Saddam's Execution and the Revival of the Baath Party in Iraq

Juan Cole, Informed Comment

These executions and that of Saddam Hussein himself have, according to the Iraqi newspaper al-Zaman, breathed new life into the Iraqi Baath Party and its successors, such as the `Awdah Party (...) Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Interior Minister Jawad Bulani is warning Iraqi government employees against joining the Awdah Party. "`Awdah" means "the Return," and it is a successor to the Baath Party that the US overthrew in 2003. Al-Zaman says that informed sources in the Iraqi government have told it that the execution of Saddam Hussein caused many Iraqis to join the Baath Party and helped its activists restore their contact with thousands of local party leaders and with cadres who had earlier been on the fence. Thousands of invitations to join the party have been distributed in the largely Sunni Arab provinces of Salahuddin, al-Anbar, Diyala and Mosul. The sources say that party activists continue their political and military work in Baghdad and even in the largely Shiite provinces of the south. (About half of the middle- and lower-ranking Baath Party officials were Shiite, though the top leadership tended to be Sunni. So there were plenty of Shiite Baathists, and they have been targeted for assassination by the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps. Maybe some of them have decided to fight back instead of just waiting for the sniper's bullet . . .)...

continua / continued