Word: baathist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Damascus may not have that card for long. Internally, the refugee issue poses long-term dilemmas for the Baathist regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The presence of so many needy Iraqis has exposed the government's failure to make economic reforms. The Syrian government--dominated by a secular core of Alawite Muslims who rule a country that is 74% Sunni Muslim--may have to stop the influx as a measure of self-preservation. Assad is particularly concerned about extremists re-entering the country from Iraq, according to Syrian security analysts. "We used to call them the Afghan Arabs...
...aftermath of Iraq's first war with the United States, with the country's southern provinces devastated and the Baathist regime engaged in ferocious repression of Shi'a, Iraqis migrated throughout the area looking for work and safety. In this environment, migrants from the city of Hilla bought the land near Najaf and built a miniature community complete with bakery and infirmary. It also included a school where the sect taught its beliefs. The arrival of this new group raised few eyebrows. It's not unusual in rural areas of Iraq for extended families to buy property and then bring...
...nostalgically back to the dictatorship, pointing out that for all the terrors Saddam visited upon his people, at least there were no suicide bombers and death squads roaming the streets. But once his trial began, even his most ardent followers conceded he would never return to power. The Sunni Baathist insurgents have long since stopped fighting for him. Many have recast themselves as the "nationalist resistance," or worse, mujahedin. Many others have abandoned Baathism for the more poisonous jihadist ideology of al-Qaeda...
...complicity in Saddam's execution dates back to 2003, when the Administration refused to consider the establishment of an international tribunal to try Saddam and his henchmen. Even before the fall of Baghdad, State Department working groups had begun drafting plans to prosecute Baathist leaders for war crimes. As documented by the International Center for Transitional Justice, the U.S. insisted that the war-crimes trials would follow "an Iraqi-led" process. Though the U.S. said it welcomed international participation in the trials, Administration officials pointedly ruled out th e idea of creating international courts modeled on the U.N.-run tribunals...
...second Gulf War drove Saddam from Baghdad and power and into the spider hole. In the interim, his Baathist apparatus and military were dismantled. His family dispersed. His heirs, the despicable Uday and Qusay, were killed while fugitives in Iraq. Two years after his arrest, Saddam was put on trial for war crimes before the newly re-constituted Iraqi High Tribunal. In November he was convicted of genocide for ordering the executions of 148 men and boys in response to a 1982 assassination attempt in the town of Dujail. The Dujail trial introduced witnesses and an extensive document trail that...