Can U.S. rebuild Iraq without Baathists?

Yahoo! ^ | 04/04/2003 | Paul Taylor (Reuters)

[Willie Green]

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

CAIRO (Reuters) - With U.S. troops rattling at the gates of Baghdad, leading experts believe Washington may end up having to rely on former members of President Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath party to run post-war Iraq.

The Bush administration has talked ambitiously of reshaping Iraq into a democracy that would be a beacon to the Middle East after an initial period of military rule.

But Arab and Western analysts say that seems unrealistic in a divided country with no democratic tradition that has endured 34 years of totalitarian rule built on fear, tribal and blood ties and patronage.

If the United States wants its troops to go home in the next five years, it will have to limit purges to the highest echelons of the Iraqi power structure and build an administration largely on the technocrats and officials who served Saddam, they argue.

"Short-term pragmatic criteria on the part of the U.S. or coalition occupying power may well create the temptation to rely on those who can 'deliver' at least cost to the centre," Charles Tripp, a historian of Iraq at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, wrote in the journal Survival.

Drawing on Britain's colonial experience in Iraq in 1917-20, Tripp questions the United States' stamina for a nation building project requiring long engagement that could expose U.S. personnel to serious risk with no certainty of success.

Iraqi exiles sponsored by the U.S. administration had long been abroad and had little credibility and few contacts in the population, he argued.

"The Iraqis inside are the ones who can deliver the goods," he told Reuters, forecasting that U.S. occupation forces "will let the Baathists reinvent themselves".

RUMSFELD HINT?

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seemed to hint as much on Thursday when he appealed to Iraqi military officers not to fight to the end for a doomed cause.

"For the senior leadership, there is no way out. Their fate has been sealed by their actions," Rumsfeld told a news conference. "The same is not true for the Iraqi armed forces. Iraqi officers and soldiers can still survive and help to rebuild a free Iraq if they do the right thing."

The Baath Party, built on a pan-Arab nationalist and socialist ideology, seized power in Baghdad in a coup in 1968 and Saddam assumed total control in 1979.

Initially a tiny vanguard of a few hundred members, the party swelled to a record 1.8 million members in 1990, the year Iraq invaded Kuwait, according to Iraqi historian Faleh Jaber.

But membership slumped and the party's importance dwindled after 1991, when many members either took part in a failed uprising against Saddam after the Gulf War defeat or failed in his eyes to do enough to protect him.

From then on, Saddam ruled through his immediate blood relatives, extended family and Albu Nasir tribe, encouraging tribal, clan and informal networks more important than the party or government structures, experts say.

The cult of Saddam's personality largely replaced Baathist ideology and a "shadow state" exercised real power.

Estimates of the size of the ruling elite vary from some 30,000 to 500,000, depending on which security forces and party officials are counted.

"It's almost impossible to weed all these people out. You'd have to go through the state with a fine toothcomb," said Toby Dodge of Warwick University. "I think the Americans will end up ruling through them, accidentally or deliberately."

INTERESTS, NOT CONVICTION

As with the Communist party in the former Soviet bloc, many Iraqis joined the Baath party to advance their interests rather than out of conviction.

"People had to be in the party to get an education, jobs or housing," said Judith Yaphe, a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst on Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War who teaches at the National Defence University in Washington.

"You don't need to get rid of every Baathist," she said.

Former Communists converted to social democracy now govern several ex-Communist central and east European states, and a former member of the Soviet KGB intelligence service is today president of Russia.

U.S. officials have spoken of putting some Iraqi leaders on trial for alleged crimes against humanity but it is not clear whether the Baath party would be banned in post-Saddam Iraq.

Tripp said exiled Iraqi opposition leaders wanted a vast purge, arguing that many thousands of people were involved in crimes during Saddam's rule, including torture, killings, and using chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds and Iranian soldiers.

"That might provoke violence, strip the Iraqi state of administrative competence and lay a powder trail for violence," he said.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Lyon)

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Yes. Germany was rebuilt without the Nazis, and Japan was rebuilt without the hard core militarists. Romania killed its communists and secret police, and the other east bloc states did pretty well.

[ambrose]

Trying to impose democracy in Iraq is foolish, in my opinion. I think it better to go the Afghan route, and have a consensus choice picked by the various factions and clan/tribal leaders.

