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Sept. 25: A Death We Can't Afford

By James Rupert | Staff Correspondent

September 25, 2003

Baghdad - Aqila Hashimi died today. She was the remarkable woman who started this year as a senior diplomat in Saddam Hussein's foreign ministry and wound up being invited by the United States to join a new government here.

Hashimi was 50 years old, unmarried, and not fancy about dress. She had the air, say, of a very efficient school principal. Meeting a foreign journalist, she would be polite and friendly, but precise and business-like in a way that made it unnecessary for her to ask that you please be concise and not waste time.

After toppling Saddam, U.S. troops soon took Hashimi's boss, former foreign minister and deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, into custody. He now lives in what is reportedly quite a small room at the U.S. military prison out at the airport. But Aziz's U.S. captors reportedly agreed with Aziz that Hashimi was a valuable person in Baghdad for getting things done. So the Americans named her to the interim Governing Council that they hope will be able to establish a permanent Iraqi government.

How is it that a high-ranking Baathist - even one of them - belongs in the U.S.-backed council trying to shape Iraq's future? It is because no autocratic regime is a monolith. Even nasty governments can employ people who aren't nasty or who do nasty things. I don't know the details of Hashimi's biography, but all the signs are that she was a very decent person who knew she was taking on a dangerous job that offered some chance of helping lead Iraq out of its current agony.

Last week, a carful of gunmen who don't want a U.S.-sponsored government here ambushed Hashimi as she left her house. The U.S. authorities swept her off to their best hospital and fought to save her life. Her death is one that the U.S. enterprise here - and the hopes for a peaceful Iraq - can ill afford.

Both need all the efficient, pragmatic and courageous Iraqis they can find.