Word: baath
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...event was paralleled in Iraq with a political breakthrough of sorts: the parliament's unanimous passage of a law that allows former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to take government jobs for which they have expertise and experience. The so-called de-Baathification of the Iraqi government after the fall of Saddam contributed significantly to the violent sectarian divisions of the country as well as to a collapse in the way the country was run. The new law is meant heal the rift between the Shi'ites who now dominate the government and the Sunnis who used...
...theme of exile mirrors the author's own life. Abdulrazzak left Iraq when he was eight years old. His father, an academic and a non-Baath party member, was persecuted by the regime and fled to Egypt and Algeria before finally arriving in London. A molecular scientist at London's prestigious Imperial University, Abdulrazzak was inspired to write about his home country after voting in absentia during Iraq's 2005 elections. The expatriates were "all invested" in the election, says Abdulrazzak. "That was the last moment of hope and I try to capture that tension of feeling...
...inciter of ethnic and sectarian violence. Last November, the Interior Ministry issued a warrant for his arrest. Ever since, he has divided his time between several Arab states, monitoring al-Maliki's actions from afar. Not even the Prime Minister's recent decision to allow many former Baath Party officials back into government has impressed the Sunni cleric. "They are inviting the former Baathists to register their names, but you know what will happen after that," he says, alluding to the murder of many former officials by Shi'ite death squads accused of operating under government protection...
Seen through the eyes of these two ordinary women, Iraq's victims and villains are richly human, with clear and comprehensible motives. Margaret's husband joins the ruling Baath Party in the Saddam years because it's the best way to advance his career; U.S. soldiers break down doors and drive tanks through generator lines because they're too focused on insurgent attacks to worry about what's in their path...
...Iraqis have been returned to other countries under European rules requiring refugees to claim asylum in the first E.U. country in which they arrive.) As a consequence, Iraqis in Sweden range from Shi'ites like Alaa, who are fleeing Sunni militia, to Sunnis who for decades belonged to the Baath Party and supported Saddam's regime. Until the volume of Iraqis began to overwhelm Sweden's bureaucracy, most Iraqi refugees received Swedish residence rights within a year, allowing them to bring other family members into the country. But Swedish immigration officials now say that the huge numbers of Iraqis...