Baathists

Unspeak in Iraq

January 22, 2010  1 comment

Anthony Shadid in the New York Times on the politics behind a term that is often thrown around loosely:

Seven years after the United States-led invasion, and three years after the leader it overthrew was executed, a question in Iraq remains unanswered: Who is a Baathist? The term is as malleable as it is incendiary, and the quandary it represents has underlined the growing dispute over the credibility of Iraq’s parliamentary elections in March […]

To many Sunni Arabs […] it is a catchall term employed to disenfranchise them. This month, it has become the fig leaf, critics say, for a brazen campaign of score-settling that has reopened sectarian wounds and thrown into question the legitimacy of the March 7 vote.

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