De-Baathification was a task assigned by U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III to the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council, whose 25 members included Allawi and other ardent Hussein opponents who broke with the Baathist regime years ago and went into exile.
Former council member Ahmad Chalabi -- who had close ties to the Pentagon until allegations arose in May that his political faction had provided flawed intelligence to U.S. agents and leaked American secrets to Iran -- remains one of the most steadfast defenders of de-Baathification.
"What about the people who are victims of the Baath? Nothing has been done for them," Chalabi said angrily in an interview. "What about the relatives of the mass-grave victims? How about the ones who have been dismissed from their jobs by Saddam?"
Chalabi argued that Baathists were fired for their own protection after the fall of Baghdad. "The main thing that came out of de-Baathification is that it preserved the lives of the Baathists," he said. "People would have taken action themselves. People would have killed them."
Mithal Alusi, chief of the de-Baathification commission, defended the dismissals as modest, possibly even insufficient. Despite the new efforts to rehire Baathists, the commission remains active, handling grievances against the party.
"There were many terrorists and killers in the system. It's not a matter of giving them another chance. The law in this country says you have to bring killers to court," Alusi said. "We can't just close our eyes and start over again."
He said the prime minister was courting trouble by giving Baathists jobs to lure them away from the insurgency.
"Mr. Allawi will make a big mistake if he allows this," warned Alusi, who alleged that more than half the top-level managers in the interim government were former Hussein technocrats. "We have to give a clear signal that there is no place for the Baathist Nazi party. Never. Otherwise we will never have a new Iraq."
Former party members such as Haisi, meanwhile, say the rehiring process is too slow.
"I'm angry because this wasn't something done for a month or two, to find out who were the real problems. I've been out of my job for a year. They wouldn't even let me attend classes to finish my degree," she said, mulling over her predicament with former colleagues who had been rehired.
