BAGHDAD — Smart, stylish and secular, graphic designer Eman Haisi might have been a natural ally in the U.S.-led coalition's plan to transform Iraq from dictatorship to democracy.
But Haisi had one major blotch on her resume: a decision 28 years ago -- at the age of 15 -- to join Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, then considered the smoothest path to higher education and a successful career.
During the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, American officials seemed bent on eviscerating Hussein's political network, firing tens of thousands of Baathists. Haisi lost her job at Baghdad University's College of Fine Arts and was suspended from a graduate program in graphic arts.
With the June 28 transfer of power to an interim government, people such as Haisi have new hope that their careers and shattered lives will be restored.
Since taking office last month, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, himself a former Baathist who split with Hussein decades ago and went into exile, has moved to undo what he and others say was the United States' overly harsh action in firing party members. They have formed review committees within ministries and begun rehiring people fired by U.S. officials. The new government says it needs some former Baathists to help rebuild the country.
The reversal of the U.S.-sponsored program known as de-Baathification has so far been painful, divisive and inconsistent. Shiite Muslims and Kurds who suffered at the hands of Hussein's Sunni Muslim-dominated leadership still blame the party for discriminating against them. Unemployed Iraqis resent that the government makes monthly payments to former Baathists -- demobilized Iraqi army officers, many of them sympathetic to the insurgency.
But Baathists such as Haisi, who is still without a job, say they should not be punished. They say they were mere subordinates in a party dominated by Hussein's inner circle.
Saif Rahman, chief of staff to the minister for industry and mining, agrees.
"There were 6 million Iraqis somehow associated with the Baath Party. They weren't all criminals," Rahman said.
His boss, Hachim Hassani, said the number of Hussein cronies repressing the rest of the country was no more than a few hundred.
Education Minister Sami Mudhaffar, who has already reinstated 4,000 of 11,000 sacked teachers, said: "Most people in the party were forced to become Baathists. They joined against their will in order to get the benefits of membership."
