ERBIL, Iraq — Thirteen years after the fall of the Baath Party, Iraq's parliament voted in favor of a law to ban the Baath Party on July 30. The law caused widespread reactions in the Iraqi Arab street. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi described the vote in favor of the law as "victory." The law has given the Shiite parliamentary blocs further momentum to vote in favor of other laws against the Baathists.

State of Law Coalition parliamentarian Adnan Chahmani said Aug. 6, "The [Shiite] National Alliance is determined to pass the Accountability Law next Tuesday [Aug. 9] to turn the page of the Baath [Party] once and for all at the doctrinal and political levels." He accused the majority of the Sunni Iraqi Forces Alliance's members of supporting "the Baath [Party]."

In the Iraqi Kurdish arena, there were no worthwhile reactions, as the Kurdish people had the lion's share of the oppression and genocide at the hands of the Baath authorities. Although some Iraqi segments still deny crimes committed against the Kurds by the Baath regime — such as the Anfal campaigns that killed more than 180,000 Kurdish people — a law criminalizing this denial has not been passed yet in the Kurdistan Region, similar to the law criminalizing Holocaust denial adopted in Germany and elsewhere.

Not only does the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) seem uninterested in the matter of Baath crimes against the Kurdish people, but it is also accused of harboring former Baathists and collaborators in their crimes. Armed Kurdish groups consisting of tens of thousands of fighters, known as the Light Regiments, joined the Baath regime in its numerous crimes against the Kurdish people in the 1970s and 1980s.