It was one of many confrontations over the future shape of post-Hussein Iraq at an assembly in Iraq’s second-largest city. On stage in a medical lecture hall turned civic forum, the newly installed mayor of Basra smoothly deflected people’s anger against the Baath party.A man in tribal dress rose to speak. 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. ‘‘Of course, you want your rights against the people who hurt you,’’ said mayor Sheik Muzahim Mustafa Kanan Tameemi, himself a one time member of Baath Party and retired Iraqi general. ‘‘But there’s no need for revenge, we’ll get them by the law.’’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 Baath Party leaders.But the exercise showed that a measure of free speech has arrived in southern Iraq. Tameemi, appointed by British forces, 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. 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. 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. Tameemi made clear he has little love for the British: ‘‘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. 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.In the back of the lecture hall, a group of young doctors were sceptical: ‘‘Most of these Sheikhs were with Saddam. He was meeting with them annually and giving them money and they were celebrating his birthday — all of them.’’ (LAT-WP)
