Sorting The Bad From The Not So Bad

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As the Americans struggle to fill key posts, unreformed Baathist hard-liners are trying to reassert their authority. "We've left the bad Baathists a lot of latitude, and they have had a lot of time to regroup," says retired Colonel Ted Seel, Central Command liaison to the Iraqi National Congress, a group opposed to Saddam that recently returned from exile. Dr. Goran Talabani, a neurologist who is advising the Americans on Iraq's health-care system, says Baath loyalists are threatening Health Ministry employees and telling them not to cooperate with the Americans. Talabani, a cousin of Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani and a close adviser to Ahmed Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress, says he hears from several sources that the Baathists are allegedly reconstituting in secret under a new name: Hizballah al-'Auda (Party of the Return).

In time, the U.S. may adopt a formal system for determining who can serve in the new government. According to an American consultant on Garner's team, the U.S. is considering a plan to purge the top three tiers of Baathist leadership involving at least 30,000 people. Another proposal would require all government employees to forswear loyalty to the Baath Party. Of course, people desperate for work are likely to sign anything.

Until it adopts a set of criteria for allotting official posts, the U.S. is relying on the advice of Iraqi exiles like Talabani. A member of Garner's staff in Kuwait before the war, Talabani gave the Americans a report on Iraq's health officials and their connections to the Baath Party. The most high-profile vetter is Iraqi businessman Saad al-Janabi, who fled the country in 1995 after falling out with Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay. Al-Janabi, who still has close ties with remnants of the old regime, has returned from Hemet, Calif. (where his wife Lori Van Arsdale is mayor), to his family home, now frequently visited by Americans, in the Mansour area of Baghdad. Al-Janabi, a well-heeled Arab with a pencil-thin mustache and an affinity for American slang, describes Garner as "my homie."

Al-Janabi says that over the past two weeks, he has held meetings at each Iraqi ministry to discuss which officials would be suitable to bring back. At the same time, he hopes to assuage fears among "acceptable" Baathists who are reluctant to work with the Americans. "After 35 years of dictatorship," says al-Janabi, "they cannot believe nothing will happen to them." He may have underestimated popular objections to some of the officials he is willing to rehabilitate. The Health Ministry's controversial Ali Shnan al-Janabi (no relation), for instance, was one of his recommendations.

But Iraqi objections to Ali Shnan al-Janabi and his ilk are precisely the kind of feedback the Americans say they need in order to rout out the irredeemable. "There will be a vetting process," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week. "People will say, 'Well, wait a minute those people were part of the senior Baath Party,' in which case they'll be taken out." The Garner camp has another fear: that some Iraqis may try to use the de-Baathification process to settle old scores, demanding that a boss be sacked for personal rather than political reasons. But generally U.S. officials are optimistic that the system can work. Says a Pentagon official: "We are bound to appoint some wrong people, but we are determined to correct any mistakes."

Just such a corrective exercise took place last week at the Ministry of Industry. Forty top officials had gathered in a boardroom when Carney, the U.S. adviser, walked in, downed a glass of sweet tea and announced something unthinkable under Saddam's rule: a free election. Carney, a former ambassador to Sudan and Haiti, had discovered that the man the U.S. had put in charge, ex-deputy minister Ahmed Rashid Gailini, was disliked by many of his subordinates for his ties to Saddam's regime. Rather than dismiss Gailini, Carney had persuaded him to step down and put his name up for re-election against another candidate, Mohammed Abdul Mujib, a ministry official in charge of investment. Carney and the two candidates left the room, and the attendees began a vigorous debate and then voted. When the results were announced, Abdul Mujib was in; Gailini was out. The vote was 38 to 2. U.S. officials had already dismissed four other Industry Ministry officials, either for Baath Party connections or for abrasive management style, but removing someone as powerful as Gailini was a delicate task. "This is the time of democracy," he said, clearly crestfallen. "Should I leave now?" Abdul Mujib, magnanimous in triumph, asked him to stay on as an adviser.