Word: saddamism
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April 2003: Saddam Hussein is on the run, and the sky over Baghdad is choked with black smoke as looters ransack and torch government buildings. But in one district, U.S. Marines stand guard on the steps of a large modern building, their weapons trained on the street and the footbridge outside. It is the Ministry of Oil. Let this treasure chest burn, the thinking goes, and Iraq goes with...
...years of catastrophic violence in Baghdad, the building has survived intact. But a far quieter battle now rages inside its walls, one that could ultimately prove as critical to Iraq's future as the war: how to reorganize the country's mammoth oil industry after nearly 25 years of Saddam's dictatorship, international sanctions and bloody conflict. Oil revenues, which are potentially worth $70 billion a year--virtually all of Iraq's export earnings--are desperately needed to rebuild the shattered economy and end its overwhelming dependence on Washington. And oil companies from ExxonMobil to China National Petroleum Corp...
...endorsement from the Ba'ath leadership is a mixed blessing. It may buy Allawi some goodwill with Sunnis, the main beneficiaries of Saddam's rule. A Shi'ite himself, Allawi antagonized Sunnis when he signed off on the massive American military offensive on Fallujah in the fall...
...athist backing will have the opposite effect on his fellow Shi'ites, especially for the Islamist coalition that is the largest block in the Iraqi parliament, and on Kurdish parties that comprise the second-largest block. Shi'ites and Kurds bore the brunt of Saddam's repression and regard the Ba'ath leadership as mass murderers. Many members of Allawi's own secular coalition regard the Ba'ath as anathema...
What?s more, the American politicians Allawi is courting will likely find it uncomfortable to be on the same side as Saddam's old party...