Economía y Politica Internacionales

Cuenta regresiva en Irak

Autor: Editorial

Fecha: 30/3/2004

Traductor: Celeste Murillo, especial para P.I.

Fuente: Washington Post

Countdown in Iraq

WITH ONLY 93 days before the United States is to end its postwar occupation of Iraq, American troops still are immersed in a bloody and inconclusive conflict. Iraqi police and security forces, poorly equipped and trained, struggle to get their footing under an onslaught of assaults. Civilians who work with the new authorities or any Western agency are assassinated almost daily. Heavily armed militias continue to operate outside any government authority. And despite the signing of a transitional constitution, there is as yet no stable political consensus on how the country will be governed after June 30.

It's hard to overstate the magnitude of the challenges facing the U.S.
coalition in the coming weeks or the stakes involved in the transition's success. Yet it's not clear that the United States has applied the resources or engaged the allies it needs. U.S. troop levels are dropping by 20 percent this month, and thousands of regular Army veterans are being replaced by reservists even as the countdown to Iraqi sovereignty begins. The United Nations is moving sluggishly to negotiate the shape of a transitional government, even as Shiite clerics prepare what may be a disruptive campaign against the interim charter. European allies are not stepping up to help, and no one seems to be working to persuade them. Meanwhile, in Washington the public debate is still focused on whether the United States should have invaded Iraq a year ago, not on how the critical coming weeks can be navigated.

President Bush, busy running for reelection as a war leader, needs to focus his attention on ensuring that Iraq undergoes an orderly transition, and not a breakdown, between now and July. The first step must be to address the security situation -- which, despite the repeated assurances of U.S. commanders that the insurgency is failing, appears to be growing worse. Mr. Bush should review whether the decision to reduce U.S. forces to 105,000 as part of a rotation of units this spring still makes sense in light of the undiminished intensity of attacks by Iraqi insurgents and terrorists. He should renew efforts to recruit contributions of troops by other governments. And he should eliminate the bureaucratic and logistical obstacles preventing U.S. commanders from adequately equipping Iraqi security forces with armor, vehicles, radios and weapons.

Better security needs to be matched with a more realistic response to Iraq's emerging political forces. In pushing through the interim constitution earlier this month, the U.S.-led administration claimed to have struck a deal that all of Iraq's factions could live with. Yet it appears that administrator L. Paul Bremer repeated the fundamental error of failing to come to terms with Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, leader of a movement that probably commands the allegiance of a majority of Iraqis and is capable of making the country ungovernable. Though Mr. Sistani may have an agenda contrary to U.S. interests, Mr. Bremer and the weak Iraqi Governing Council cannot afford to disregard his rejection of the transition plan. Instead a concerted effort must be made to forge a genuine political consensus, with the help of the United Nations. Throughout the past year the administration repeatedly has relied on too few military forces and too narrow a group of Iraqi political leaders. Now is the time for Mr. Bush to remedy those problems, before the transition clock runs down.