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'De-Baathification hampering US reconstruction'
Jordan Times, Monday, December 29, 2003
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US policy of de-Baathification is hampering restoration of political and economic life in Iraq, a member of the country's Governing Council wrote in an opinion piece appearing in Sunday's Washington Post newspaper. Ayad Allawi, a member of the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council, said the controversial policy can create a culture of "false accusations" and "cronyism."
The policy has been favoured by Washington as a way of ridding the country's armed forces and civil service of former Saddam loyalists, but Allawi said many Iraqis joined the Baath Party under Saddam just to get a job.
"Unfortunately, the current, indiscriminate policy of "de-Baathification" — the wholesale purging of Iraqis who joined the Baath Party to get a job — does not contribute to economic reconstruction, political stability or the cause of justice and national reconciliation," Allawi said. Allawi, himself a former Baath Party member, left Baghdad for London and formed an opposition group there in 1976. He survived an assassination attempt by Saddam's agents during this period.
"Such a process is patently vulnerable to corruption by vested interests and can create a legal culture of false accusations, corruption and cronyism, undermining justice as well as free-market competition," Allawi said.
"Overnight we saw most of the civil bureaucracy disbanded and many honest civil servants unjustly sent home penniless," he said.
"In a single stroke, we also sent home 400,000 trained Iraqi soldiers, most of them patriots, and in the process created a vacuum in which insurgents, terrorists and criminals have flourished."
The senior Iraqi official said thousands of teachers had been fired recently for belonging to the Baath Party, but that "their only crime was a desire to feed their families."
Allawi also said former dictator Saddam Hussein is likely to be the first individual brought before an Iraqi war crimes tribunal.
However, he stressed that Iraqis want justice and not vengeance, and that this is key to national reconciliation.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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