New Iraqi army recruits old Saddam military

The new Iraqi army will start recruiting former senior officers from Saddam Hussein’s military and today also lifted a ban on members of Saddam’s disbanded Baath party from teaching in schools.

The announcement by the US administrator Paul Bremer in Baghdad represented an admission of mistakes in a centrepiece of Washington’s policy in Iraq after Saddam’s fall – the dissolution of the Baath Party and the 350,000 member military, which were key tools of repression by the former regime.

Most Iraqi leaders welcomed the changes, saying the strong purge was a mistake from the start and fuelled the anti-US insurgency.

Some Shiite members, however, expressed fears that the move could return to positions of authority Baathists who helped repress Iraqis for decades.

US officials say the easing will still keep Baathists who committed crimes out of government.

Council member Ahmad Chalabi, who has led the de-Baathification process, warned against what would be a further step – letting former Baathists into a caretaker government due to take power on June 30.

“Having Baathists participate in an interim government would be the same as Nazis taking part in a German government,” Chalabi said.

The easing of the purge of Baath party members from public service deals with the Education and Higher Education ministries, not the interim government, which has yet to be created.

“Many Iraqis have complained to me that the de-Baathification policy has been applied unevenly and unjustly,” Bremer said, calling the complaints ”legitimate.”

“The de-Baathification was and is sound,” he said. “It is the right policy for Iraq, but it has been poorly implemented.”

Thousands of teachers and professors who have been barred from their jobs will immediately be allowed back to work, Bremer announced in an address aired on US run Al-Iraqiya television.

Also, the Iraqi defence minister will meet with former commanders from Saddam’s military to discuss recruiting high officers from the disbanded force into the new army that the coalition is rebuilding from scratch.

Bremer and US officials insisted that former Baathists ”with blood on their hands” would not regain their posts.

The decision to disband Saddam’s military and the Baath party after Saddam’s fall was at first popular.

But it led to widespread unemployment, especially among the Sunni minority that formed the core of Saddam’s regime. Some of the unemployed went on to join the ranks of the anti-US insurgency.

The push of Baathists out of government positions also cost the country needed expertise at a time when it is trying to rebuild.

Even some US officials have complained that the de-Baathification programme was too heavy-handed.

The change comes during the bloodiest month since the. occupation began, with US forces fighting Sunni Muslim insurgents in the centre of the country and Shiite militiamen in the south.