The decisions taken by the body known as the “Accountability and Justice Commission” in Iraq do not tell us anything that we do not already know about the situation in Iraq: domestic sectarian fragmentation; nearly-total foreign hegemony over fundamental decisions taken by the Iraqi government; relying on foreign states for support against other local groups, which is something that is proving to be best recipe for continued adversity among the various components of Iraqi society. This adversity is essentially a legacy inherited by Iraq from the Saddam Hussein era. If it is indeed true that Hussein's rule marginalized a considerable number of Iraqis, at times prompting them to search for foreign protection, and with the latter today becoming a type of foreign tutelage; if this is true, then what have the authorities in Baghdad done since being handed decision-making power by the US occupation? What have the authorities done, other than continue the same policy of marginalization, instead of searching for what could help produce a return to Iraqi national cohesion, which has been lost? Isn't it strange that while this occupation is looking for a way out of Iraq, those in power in Iraq have only prompted the same people – who were tempted by this same occupation to take part in the political process – to now refrain from taking part? Instead, these people are being ejected from the political process by means of the same flimsy slogans, such as “justice,” which can serve as a cover for committing all types of sins. There are comparisons being made between the de-Baathification of Iraq and the denazification of Germany's politics after World War II. One of these comparisons was made by Mohammed al-Haidari, an Iraqi MP and a leader of the Islamic Supreme Council. These comparisons might have been valid, had it not been for the fact that a sectarian cast dominated the recent decisions to exclude 500 people from the candidate lists in the elections scheduled for March. Some people expect this number might jump to 1,000. These comparisons could have been valid, had it also not been for the fact that after it has been approximately seven years since the fall of the Baath regime in Baghdad, we are now discovering that officials in the post-Baath governments, members of Parliament, and leaders of political parties are still being accused of belonging to that party! Doesn't this require us to ask where “accountability and justice,” the body that inherited Paul Bremer, was all these years? How can this body convince anyone that a person who was charged with managing the Iraqi Ministry of Defense for four years turns out now to be a Baathist? Is it not appropriate here to ask whether it was the sectarian affiliation of this man and others that is the real reason behind these decisions? There is nothing easier than relying on the protection of ideological regimes to achieve political objectives against opponents. Even though the Iraqi regime is not described today as having a religious identity (wilayat al-faqih [clerical rule]) that would require protection in the manner of today's Iran, the Accountability and Justice Commission has an Iranian sibling, called the Guardian Council. In the name of safeguarding the “purity” of the regime in Tehran, the council conducts, before each election, a wide-scale exclusion process of dozens of candidates on the grounds that they are “enemies of the Revolution.” This revolution, which is thirty years old, still discovers every four years that it has “enemies” in the country who constitute a threat, just because they run in the elections!! The Zionist movement also turned the pursuit of people who are accused of being neo-Nazis into a winning formula, through which economic profits and political support could be achieved. It wields this like a sword against all western regimes, accompanied naturally by the slogan of fighting anti-Semitism, which Israel continues to take advantage of in order to achieve its own objectives. Just as we find the Zionist use of a clean slogan, such as fighting Nazism or anti-Semitism, a cheap type of exploitation that has become exposed for all to see, we should also expect that the war against the Baath Party in Iraq, which has already paid the price of its actions in any case, will turn into a slogan of fighting the rivals of those in power today in Baghdad, and of those who stand behind them as well.
