IRAQ - Baghdad Lures Saddam Officers.

The Baghdad government on Nov. 2 called for the return of junior officers from Saddam's disbanded army, openly reversing a US directive issued in early May 2003. The move is aimed at draining the Sunni/Ba'thist/Neo-Salafi insurgency of recruits and bolstering the Iraqi security forces.

The Defence Ministry, with US support, has quietly recruited a few thousand former officers over the last 18 months. But this is the first time it has offered an open invitation to broad classes of former officers to rejoin the army. The move could be a political overture by the Shi'ite Arab- and Kurdish-led government to disaffected Sunni Arabs, possibly to drum up support before the Dec. 15 elections. With the Nov. 2 announcement, any former officers up to the rank of major are eligible for reinstatement by applying at recruitment centres in six cities across Iraq.

The move by the Defence Ministry represents the most public departure yet from an American policy instituted by L. Paul Bremer III, the former head of the US occupation, of cleansing the Iraqi government and security forces of former members of Saddam's Ba'th Party and disbanding the Iraqi Army. Many US commanders and military analysts have said the dissolution of the 400,000-member Iraqi Army in May 2003 drove many thousands of Sunni Arab soldiers and officers into the insurgency while depriving the country of a force which could help restore order.

US and Iraqi officials now say a core part of the Sunni-led insurgency is made up largely of former members of Saddam's military. Iraqi officials said any recruits signing up in November would go through a rigorous screening process intended to weed out possible insurgents. Both the US the Iraqis have been retreating in stages from Bremer's original "de-Ba'thification" order since early 2004. But US and Iraqi officials said the Nov. 2 announcement was significant for several reasons. It not only explicitly extends an invitation to thousands more officers, but in symbolic terms, it represented an official recognition of a practice underway for some time.

Some senior US military officials on Nov. 2 said the announcement seemed aimed at Sunni Arab officers, relatively few of whom have rejoined the military. The current Iraqi Army is desperately short of mid-level officers. The New York Times on Nov. 2 quoted a State Department official as saying that, in negotiations on the constitution earlier this year overseen by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the Shi'ite Arab majority agreed to lift some restrictions on Ba'th Party participation in the government. The official said: "It was loosened a bit, but it was not a dramatic loosening that might have led more Sunnis to support the constitution in the referendum".

The NYT quoted Saleh Sarhan, a spokesman for the Iraqi Defence Ministry, as saying Iraq needed the expertise of the former officers. The new army is trying to rebuild armour and artillery units and wants the return of tank drivers, mechanics and others. He said: "We're trying to carry out big operations against the terrorists, such as sealing the borders of Iraq".

In recent months, many US officers have acknowledged that it will be years before the Iraqi Army is capable of fighting the insurgency on its own. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top US commander in Iraq, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in September that only one Iraqi battalion was then able to operate without the aid of the US-led forces.

In its Nov. 2 announcement, the Defence Ministry laid out a schedule for the recruitment of former officers. On Nov. 6-10, officers with the rank of major were to walk into designated recruitment centres and go through an interview and medical checkup. Those with ranks of captain, first lieutenant and lieutenant will then go in successive waves, until Dec. 1. The NYT quoted Maj. Manaf Abdul-Hussein, formerly of the Iraqi Air Force, as saying: "The government made this announcement to put the right people back in the right jobs. We've worked in the military for a long time, and we're specialists in the field". He said he knew of many colleagues clamouring for their jobs back because of the high unemployment rate.

The NYT quoted Maj. Haithem al-Qaraghuli, another former air force officer, as saying he had been pleasantly surprised by the announcement, adding: "I heard about the call today, and I'm thinking seriously of responding to it, because the pension I'm getting... is...just $80 a month. If you're supporting a family, that's just not enough".

The disbanding of the Iraqi Army and the purging of former senior Ba'th Party members from government, both announced in May 2003 by Bremer, have been widely criticised as two of the worst policy blunders of the US occupation. Some Shi'ite Arab leaders, especially Ahmad Chalabi, strongly supported the moves and continue to advocate such purges. But Iraqi and US officials began in 2004 to roll back the changes.

Bremer himself announced in April 2004 that the US administration wanted to encourage the return of teachers, engineers and others who had joined the Ba'th Party simply for professional advancement. Well before the Nov. 2 announcement, the Defence Ministry had been recruiting former officers to work in commando units and other forces. There have been examples, however, of insurgents infiltrating the new Iraqi units.

On Nov. 2 Defence Minister Sa'doun al-Dulaimi said: "Those who wish to rejoin the new Iraqi Army to serve the precious homeland should go to recruitment centres opened around the country...for medical procedures and interviews". The newly created Iraqi armed forces currently number about 87,000 men. There are also some 69,000 policemen and 36,000 Interior Ministry troops. With the Dec. 15 election looming, there may be a political as well as practical security motive behind the move.

The loss of army pay has been a major source of discontent among Sunni Arabs, who under Saddam dominated the officer corps, the then ruling Ba'th Party and his regime. US officials said Bremer's move simply formalised the fact that the army had evaporated in the aftermath of the war, with soldiers deserting en masse.

However, many of those units are not yet ready to operate without US support, and many lack basic equipment such as armour. Yet many former officers have refused to respond favourably to the Nov. 2 call. One former major in the air defence corps said he would not serve under the present government or under US command, adding: "They called us the army of Saddam but we were the army of the people. We were marginalised and neglected at first but they need us now that they are in a bad way. I can't work under the command of the occupiers... I fought them once; how can I possibly serve them?"

Still the call is necessary and Iraq's ruling coalition of Shi'ite and Kurdish parties are finally showing some realism. This reversal is crucial if there is to be any hope of making the Iraqi army strong enough to break its dependency on US forces. It could not have been easy for the Shi'ite Arab and Kurdish politicians, whose communities suffered terribly at the hands of Saddam and the army.

The rash 2003 Bremer decision to disband the entire Iraqi Army was one of the worst of Washington's many blunders. It made creating a new national military much harder, and broke a US promise that officers and soldiers who did not fight the invading forces would be taken care of. It supplied vast cadres of armed and aggrieved ex-soldiers to a developing Sunni-based insurgency, and undermined the legitimacy of the emerging Iraqi authorities by leaving them completely dependent on large numbers of US troops.

With the country so divided and the Sunni insurgency now having become so powerful and entrenched, it will be extremely hard to make sure that former officers who have gone over to the insurgents do not infiltrate the new army. But it still makes good sense to try to undo as much of Bremer's disastrous decision as possible, as one element in a broader effort to reintegrate the deeply estranged Sunni Arab minority.

A costly legacy of the occupation was spelled out recently by the US special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction. In a report to Congress, he showed how poor project co-ordination and monitoring, contracting abuses and astronomical security costs had allowed a substantial part of the $30 billion spent on US-financed reconstruction programmes to dribble away without producing visible improvements in Iraqi life (see rim5bbIraqUScasualtiesNov7-05).

With sufficient wisdom and a lot of good luck, it is not too late for Iraqis to salvage something positive from their long ordeal of dictatorship, war, invasion and occupation.