BASRA, Iraq, 14 April 2003 — A stout, heavily bearded man in tribal dress rose to speak. His face was red and he was shouting. Saddam Hussein’s government, he said, had killed many of his relatives and now he wanted revenge — not the return to power of the same police force that had executed his family members.
“I’ll kill them myself,’’ he said. “I know the people who hurt us, and I’ll get them! I’ll get them!’’
On stage in a medical lecture hall turned civic forum, the newly installed mayor of Basra smoothly deflected the man’s anger. “Of course, you want your rights against the people who hurt you,’’ said Sheikh Muzahim Mustafa Kanan Tameemi, himself a onetime member of Saddam’s Baath Party and retired Iraqi general. “But there’s no need for revenge, we’ll get them by the law.’’
It was one of many confrontations over the future shape of post-Saddam Iraq aired Saturday at an assembly in Iraq’s second-largest city. The meeting drew several hundred Basra civic leaders and tribal elders, and nearly collapsed into chaos several times over the question of how to restart the government without incorporating leaders from the once all-pervasive Baath Party.
But the exercise showed that a measure of free speech has arrived in southern Iraq. For several hours in the stuffy hall, Tameemi faced down questioners who insisted on the execution of ex-Baath Party officials, demanded to be told what Iraqis should think now about Saddam, and criticized his priorities in organizing the rule of law in this thoroughly looted city of 1.3 million people.
Tameemi, who was appointed by British forces occupying the city, spoke eloquently about his plans to run Basra with tolerance and no special treatment for any religious group — a key point in a majority-Shiite city long ruled by the Sunni-dominated Baath Party.
But his first major decision has already proved controversial in a city starved for order: reinstating the police force.
The new police chief served as a police major under the Baath Party government, and many of those at the meeting refused to accept that the same police force that until so recently carried out orders for arbitrary arrests, torture and enforcement of dictatorial laws would now be reinstated in the newly freed Iraq. All police have been ordered to report back to work and Tameemi said he is negotiating with the British force occupying the city to allow them to carry weapons.
From the start, there were memorable confrontations in this experiment with Iraqi openness. The very first questioner, an older man in tribal dress, rose to challenge Tameemi. “I want you to convince me that there are some good Baath Party members,’’ he said. “Tell me about Saddam Hussein — is he good or bad now?’’ He also pointedly demanded to know just who was responsible for Iraq now being under foreign occupation.
“Let’s have a new beginning,’’ Tameemi responded, “and forget what happened before, even though there are things that can’t be forgotten. Even if someone kills your father, you might pardon him later on.’’
Tameemi made clear he has little love for the British who named him to the mayorship. “They said they are going to free Iraq,’’ he said, “but they are an occupying force and we all know that. The British should treat the Iraqis well or they’ll start a revolution like in 1920’’ — when Iraq rebelled against the post-World War I British protectorate.
But again and again, he faced questions he could not answer about the old regime and what would happen to those who had worked with it. At one point, the cry went up in the room to make sure the police did not return to their old olive-green uniforms. “It reminds us of the previous regime,’’ said one man. Another shouted, “We’ve all got psychological damage from that color. We don’t want to see it again.’’
Later on, another angry Basran stood to confront Tameemi. “No one from the Baath Party should be on this council,’’ he said.
“If I agree with that, I should leave right now,’’ Tameemi responded. At other points in the session, he took pains to offer his own anti-Saddam credentials. “We were all against these guys before,’’ he said, “but we couldn’t say anything.’’
In the back of the lecture hall, a group of young white-coated doctors from the Basra Teaching Hospital listened intently. They were skeptical of the tribal leaders who crowded the meeting, and of Tameemi’s ability to create a local government free of Baathist taint.
“They don’t know democracy before,’’ said one doctor. “This is the first time today, the starting.’’
Another doctor gestured toward the old sheikhs in traditional dress ranged in front of him. “Most of them who are here now were on the list for Saddam Hussein. He was meeting with them annually and giving them money and they were celebrating his birthday—all of these sheikhs.’’
The doctors said they were afraid to speak at the meeting, but they later handed Tameemi a piece of paper, asking that he not reappoint the old Baathist city health director to his post. But Tameemi already had.
