The Iraqi government has recently approved a bill that will attempt to reverse a de-baathification law, established in 2003. Initially, abstraction of Baath party members was meant to appease the majority Shiite population, now the reversal aims to pacify the disgruntled Sunni minority. Both approaches, although diametrically opposed, attempt to reconcile the ethnic rifts within Iraqi society. The question is will the new law work? But first what is de-baathification and how have the recent developments contributed to democracy in Iraq?

The de-baathification process was called into power shortly after the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003, by then senior advisor to Iraq and director of the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority), L. Paul Bremer. Initially 140,000 members of the Baath party were removed from their jobs under Bremer’s law. This included not just the military but members of day-to-day Iraqi administration – bureaucrats, teachers, professors and factory managers.

Regret for this indiscriminate purging showed its first signs in 2004 when an announcement, made on the 23rd of April by Paul Bremer himself, called for an easing in the de-baathification law. The change of heart didn’t come as a surprise considering the Baath party consisted of anywhere between 2-6 million active members and roughly 12 million supporters at its zenith (approximately half of the Iraqi population).

35 years of the Baathist regime had seeped into every pore of Iraq’s state activities and many Iraqis joined to move ahead or simply to earn a living in an otherwise stagnant economy. De-baathification instigated a hysterical removal of people with expertise; people who were involved in the functioning of various ministries, university departments and state companies.

In addition, Shiite political bodies, still seething from the ire of repression by the old Sunni regime, exploited the situation and their positions of power. When given the responsibility to implement the de-baathification law, Bremer himself admits that the political groups were excessive in their execution and this only fed into a growing Sunni insurgency. A majority of the Sunni population felt alienated and victimized by the law.

Since the decision to reform the de-baathification law however, an estimated 100,000 low level officials have been returned to their jobs but this process too has not been free from corruption. Many observers and diplomats say that re-instatement often involves bribes to the right people and has been misused by Shiite political elite to serve their own agendas.

The most recent development concerning the de-baathification process marks a controversial and perilous attempt toward creating democracy in Iraq. On the 12th of January 2008 a bill under the U.S. driven Accountability and Justice law, was approved by Iraqi parliament and later endorsed by Iraq’s Presidential Council on the 3rd of February.

This law aims to ease restrictions on former Baath party members that had been earlier removed from government posts. It is supposed to allow low-ranking officials, who did not commit crimes against other Iraqis, to return to their jobs.

The law also intends to force high-ranking officials into retirement with a compensatory pension and recommends the arrangement of a seven judge panel to hear de-baathification cases in order to avoid mistreatment once again by certain entities. Ultimately, success depends on the implementation process.

Held under the proud banner of the ‘Accountability and Justice’ law, re-integrating Baath party members serves the U.S. interests in two main ways; to weaken Sunni support for the insurgency by incorporating them into the government process and as a gesture of goodwill to Sunni allies in the region that might have been apprehensive of the Shiite led Iraqi government’s handling of affairs.

However, some analysts believe that the insurgency is Baathist at its core and that re-instating Baath party members can restore conditions to pre-war standards, endangering those who suffered under the Baath regime. These suspicions don’t fall too far from the truth.

Case in point, the Fallujah uprising where the CPA reinstated former Baath party members into the Fallujah brigade only to disband it later in September 2004, when they found out the brigade was planning and executing insurgency activity in one of Iraq’s most troubled regions. There have been incidents where Saddam’s former officers have provided the insurgency with information and helped them to infiltrate the security apparatus.

It should come as no surprise then that the Pentagon announced that over $1 billion worth of security equipment was deemed unaccounted for at the end of 2007. Hence if not watched carefully, this so called re-baathification process can make the Iraqi government vulnerable to infiltration, desertion and insurgency amongst its ranks.

There is no doubt that in the new Iraqi democracy, it is important to address the needs and concerns of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions. There must also be an equitable distribution of power between Iraq’s federal and local authorities. Ground realities however show that there is much discord and disagreement over power sharing and re-baathification is a key example of this. While certain Shiite politicians still see the new law as principally a way to enforce severe restrictions on senior Baathists many Sunni parliamentary members seem disillusioned and feel that the change has come too late.

Iraq’s strategic location in the Middle East and its diverse ethnic composition of Shiite, Sunni and Kurd displays potential for a successful prototype of democracy in the Middle East. However if not implemented correctly, re-baathification can introduce a Saddamist regime back into the Iraqi political landscape and this can have implications for a prolonged civil war.