Justice and Accountability Commission - Tag Search

Anthony Shadid reports that the Justice and Accountability Commission -- the de-Ba'athification commission, which roiled Iraqi politics for months -- has finally decided to wrap up its work.

"It's stopped," President Jalal Talabani said. "There will be no more."

Well, good. The commission was a questionably legal body, and it made a series of poorly justified, ad hoc decisions. It played an unconstructive role in Iraqi politics.

That said, I can't help but think abolishing the commission at this point is closing the proverbial barn door after the horse has bolted. The architects of the commission, notably Ahmed Chalabi, already got what they wanted: As Reidar Visser has argued (and argues again in Shadid's piece), the de-Ba'athification process helped to undermine any push for a more nationalist and less sectarian government in Iraq.

In any event, we'll wait and see what replaces the commission (which was supposed to replaced by a successor years ago).

Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya coalition may have won the most seats in this month's Iraqi election -- but increasingly it looks like prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition will form the next government, even if Maliki himself loses his job.

Iraq's political parties spent the weekend in feverish negotiations, which seem to be running along two separate tracks. The first is being conducted in Tehran and Najaf, where Maliki's bloc is meeting with the Iraqi National Alliance; a merger between those two would put Maliki within six seats of holding a majority in parliament.

Thought the de-Ba'athification controversy would end with the election? Think again:

Ahmed Chalabi and Ali al Lami, the men responsible for the purge of hundreds of candidates with Baathist links from the Iraqi elections, said they are taking the country's Independent Higher Electoral Commission to court in a bid to have votes for 55 candidates voided.

These 55 candidates are replacements for 55 other candidates who were already barred by the Justice and Accountability Commission. Chalabi and Lami say the replacements are Ba'athists, too. The fun never stops! Their names and the provinces they hail from haven't been released yet (at least, I can't seem to find them).

The campaigning might be over in Iraq, but Ali Faysal al-Lami's Justice and Accountability Commission never rests. Nor does Reidar Visser, who flags this bit of last-minute de-Ba'athification news:

... sources in the accountability and justice board say they have written to the Iraqi elections commission (IHEC) to have the name of candidate number 10 for the State of Law list in Najaf, Abbud Wahid al-Eisawi, struck from the ballot paper. Eisawi is a tribal adviser to Nuri al-Maliki.

Visser makes two points, both worth repeating: First, the last-minute timing of this decision -- we're forty-eight hours before election day, folks -- shows how inherently political the de-Ba'athifiation process has been; second, the fact that Maliki's adviser got de-Ba'athified shows that the Iraqi National Alliance is running the show.

Never a dull moment! In more encouraging news, the Iraqi government says there's really no warrant for Moqtada al-Sadr's arrest, and that his inclusion on the warrant was a typo (عربي).

Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, is not terribly concerned about the de-Ba'athification crisis.

Hill is back in Washington for a few days, and he held a press conference yesterday to talk about Iraq's upcoming parliamentary elections. He stressed several times that the Iraqi government came up with its own solution to the de-Ba'athification crisis, and said he's not worried about the potential for serious sectarian violence.

"Ahmed Chalabi and Ali Faysal al-Lami... clearly are influenced by Iran," Gen. Ray Odierno said last night. "We have direct intelligence that tells us that."

Surprisingly blunt language from Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who was speaking last night at a forum sponsored by the Institute for the Study of War. Odierno said the U.S. has evidence of several meetings in Tehran between Chalabi, Lami, and Iranian officials, including at least one person on the U.S. terror watch list.

More than 6,100 candidates have officially launched their campaigns in Iraq (عربي) for spots in the country's 325-seat parliament.

The campaigning so far excludes Salah al-Mutlak and Dhafer al-Ani, two well-known Sunni members of the Iraqiyya coalition. Ali Faysal al-Lami, the head of the Justice and Accountability Commission, announced last night they they're banned from the March 7 election because of their alleged links to the Ba'ath party.

Michael Hanna has a wonderfully detailed post up at Democracy Arsenal with the latest on the Iraqi de-Ba'athification crisis, some of which we covered in our last post on the subject, most of which we haven't. Hanna's post is a pretty definitive summary of where things stand right now.

I would add one item that broke after Hanna "went to press": The Justice and Accountability Commission announced (عربي) that most of the 177 de-Ba'athified candidates who appealed their bans did not file their appeals properly. So only 37 candidates will be allowed to contest their bans.

Iraq's "four presidencies" -- Jalal Talabani (the president), Nouri al-Maliki (the prime minister), Ayad al-Sammaraie (the parliament speaker) and Midhat al-Mahmud (the head of the judiciary) -- convened for a meeting yesterday. Details of the meeting are scarce, but the group agreed to overturn last week's appeals court decision which overturned the de-Ba'athification decision.

I'm a little unclear on what legal authority they're exercising -- but then this whole sorry de-Ba'athification affair has operated in a legal gray area.

Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, isn't happy about yesterday's court decision allowing hundreds of banned candidates to run in the March 7 parliamentary election.

A spokesman for Maliki, Ali al-Dabbagh, said the appellate court's decision is illegal and unconstitutional, and that the law "must be applied as it is." Maliki said the decision is not binding -- a position also adopted by Ali Faysal al-Lami, the chairman of the Justice and Accountability Commission -- and called yesterday for an emergency session of parliament to review the candidates.

Update, 10:58 a.m.: Al-Jazeera has some more detail about the decision, as does Marc Lynch.

It's worth noting that Iraqi president Jalal Talabani played a key role in pushing this crisis towards a political solution.

Update, 10:23 a.m.: Just to clarify, the bit about post-election review wasn't in the Al-Rafidayn story I linked; it is, however, in several other sources, including Al-Arabiya (عربي) and the BBC Arabic service (عربي). Everyone's quoting Hamidiyya Husseini, a spokeswoman for the Independent High Electoral Commission. Rough translation from Reuters:

Ahmed Abu Risha, a prominent sheikh in Anbar province and a key figure in the Sunni Awakening movement, is threatening to call for a Sunni boycott in the March parliamentary election.

"They will not care about the election, they will ignore it, maybe, if these decisions stand," Abu Risha said in an interview this week at his sprawling compound just outside Ramadi, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad. "I will make my decision later about encouraging people to go to vote or not," he added.

Sheikh Kadhom al-Tai'e, a Sunni tribal leader in southern Iraq -- who pointedly refused to join the Awakening movement in 2007 (عربي) -- has also threatened a boycott.

Ali Faysal al-Lami, doing his best Oprah impression, has decided to hand out even more electoral bans (عربي). The list of prohibited candidates is now up to 766 names, up from 499 earlier this month; 95 of the banned candidates have appealed their cases to the seven-man court that reviews the de-Ba'athification decisions.

In an interview with Al-Hayat, Lami was asked about several possible solutions to the growing electoral crisis in Baghdad. He ruled out postponing any decisions until parliament has a chance to appoint the new seven-man de-Ba'athification board.

A few items on the de-Ba'athification front. 59 of the 511 banned candidates have been reinstated by a special appellate court (عربي); the list does not include any big-name candidates.

Some of the still-banned candidates -- including Salah al-Mutlak -- plan to press their case in front of other appellate courts. They're trying to invalidate the entire de-Ba'athification process as unconstitutional, rather than challenging their individual status (which is what the 59 candidates reinstated today did).

Iyad Allawi, the former Iraqi prime minister and the leader of the Iraqiyya coalition, said today in an interview that he thinks the de-Ba'athification process is illegal. But Ali Faysal al-Lami -- the head of the Justice and Accountability Commission, which made the decisions -- told The Washington Times' Eli Lake that he stands by his decision.

Iraqi president Jalal Talabani has ordered a high-level commission to investigate the Justice and Accountability Commission's decision to ban 511 candidates from the March election.

"I myself am not satisfied with the banning decision," said Talabani, a Kurd who heads the three-member presidential council. "We have sent a letter to the Supreme Appeal Court asking whether this committee that issued the decision is legitimate or not."

Talabani's announcement comes 24 hours after Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi declared the ban illegal. The two men met yesterday at Talabani's home to discuss the decision; neither has released details of the meeting, but it's clear they decided to fight the ban.

Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon are worried, as are we, about the Iraqi electoral commission's (possibly illegal) decision to bar nearly 500 candidates from the March 7 election. The three-day window for appeals closes tomorrow, at which point the commission will release a final list of banned candidates (عربي).

What should be done? Pollack and O'Hanlon think it's time for Obama to start working the long-distance lines to Baghdad.

Reidar Visser makes an important discovery: Ali Faysal al-Lami, the head of Iraq's Justice and Accountability Commission -- which last week banned nearly 500 candidates from Iraq's March parliamentary election -- is himself a candidate in that election.

Lami is running as part of the Iraqi National Alliance, the coalition led by Iraq's two largest Shi'ite parties: the Sadrist movement and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

In other words: The man who controls the "vetting process for the entire election," as Visser puts it, is himself running for office. Not really a shining moment for Iraq's young democracy.

For those of you who are really, really interested in this subject, Al-Jazeera English's Inside Iraq program did a half-hour show this weekend on the constitutional crisis. It features three Iraqi MPs: Mustafa al-Hiti, Adnan Pachachi, and Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani. Video's after the jump.

The Iraqi de-Baathification commission wants to ban Salah al-Mutlak, a popular Sunni politician and a member of the Iraqiyya coalition, from running in the March election.

The recommendation from the Justice and Accountability Commission -- which is not binding -- was announced yesterday by Ali Faysal al-Lami, the head of the commission. His ruling would bar Mutlak and his party over their past support for Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party. The recommendation now heads to Iraq's high electoral commission (IHEC) for a final decision, which should be announced on Saturday.