Six years after the fall, Baath Party still present in the Iraqi polit­i­cal arena, and at the fore­front of the polit­i­cal debate among polit­i­cal coali­tions and enti­ties. This debate esca­lated after the cir­cu­la­tion of rumors say that the Baathists want to return to the polit­i­cal scene. These rumors are based on two recent developments:

- The announce­ment of a coali­tion between the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Iyad Allawi and the head of the National Dia­log Saleh Al Mut­lek. The first accused of being a for­mer Baathist,  still linked to the party mem­bers in neigh­bor­ing coun­tries who sup­port him finan­cially. The sec­ond is accused of being one of the ele­ments of the for­mer regime and still main­tains rela­tions with for­mer Baath offi­cials,  he is also accused of being the voices who calls for the return of Baathists or to estab­lish a dia­log with them.

From the many neg­a­tive responses to this coali­tion, Sami Al-Askari, a “State of Law” MP said:

The for­ma­tion of this coali­tion paves the way for the return of “The Baathists”.

- The con­fu­sion among of the Shi­ite polit­i­cal votes after the split between Maliki’s Dawa Party form­ing the “State of Law” coali­tion and the Shi­ite Iraqi National Alliance.

Maliki was the first to attack the Baathists and warned against the Baath Party attempts to return to the polit­i­cal scene.

Later and timed with elec­tion, this anti-Baath cam­paign spread among offi­cials and other politi­cians, for exam­ple; for­mer prime min­is­ter, Shi­ite Ibrahim Al-Jaafari head of “Al-Wasat” bloc said:

“We will not allow the Baathists to gov­ern Iraq once again this is a mes­sage to our peo­ple to all those who think they are able to return to rule Iraq with an iron fist”.

Iraqi Shi­ite web­sites cir­cu­lated infor­ma­tion says that Baath Party gave “highly clas­si­fied” instruc­tions to its fol­low­ers to stop the “polit­i­cal progress”.

The web­sites claimed that a text from extracted from a recent Baath Party con­fer­ence says:

“acti­vat­ing the sleep­ing cells within the National Guard, police and secu­rity insti­tu­tions to be very close to the to com­mu­nity and social facil­i­ties in all Iraq and the lead­er­ship must be very close to strate­gic posi­tions”. The use of “small cells tac­tics” to mon­i­tor the move­ments of militias-based police and army … An assas­si­na­tion cam­paign focuses on their lead­ers and rad­i­cal ele­ments, work­ing in var­i­ous ways in order to gain infor­ma­tion and other things of inter­est, and to work and estab­lish bet­ter rela­tions with “non-loyal” ele­ments in order to win their sup­port, or at least to ensure their neutrality”.

Unknown if the text is authen­tic or not, but Shi­ite par­ties (espe­cially Maliki) started a cam­paign against Inte­rior Min­is­ter Al-Bolani, who strongly denied the accu­sa­tions. The cam­paign also included the Min­is­ter of Defense Abdul Qader Al-Obeidi who was forced by the Iraqi gov­ern­ment to fire mil­i­tary offi­cers accused of being linked to the Baath Party. In addi­tion, Maliki appointed Walid Al-Hilli (Dawa Party mem­ber) a new head for the Account­abil­ity and Jus­tice Com­mit­tee (AKA De-Baathification).