By Ali Yass

This year’s 23rd of August marks the centenary of the modern Iraqi state. Despite all the drastic and harsh detours, the most chaotic and destructive epoch along this journey was that which coincided with and ensued the American occupation of Iraq in April 2003.

Brigadier Graham Binns, commanding the 7th Armoured Brigade which had taken Basra, said in his testimony to a special investigation committee that “the best way to stop looting was just to get to a point where there was nothing left to loot.” ^[1] This comment epitomises a position that very much characterises the immediate period following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime: the United States and its allies in that war did not have any concrete plans to deal with the state of affairs in the country, driving it henceforth into political vacuum. It took the United States two years of planning to occupy Germany during World War II. In contrast, the American administration established the governmental body responsible for administering Iraq after the occupation, only two months before starting the military action under the name The Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA). However, this office was dissolved after a short period of its operation, to be replaced by The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which was working directly under the authority of the U.S. Department of Defense represented by Donald Rumsfeld back then. Rumsfeld had chosen the retired general Jay Garner, who had participated in the Vietnam War and the Gulf War and was assigned after the war in 1991 to secure the Kurdish areas in Iraq. Garner was a businessman and director of a company at the time of his assignment. He lasted only three weeks as head of ORHA. On May 6, 2003, the forty-third US President appointed Paul Bremer as Administrative Director of the CPA and as a civilian governor of the military forces stationed in Iraq, which the UN Security Council described as an occupation force.

The position of ORHA within the structure of the American administration

Bremer, the former diplomat -was also a businessman and a head of a consulting firm. This “Civil” Governor was so keen on wearing combat boots throughout his entire stay in Baghdad. As he mentions in his book “My Year in Iraq”, his “Timberland” boots were a gift from his son on the eve of his departure to Iraq. He wrote to him on that box “Go kick some butt, Dad.” ^[1] This was Bremer’s entrypoint; he did not have any previous experience in Middle Eastern politics and culture, nor could he speak any Arabic. Nonetheless, the implications of the laws that he approved in the 14 months of his stay in Iraq continue to shape the political landscape of the country. Most importantly, the structural sectarianism remains entrenched, which comes at a high cost for Iraq and the Iraqis.Bremer was cautious from the very first moments of his arrival in Baghdad to postpone the elections, and to form what would later be known as “The Iraqi Governing Council”(IGC) under the tutelage of the occupation. His predecessor, Garner, was meeting with the opposition factions- as in the Nasiriyah meeting of mid-April 2003. Washington chose 43 Iraqi politicians -including 14 who had been in exile and 26 from inside the country- to participate. At the end of the same month, Garner announced that the process of forming a transitional government had begun, and suggested that an international agency oversees the proceeds of the Iraqi oil industry. This might be one of the reasons that led to his dismissal so quickly. Days after Garner’s proposal, the US administration submitted a revised draft resolution to lift the sanctions on Iraq. The revised draft acknowledged the US administration’s commitment as an “occupying power” while at the same time mainiting for the US and its allies broad powers to manage the expenditure of oil revenues for at least a year. A week later, and only two days after the formation of theCPA, Bremer and with him John Sawers, the British diplomat representing the British Prime Minister in Iraq, informed the leaders of the political parties and the opposition of the coalition forces’ decision; the indefinite postponement of the establishment of a transitional government.

The first two laws issued by the occupying forces- dissolving the Iraqi army and De-Ba’athification– had catastrophic consequences. Initially, these two decisions were not issued by a political or judicial party, but by a military one, as stated by the commander of U.S. Central Command General Tommy Franks in his letter “Freedom Message to the Iraqi People” addressed to the Iraqis on April 16, 2003, and in which he called for the handover of all Ba’ath party property and its documents to the coalition forces. The letter also called on the members of the Iraqi army and general organizations to abandon their arms and submit to the orders of the closest military commander of the coalition forces. Franks also decided to strip the security services of all their powers and authority. This can be considered one of the main factors that led to the emergence of ISIS later. When Bremer arrived and issued the first bylaw, which included the decision to establish the CPA and in the second part of it an article titled “De-Ba’athification of Iraqi Society,” the number of Ba’ath Party members was approximately 11 million, and the population of Iraq at the time was 25.64 million.

