the view that Sunnis were irredeemably wedded to radicalism, and needed to be marginalized to protect both Iraqi and Shi’ite interests. In one particularly revealing incident, Shi’ite leader Abdulaziz Hakim made it clear that he supported democracy so long as his organization and sect benefited from that democracy. In conversations reported by journalist Bob Woodward and others, Hakim told members of the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group that the government of Iraq represented 80 percent of the population of that country (Shi’ites and Kurds) so democracy was served, and nothing had to be done about the remaining Sunnis.

The Iraqi Council of Representatives passed a new de-Baathification law 12 January 2008. The Accountability and Justice Act was meant to reform the process of de-Ba’athification, as well as reverse some of its earlier excesses. The new law would enable thousands of former Baath party members to apply for reinstatement in the civil service and military. The legislation aimed to offer jobs to former regime officials who did not previously hold high positions. But it excluded those already charged with or wanted for crimes. It also granted state pensions to many former Baathists.

The Bush administration had been pushing the Iraqis for months to pass a law that would remove restrictions on members of the Baath Party, allowing some to return to government jobs they held under Saddam Hussein. For President Bush, passage was a personal victory. "It's an important step toward reconciliation. It's an important sign that the leaders in that country must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people," he said.

Parliament's Accountability and Justice Committee, [the de-Ba'athification committee], whose legality has been challenged by Sunni politicians, began a sharp dispute by disqualifying 511 of candidates in January 2010. Fifty-nine of those identified for disqualification were cases of mistaken identity where individuals had names similar to those found on the commission’s database. More than a dozen political parties could also be excluded from the elections for alleged ties to former leader Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The committee's chairman, Falah Shansal, was allied to pro-Iranian cleric Moqtada Sadr. Several political leaders accuse him of bowing to the wishes of Iran.

Iraq's Sunni vice president Tariq al-Hashemi, contested the legitimacy of the Iraqi parliament de-Baathification committee which made the decision to bar 511 politicians from running in the March election. He said that the committee had no legal basis to act. He said that Iraq's presidential council sent a letter to parliament in March, 2008 saying that the de-Baathification committee must take on a care-taker role, since it had no authorization to apply the law over purging former Ba'ath party members. He argued that the present committee, which replaced the original one, should have had the approval of parliament, then of the presidential council [which it did not]. Therefore, he insisted, the committee has no legal basis to exclude any Iraqi from political life.

President Jalal Talabani [a Kurd] said he did not oppose the participation of Ba'ath members who are not from what he called the Saddam Hussein wing of the party. The distinction appears to be a way around the still-confounding issue of who is a Ba'athist.

Several Shi'ite members of parliament accuse the United States of being behind the attempt to reinstate candidates banned by the committee. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's spokesman, Ali Debbagh, called the move by Iraq's High Electoral Commission to reinstate the candidates "illegal." An appeals court ordered the commission to reinstate the candidates, and to suspend background checks on them until after March elections.

In February 2011, Donald Rumsfeld said he did not regret later decisions to disband the Iraqi army. He also continued to support the "de-Baathification" process of the Iraqi government, which removed Saddam Hussein’s supporters from government positions. Both moves fueled the subsequent insurgency in Iraq. "How it was administered I think was the problem, not the decision to have a de- Baathification process. I think that was the right decision. How it was administered by a man named Ahmed Chalabi, a Shia, was probably - had the effect of making a lot of Sunni’s feel like they were not going to be a part of the new Iraq. And you can not have that," he said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki arrested large numbers of so-called “Ba’athists” in 2011, shortly before the final withdrawal of US troops.

By 2015 the sectarian divide had produced a number of incidents where Shia militia fighters had gone beyond suppression of the Islamic State to attack Sunnis and destroy their villages as part of a long-standing “payback” for grievances the Shia suffered under Saddam Hussein and earlier Sunni leaders. The hyper-partisanship of the previous Shia Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, only amplified the hostilities between the two Muslim factions.

By May 2016 a group of former Saddam-era army generals was proposing a military takeover. The bloc wanted to cut off Iran’s strong influence in Iraq and establish a nationalist state, and said it is ready to work with Sadr, the Kurds and the United States to get there. Other Sunnis were calling for a repeal of de-Baathification, and guarantees they can return to their traditionally Sunni cities after the eviction of Islamic State militants. They have also put forward the idea of an autonomous Sunni region in western Iraq. The Kurds are saying the time is ripe for independence, and are holding back their lawmakers from parliament as a bargaining chip. The Shi’ites want to keep the power they have gained since Saddam’s fall.

Speaker of the Council of Representatives Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni Arab, criticized the CPA’s decisions to disband the army and impose a strict de-Ba’athification regime. “The decision to turn a work force of more than two million capable individuals into unemployed individuals because of two successive orders added more unemployment.” The American administration implementing the occupation “was responsible for this issue.” Going forward, “the best thing that the United States can do is invest in this work force through productive small or medium projects that would be of service to the society, helping it regain self-esteem and contributing to meeting basic needs, as well as creating economic stability in the country.”

Much like Denazification, the de-Ba’athification program seems to have gone too deeply and too quickly into the membership. Thomas Ricks, author of "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq", interviewed in “The Lost Year in Iraq” by PBS–Frontline, noted that “The United States military began preparing for the occupation of Germany several years before the end of World War II, not with a hasty couple of months of planning that was really disorganized, as was the case with Iraq. Even de-Baathification didn’t really pay attention to the lessons of de-Nazification. The Army War College actually had studied this in the fall of ‘02 and made the point in a study that de-Nazification was very carefully done from the very bottom up. They went into each village, and they talked to anti-Nazi people about who the Nazis had been, and they compiled information at the village level. Bremer did the opposite. He comes in at the very top and issues a sweeping rule that really doesn’t even have information about who are Baathists, why they were Baathists, and who wasn’t a Baathist. It’s really just almost a casual imposition on the society that’s not particularly informed about the nature of Iraqi society. I think the occupation of Germany was much more an excuse than real analogy.”