Word: baath
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...form the new government without marginalizing any party," says political analyst Hussein al-Ja'af. He contends that the terrorism attacks won't derail the political process, though he warns that three days this month coincide with the birth and overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of the Baath Party and could bring more attacks. "They make violence to confuse people about the democratic experience that Iraqis have...
...lacked street cred. He projected himself as a democratic strongman - a contradiction in terms that convinced few of his countrymen. Although a Shi'ite, he alienated many among the majority sect by espousing a secular view of Iraq. Many Iraqis were suspicious of his ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, even though Allawi had left the party in 1975 and had survived an assassination attempt ordered by the dictator. (See what Allawi was like...
...when it suits them. Last month, the Justice and Accountability Commission, a secretive government de-Baathification committee headed by prominent Shi'ite politicians, banned some 500 candidates - most of them Sunni and secular - from running in the parliamentary election, without ever showing any evidence that linked them to the Baath party. Some critics saw the move as a last-minute attempt by al-Maliki's campaign, which had also been running campaign ads showing Saddam-era atrocities against Shi'ites, to reconnect with the Shi'ite political base. The move raised fears that Sunnis might once again boycott the election...
...election commission barred some 500 candidates from Iraq's parliamentary elections in March, acting on a list compiled by another panel that cited alleged ties to the outlawed Baath Party once led by Saddam Hussein. The move threatened to spark sectarian strife by angering members of the country's Sunni minority, who claimed they would be disproportionately affected and saw the ruling as an attempt to curtail their participation...
Like the knee-jerk decision to dismantle the Iraqi army, the U.S. decision in 2003 to ban members of the former ruling Baath Party from joining the new Iraqi government was one of the biggest blunders of the early American occupation of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. It instantly alienated an entire spectrum of civil servants and politicians, many of whom didn't have much loyalty to the old regime and could have been enlisted in the construction of a new government. And because many of them were Sunni, it helped widen the sectarian split in Iraqi society that eventually...