Bremer did not know who had to be eliminated and which of the Ba’athists were involved in war crimes and genocide. Moreover, there were specific party members who were necessary to the process of building the new system, for example in fields like the army, education and oil.  This was highlighted by Lebanese politician and diplomat Ghassan Salamé in an interview in which he addressed the Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan and officials in the White House and the Pentagon, claiming that one of the disasters of De-Ba’athification was the total destruction of the education sector. He indicates that the majority of school principals and educational supervisors were members of the Ba’ath Party. And he goes on to reference an example from one of the Iraqi provinces whereby the director of education, her deputy, and a number of school principals were removed to be replaced by the attendant of that department whom he describes as “semi-illiterate.” ^[3]

Bremer monopolised the power to exempt certain members from the De-Ba’athification process instead of relegating the task to the courts. Targeting the Ba’ath members by way of a trial- such as the Nuremberg trials of 1945 – 1946 for example- or through the judiciary was neither his priority nor that of the Iraqi opposition,^* even though Bremer himself stated that more than two-thirds of the Iraqi judges were independent from the Ba’ath Party and that the judicial institution was one of the most professional and efficient institutions operating when he arrived in Iraq. Later, he transferred his own authorities to the IGC, which then handed over to Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi used this law as a tool for political persecution, and during that period it was weaponized against the Sunni Arabs. As such, De-Ba’athification preceded the establishment of the court that tried Saddam Hussein and his regime members. This form of “justice” did not exceed the standards of revenge in its tribal sense. Also, it is worth noting that the De-Ba’athification decision in its first stages included Ba’athists from all first 5 levels of the party organization.

^* Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the De-Ba’athification process, told the “International Center for Transitional Justice” (ICTJ) that his daughter did an Internet search on Denazification and other examples from the Second World War era, but he did not cite more recent examples. Former CPA chief Paul Bremer said, “Looking back … the post-Cold War paradigms are perhaps more important … than the previous post-WWII paradigm.”

Membership levels in the Ba’ath Party

Today, 18 years later, with the Iraqi parliamentary elections approaching, the Sadrist Movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr and other religious parties is carrying out a campaign in Parliament aimed at banning from nomination in the elections anyone who proves to have previously belonged to the Ba’ath Party (including all levels down to the rank of Supporter), or even those who have first-degree relatives that held leadership positions in the party. More often than not, it is brought up in situations where the failure and corruption of the political process is exposed. Recently, it was deployed against the activists in the October Revolution, who were accused of being Ba’athists amongst other charges, even though the majority of their generation look to the period of Saddam’s dictatorship as something that is distant.

From here we see how the political process was formulated based on a sectarian equation, making way for structural sectarianism. The United States did not search or make space for new Iraqi leaders. The U.S. preferred to deal with the “Group of Seven” -seven politicians, including one Sunni – despite their full awareness of the problematics of this approach, such as the marginalization of Sunni representation and the absence of women. This group laid the basis for the formation of the IGC, which was established 95 days after the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime. It consisted of 25 members, 13 Shiites, 5 Kurds, 5 Sunni, one Turkmen and one Christian. 

At the beginning of the selection phase for the head of the IGC, it was agreed that they were going to rotate the position based on sectarian considerations. Still, Bremer announced that he reserves the right to veto any decisions issued by the Governing Council. He would also use it to prevent the issuance of a new Iraqi constitution if it does not comply with the “Western concept of democracy” and in the event of it containing any text that regards Islamic law as the main source of legislation.

This political tradition applied by the occupation mandate laid the premise for what became shadow norms or laws, from political repression and the influence of clerics over state politics, to wielding power without prior experience and shooting unarmed demonstrators, as in Mosul when civilians protested the appointment of the pro-occupation governor, Misha’an al-Juburi, and 12 demonstrators were killed by the U.S. army fire just a few days after the occupation imposed its authority. This legacy forms a significant part of the political landscape that the Tishreen revolutionaries resolutely and consciously tried to replace with a civil project, one that would lay the cornerstone for the process of building the modern Iraqi state after decades of futility.

Sources

^[1]“The Report of the Iraq Inquiry: Executive Summary,” Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors (London: HM Government, 2016), page 87.

^[2] “My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope”, L. Paul Bremer III, Simon & Schuster 2006, page 21.

^[3] “Al-Mashhad” program with Gisele Khoury, BBC Arabic. 2015.

Ali Yass is a student, painter and filmmaker. He received his BA in Visual Arts from The University of Jordan in 2015. He participated in numerous shows worldwide. He is currently studying at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).