Iraqi Deal to End De-Baathification

Iraqi Deal to End De-Baathification
By ANTHONY SHADID
Copyright by The The New York Times
Published: May 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/world/middleeast/12baghdad.html?th&emc=th


BAGHDAD — Iraqi politicians have reached an agreement to halt a four-month campaign to bar candidates from politics for ties to the Baath Party, American and Iraqi officials said, papering over the sectarian tensions it unleashed, at least for now, and removing an obstacle in the long-delayed process of forming a new government.

The disqualification of hundreds of candidates threw politics into turmoil before the March 7 parliamentary elections. In the deadlock that followed the landmark vote, the prospect of barring more candidates deepened the sense of crisis here, reflecting the conflicts that still threaten Iraq’s fragile political system.

But officials said this week that an agreement was reached to end the de-Baathification campaign in much the same way that it began in January, in an opaque fashion that has bewildered the campaign’s supporters and opponents and underlined the extent to which tenuous Iraqi institutions can be manipulated by the power of single personalities.

“It’s stopped,” President Jalal Talabani said. “There will be no more.”

Similar predictions have been made in the past, and the issue has proved phoenix-like in its capacity to haunt politics here. But even the campaign’s architect, Ahmad Chalabi, the former ally turned bête noire of the Americans, acknowledged that the dispute had ended for now and that none of the winning candidates would be barred.

That suggests that the breakdown of seats — a wafer-thin margin of victory by a mainly Sunni Muslim coalition led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi — will stand, buttressing the coalition’s claim that it has the constitutional right to form the next government.

Whether it will be able to do so remains in question, and a vote recount is still under way in Baghdad. But American officials hailed the decision on de-Baathification as a step forward.

“There seems to be an emerging consensus that it’s time to move on,” Christopher R. Hill, the ambassador to Iraq, told reporters on Sunday.

Even now, the legacy of an incendiary campaign is being debated, with sentiments predictably breaking down along Iraq’s sectarian lines.

Critics have contended that the disqualifications were a brazen instance of score-settling that reopened sectarian wounds and reinforced how elusive national reconciliation remains. Others called them a travesty of justice that highlighted the ability of one man, Mr. Chalabi, to recast politics through a deft reading of institutions, personalities and the pressures they faced. In the end, he met only token resistance.

“Ahmad Chalabi’s ability to manipulate Iraqi politics through the instrument of de-Baathification is impressive indeed,” said Reidar Visser, an Iraq analyst at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. A year ago, he added, “Iraqi politics was looking less sectarian.”

“Through forcing de-Baathification back on the agenda,” Mr. Visser continued, “Chalabi has been able to bring about a sectarian repolarization of Iraqi politics.”

Mr. Chalabi disagreed. He said the campaign qualified as a victory, making clear that the Baath Party and its sympathizers had no place left in a post-Hussein Iraq.

“It was big-time worth it,” he declared in an interview this week.

De-Baathification is one of those issues in Iraq — like Saddam Hussein, the Americans and Mr. Chalabi himself — that prompt decided opinions. It traces its origins from the earliest days of the American occupation, when L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator of Iraq, outlawed the party in May 2003, and then, in November of that year, established a commission to oversee a process of barring all but the party’s junior members from public life.

The Accountability and Justice Commission, while on shaky legal grounds, has served as its successor, even though a substantial portion of Iraq’s political class deems it little more than a tool to eliminate secular and Sunni voices.

To surprise and dismay, the commission, led by Mr. Chalabi, moved in January to disqualify more than 500 candidates. Mr. Chalabi insists he acted alone, empowered by Iraq’s de-Baathification laws. But from the start, the process was arbitrary and capricious. Numbers ebbed and flowed as revised lists made their way to electoral officials. Leading politicians sought to call in personal chits to safeguard friends or the allies of friends. Shiite politicians who feared a process with the potential to run amok caved to the political imperative of not appearing soft on Baathists.

After the elections, in which Mr. Allawi’s coalition won two more seats than the alliance of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the issue returned to the fore.

Mr. Chalabi’s commission threatened to bar as many as nine candidates, six of them from Mr. Allawi’s coalition, and disqualify dozens of candidates, potentially retabulating the results.

Last week, negotiations that some officials described as panicked led to an agreement not to bar any of the nine winning candidates. Mr. Chalabi said the dozens of other candidates would not be disqualified either. “We have a genuine expectation that the Accountability and Justice Commission has concluded its work and that we will not see further moves on that,” Mr. Hill said.

He added, “That said, they need to figure out how to do the legal unwinding.”

Mr. Chalabi said he had agreed not to oppose the appeals of the candidates before the courts, ensuring that they would be upheld. He denied that he buckled to pressure, either from the Americans or from his Shiite allies. “I care about this kind of pressure?” he said. Asked if the situation was arbitrary — an instance of politics’ taking precedence over the rule of law, in which a court ruling would provide legal cover for a political agreement — he shook his head.

“It’s not arbitrary, it’s not arbitrary,” Mr. Chalabi said. “We indicated that we have no objection if the court decides for those candidates. That’s not arbitrary.”

“It’s the rule of law,” he added, “but rule of law in the interests of the country.”

Mr. Chalabi’s campaign could be seen as a political masterstroke, mobilizing Shiite voters for both Mr. Maliki and the Shiite alliance through which Mr. Chalabi won a seat in Parliament. Mr. Chalabi appears to have swelled his own flagging popularity; he failed to win a seat in the previous election. He said he started the campaign to foil what he called an American plan to reorient the government by bringing in Sunnis sympathetic to the Baath Party.

“I blew it up in their faces,” he boasted.

Philip Frayne, a spokesman for the United States Embassy, said only, “Our concerns about the way de-Baathification took place stem from the perception that it was being used for political gain.”

Whatever the intention, the campaign’s conclusion seemed to bewilder politicians as much as its beginning. In an interview on Monday, one politician grew agitated as he was asked where the matter stood. “It’s a chaotic situation. Nobody gives you facts. We try in fact to get a clue on this subject,” he exclaimed. “Nobody knows.”

The words were spoken by Tariq al-Hashemi, the Sunni vice president of Iraq.