De-Ba'thification.

Ever since the US purged members of the Ba'th Party from the government soon after the invasion in 2003, it has been trying to reform the policy. Some changes were made in 2004, bringing back teachers and people with technical expertise, but the hope has been that a broader plan to rehire low- to mid-level Ba'thists would drain the Sunni-led insurgency of support.

The latest de-Ba'thification drive began this spring with the much-praised Reconciliation and Accountability Law, a proposal backed by Zalmay Khalilzad, who was the US ambassador to Baghdad until April. This decreed that all former Ba'thists who had been in government could collect their pensions. It opened government jobs to thousands more, and set a three-month time limit for citizens to bring lawsuits against former members of the Ba'th Party. Sunnis supported the overhaul, and Shi'ites and Kurds were expected to fall into line after the PM and the president, a Kurd, announced the plan on March 26. But the law included a change which would become its undoing.

Within a year, the law said, Iraq's De-Ba'thification Commission - headed by Ahmad Chalabi - would be disbanded. Chalabi, a former Pentagon protege, relies on this group for an official role in government. Having renovated a spacious office in the Green Zone, he has opposed any effort to weaken his position or the policy on former Ba'thists. He and allies sabotaged the plan by rallying opposition among Shi'ite officials in the south who relayed their complaints to Grand Ayatullah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite cleric.

On April 1, Chalabi visited Sistani's office in Najaf. At a news conference later, he said Sistani had told him the law was incomplete and that "there would be other drafts". A day later, an aide to Sistani confirmed that there was "a general feeling of rejection" about the proposal. Since then, the original draft has gone nowhere. The Americans have met with several groups responsible for additional drafts to address de-Ba'thification. Iraqi officials said they were working on a compromise law combining various elements of the US law and other proposals, primarily a softer alternative backed by Chalabi. But without clear support from Sistani, no final draft has been submitted. It remains unclear how much support such a proposal could attract.

Hussein al-Falluji, a Sunni MP with the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF - or al-Tawafuq), the main Sunni bloc, said the PM did not fully support reconciliation with former Ba'thists. Moreover, some Sunnis in the government fell afoul of B'athists under Saddam and may not be eager to bring back members of the former dictatorship.

Even if the law passes, it may not be enforced. But in many provinces, officials have little respect for laws passed in Baghdad. In the south, various Shi'ite parties have divided the spoils of government: al-Fadhila al-Islamiya (FaI) controls much of the oil industry; the Border Police are tied to the SIIC. Ba'thists looking for work need not apply; residents say merely mentioning that someone was once a Ba'thist is usually enough to get him killed.