Larissa
25th April 2003, 18:08
I'm forwarding this from another Forum...
The Americans have not been welcomed by the Iraqis. On the contrary, 20,000
demonstrated against them in Baghdad and another 20,000 in Nasiriyah.
In Kerbala hundreds of thousands of Shias have showed their ability to
organize. This spells trouble for the Americans, as U.S. officials
acknowledged last week to the Washington Post. Who are the American
occupiers turning to for help? You guessed it. The Baath party. Here's an
article from this week's Guardian:
--
Less than two weeks after the collapse of the regime, thousands of members
of the Ba'ath party, willing instrument of Saddam, are again running Iraq.
Two thousand policemen - all party members - have returned to the streets of
Baghdad at the invitation of the United States. Dozens of minders from the
Information Ministry who spied on foreign journalists for security agencies
have returned to the Palestine Hotel - where most reporters stay - offering
their services as translators to unwitting new arrivals.
Bureaucrats at the Oil Ministry - including the brother of General Amer
Saadi, the chemical weapons expert now in US custody - have been offered
their jobs back by the US military. Feelers have also gone out to Saddam's
health minister.
It has become increasingly apparent that Washington cannot restore
governance to Baghdad without returning power to the party that for decades
controlled every aspect of life under the regime.
It has become equally apparent that the Ba'ath party - with its
neighbourhood spy cells as feared as the state intelligence apparatus - will
survive either through the appeal of its founding ideals or through the rank
opportunism of its millions of members.
"They had loyalty to Saddam Hussein, and now they have loyalty to foreign
invaders," said Wamidh Nadhmi, a political science professor at Baghdad
University who broke with the party in 1961 and is trying to organise a new
political grouping.
The Ba'athist project of reinvention gathered pace at the weekend when the
Iraqi Writers' Union, members of which received salaries for poems for
Saddam, met and claimed to have been secret opponents of the regime for
years.
The resurrection of the party is, in part, acknowledgment of the daunting
reality of governing a country as complex and battered as Iraq. Under
Saddam, membership was mandatory for teachers, police, the army, and senior
posts in hospitals, universities, banks, and the public service.
Local party bosses, or mukhtars, dispensed marriage licences, compelling
locals into joining militias, and organised parades in honour of Saddam.
They also winnowed out potential traitors, destroying the lives of the
millions who fell foul of the regime.
The technocratic elite, dominated by the Sunni minority, remains the biggest
source of talent for the new US administration.
The party, with its secular principles, represents a bulwark against a
nascent Islamist movement among the country's disenfranchised Shia majority
troubling middle-class Iraqis.
The new assertiveness by the Shia clergy probably does not sit very well
with the US either. So that leaves the Ba'ath party.
--
Paul
The Americans have not been welcomed by the Iraqis. On the contrary, 20,000
demonstrated against them in Baghdad and another 20,000 in Nasiriyah.
In Kerbala hundreds of thousands of Shias have showed their ability to
organize. This spells trouble for the Americans, as U.S. officials
acknowledged last week to the Washington Post. Who are the American
occupiers turning to for help? You guessed it. The Baath party. Here's an
article from this week's Guardian:
--
Less than two weeks after the collapse of the regime, thousands of members
of the Ba'ath party, willing instrument of Saddam, are again running Iraq.
Two thousand policemen - all party members - have returned to the streets of
Baghdad at the invitation of the United States. Dozens of minders from the
Information Ministry who spied on foreign journalists for security agencies
have returned to the Palestine Hotel - where most reporters stay - offering
their services as translators to unwitting new arrivals.
Bureaucrats at the Oil Ministry - including the brother of General Amer
Saadi, the chemical weapons expert now in US custody - have been offered
their jobs back by the US military. Feelers have also gone out to Saddam's
health minister.
It has become increasingly apparent that Washington cannot restore
governance to Baghdad without returning power to the party that for decades
controlled every aspect of life under the regime.
It has become equally apparent that the Ba'ath party - with its
neighbourhood spy cells as feared as the state intelligence apparatus - will
survive either through the appeal of its founding ideals or through the rank
opportunism of its millions of members.
"They had loyalty to Saddam Hussein, and now they have loyalty to foreign
invaders," said Wamidh Nadhmi, a political science professor at Baghdad
University who broke with the party in 1961 and is trying to organise a new
political grouping.
The Ba'athist project of reinvention gathered pace at the weekend when the
Iraqi Writers' Union, members of which received salaries for poems for
Saddam, met and claimed to have been secret opponents of the regime for
years.
The resurrection of the party is, in part, acknowledgment of the daunting
reality of governing a country as complex and battered as Iraq. Under
Saddam, membership was mandatory for teachers, police, the army, and senior
posts in hospitals, universities, banks, and the public service.
Local party bosses, or mukhtars, dispensed marriage licences, compelling
locals into joining militias, and organised parades in honour of Saddam.
They also winnowed out potential traitors, destroying the lives of the
millions who fell foul of the regime.
The technocratic elite, dominated by the Sunni minority, remains the biggest
source of talent for the new US administration.
The party, with its secular principles, represents a bulwark against a
nascent Islamist movement among the country's disenfranchised Shia majority
troubling middle-class Iraqis.
The new assertiveness by the Shia clergy probably does not sit very well
with the US either. So that leaves the Ba'ath party.
--
Paul