So a lot of their members were Saddam’s party. Part of ‘debaathification’ involved putting everyone who had been in the party on a list, but the nature of a 1 party state, that includes everyone from professors and traffic engineers to professional throat-slitters and the people managing them. If you were on the list, you could not be employed at any state enterprise. This made anyone whose job didn’t have a private sector equivalent, functionally unemployable.
So a lot of their members were Saddam’s party. Part of ‘debaathification’ involved putting everyone who had been in the party on a list, but the nature of a 1 party state, that includes everyone from professors and traffic engineers to professional throat-slitters and the people managing them. If you were on the list, you could not be employed at any state enterprise. This made anyone whose job didn’t have a private sector equivalent, functionally unemployable.