[thoughtomator]

Yes exactly... the Ba'ath party must be treated exactly like the Nazi party was. Anyone involved in it must be expurgated.

[thoughtomator]

Why remove one form of tyrant to impose another? Making Iraq a free nation is the best thing for both us and them. Iraq is not a tribal backwater like Afghanistan, it is an industrial nation with enormous resources. They can probably produce several thousand US dollars worth of profit per capita every year from oil alone.

The potential of Iraqi society is immense. Every opportunity should be given to turn it into the Japan of the ME.

[Our man in washington]

FRANCE: We'd like to help rebuild Iraq. Is there anything we can do, now that we don't have to go to war?

UNITED STATES: Well, we really don't need...

FRANCE: Oh, come on! We'll do anything.

UNITED STATES: Well, there is one thing, but it's hard. We're trying to get rid of the influence of the Baaths in Iraq.

FRANCE: Well, duh! The easiest way to get rid of the influence is not to have any. Who needs them, anyway?

UNITED STATES: Uh, that's "Baaths" with two A's.

FRANCE: Oh. (pause.) Never mind.

[Conspiracy Guy]

The Shoowerist would be the ideal leaders once the Baathist ate gone.

[DJ Frisat]

"Yes exactly... the Ba'ath party must be treated exactly like the Nazi party was. Anyone involved in it must be expurgated.

Is this anything like throwing out the baby with the Ba'ath water?

[Myrddin]

Absent the tyranny of Saddam and the Ba'ath Party, the islamic majority (Sunni an Shi'ite) are likely to bring sharia law to Iraq. The remaining Chaldean Christians will be forced to convert or face execution. We will see one form of extremism exchanged for another. Islam and a free society are dissonant concepts.

[freedom9]

"Can U.S. rebuild Iraq without Baathists?"

Sure, but it won't smell very good.

[sharktrager]

Absolutely not.

I propose they be used as fertilizer to help replace the crops that weren't grown during the last years of Saddam's reign.

[tiki]

I don't think there will be many Ba'athists left and those will probably be tried for war crimes.

[sonrise57]

I believe you are right. I heard a discussion on WABC a few days ago about Bush allowing Christian relief agencies entering Iraq for humanitarian work. I believe that an unspoken objective in this war has been to open the Islamic world to evangelical missions. I know it sounds like I am smoking something, but I firmly believe that the reason democracy has taken root in the west is because of the strong judeo-christian underpining of the culture. Wasn't it Wilberforce who coined the phrase "the law is king"? This sentiment is rooted in the spiritual heritage of the west. Democracy has a hard time flourishing in cultures that do not have these spiritual underpinings.

[Poohbah]

Trying to impose democracy in Iraq is foolish, in my opinion. I think it better to go the Afghan route, and have a consensus choice picked by the various factions and clan/tribal leaders.

No problem.

But we still drain the Ba'ath tub first.

[FrdmLvr]

I would hope every single member of the Baath party ended up with life sentences with no hope of ever seeing the light of day again, at the very least. Most of them should be executed for their crimes against the Iraqi and Kurdish people.

[Poohbah]

Absent the tyranny of Saddam and the Ba'ath Party, the islamic majority (Sunni an Shi'ite) are likely to bring sharia law to Iraq.

The great thing is that Sunnis and Shias tend to violently disagree on the proper interpretation of sharia.

Islam and a free society are dissonant concepts.

Tell that to Turkey. Hell, tell that to the de facto Kurdish Republic that's been up and running for a few years now.

[Poohbah]

If you want 'em executed...

Just have the War Crimes Grand Jury return "no bill" and have 'em released back into the population at large.

[Leatherneck_MT]

Actually Georgie Patton DID use Nazi's to help rebuild in the areas he was responsible for. He was even called on the carpet and ordered to de-nazifi his area of operations. He refused until they gave him some competent people to replace the Nazis who had control of the civilian infrastructure. Eventually they all did go away, but in the early stages of rebuilding, Nazis were used.

Semper Fi

[FrdmLvr]

Real justice.

[Sinner6]

Can U.S. rebuild Iraq without Baathists?

or Can Bush save the economy without Democrats?

Yes on both counts.