Irak, Medio Oriente y Asia

El Final del Comienzo

 

Autor: Editorial

Fecha: 16/12/2003

Traductor: Analí T.B., especial para P.I.

Fuente: Washington Post


End of the Beginning

HE WAS FOUND, appropriately enough, crouching in a hole. Saddam Hussein, who will be remembered above all for the hundreds of thousands of people he condemned to mass graves, surrendered in ignominy from a miserable pit near the Tigris River. Unlike many of the mass murderers who preceded him, from Hitler to Pol Pot, he will probably live to stand trial for his crimes. "He will," President Bush said yesterday, "face the justice he denied to millions." For that, Iraqis can thank the skilled U.S. soldiers and intelligence analysts who managed to locate the former dictator Saturday night and arrest him without firing a shot. They can also begin to think with greater confidence about an Iraq where brutality and privation give way to the tolerant, modernizing and prosperous country that most people want.

The bitter insurgency that U.S. forces have faced in Saddam Hussein's home region will not cease with his arrest, as a car bombing yesterday quickly demonstrated. Many of those who fight the American-sponsored provisional authority do so for reasons that extend well beyond loyalty to Saddam Hussein. It is even possible that some who oppose the occupation, especially in the Shiite population, will feel more impetus to attack American targets now that there is no risk they will be re-empowering their former oppressor. But many more Iraqis, freed from lingering fear that the dictator could return, may be ready to think about their place in the new order and join in the task of rebuilding.

That is the greatest gain the capture may offer U.S. authorities and the Iraqi Governing Council: another chance to win over a part of the population until now excluded from the political transition, especially in the "Sunni Triangle" north and west of Baghdad. American administrator L. Paul Bremer yesterday called on supporters of the former regime to "come forward in a spirit of reconciliation and hope, lay down their arms and join . . . their fellow citizens in the task of building a new Iraq." It will be important that U.S. and interim Iraqi leaders follow up on that message in the coming days, looking for ways to involve more representatives of the Sunni population in reconstruction projects
and in the selection of a sovereign government.

In the United States, Saddam Hussein's arrest quickly prompted calls by
Democratic presidential candidates for a renewed effort to "internationalize" the occupation with foreign troops and administrators from the United Nations. That's a step we have long supported. But some of the Democratic rhetoric conveyed the worrying implication that the dictator's elimination should facilitate the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The point of building a broader international coalition is not, as Howard Dean suggested, to replace American soldiers with those of other nations but to make more achievable the goal of stabilizing Iraq under a democratic government. The capture of Saddam Hussein was an important step toward that goal and cause for celebration. But it must
not be taken as the turning point for the American mission. It is more a new starting post for a project whose greatest challenges still lie in the future.




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