Saddam’s political party makes a comeback

Saddam Hussein’s political party is staging a comeback, and US military commanders are debating how far to accommodate it in Iraq’s coming constitutional referendum.

While less tied than before to the ousted dictator, the Ba’athist movement has become an important channel for Sunni Arab political expression, say US officers, helping to promote voting in the October 15 referendum.

But the New Ba’ath party, as military planners now call it, still flits between engagement in the US-backed political process and organising and financing insurgent attacks.

In Diyala, an ethnically mixed province north-east of Baghdad, unashamed Ba’athists have stepped out of the shadows since national elections in January."It’s an organisation that has been developing in the last six months, if not longer," said Colonel Steven Salazar, commander of the US brigade covering Diyala.

"They’ve held big party functions where they talk about their political future. But in the background, there are always small groups dedicated to violence," he said. In the same period, the Ba’ath has claimed responsibility for guerrilla attacks on US and government targets, usually through the same kind of internet postings used by Sunni religious extremists, US officers said.

Ba’athists recently claimed responsibility for assassinating a Shia provincial council member, an attack carried out with a suicide car bomb. The nature of the attack highlights the difference between the old Ba’ath and new. Today’s Ba’athists, whether they like it or not, are tied in with Sunni militants, often from other Arab countries.

In the old days, the Arab Ba’ath Socialist party (ABSP) officially stood above Sunni-Shia differences: its platform of "unity, freedom and socialism" was meant to empower all Arabs.

Although Mr Hussein’s regime mostly placed Sunni in positions of power, many Sunni like to say that the Shia formed the majority of ABSP membership.

New Ba’ath adherents, in contrast, are mainly Sunni, reflecting suspicions among the minority group about US-imposed democracy, some US officers admitted.

The ABSP is banned in the new Iraq, and the New Ba’ath party is not likely to be legalised either, Col Salazar said. “If there’s going to be a Ba’ath party, it’s going to have to be a very different kind of party,” he said.

However, "no one is excluded" from Iraq’s political process, "except perhaps terrorists who are in jail".

Lower level US officers, who deal directly with local Ba’athist suspects, said the party would need to be legalised, “in some form or other” to bring about peace.

In fact, the draft constitution worked out on August 21 by Shia and Kurdish leaders explicitly prohibits the revival of "the Saddamist Ba’ath party", as a group built on "racism, terror, hatred and religious chauvinism." Whether this also includes the New Ba’ath party may be open to debate. But the prospect of permanent de-Ba’athification is certainly one of the main reasons Sunni Arab negotiators have refused to endorse the draft.

– http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a2da7e06-1...