Trouble(s) Brewing?

It is easy to forget just how intractable the conflict in Northern Ireland once seemed. There was a time not long ago when The Troubles were on par with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of intensity and seeming hopelessness. I am not certain that the typical informed observer in, say, 1985, would have said that the Troubles would be settled first.

That is why stories such as this, in which the Real IRA threatens to resume the way of the bomb and the gun, are so galling. I am overwhelmingly sympathetic both to Catholic civil rights claims and Republican leanings in Northern Ireland. But I loathe the IRA and its Unionist counterparts. And there have been lots of hints of late that Trouble might be brewing in the Six Counties.

Northern Ireland's Peace

Well, this is alarming news, especially as there are signs that it may not be a one-off, isolated incident. I began talking about Northern Ireland in my Global Terrorism class today (I always start off with "Sunday Bloody Sunday" from Rattle & Hum in order to have them hear Bono's awesome speech that is all the more powerful because it came on the day of the Enniskillen Bombing in November 1987) and had to try to convey to my students that the Troubles once seemed every bit as intractable as the Israel-Palestine question. The peace has held in Northern Ireland for more than a decade now (and really ought to be seen as the signature foreign policy accomplishment of the Clinton administration) and so presumably is strong enough to weather the occasional flareup. But if the IRA is determined to return to the way of the gun the way of the gun will prevail.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

The Bloody Sunday inquiry in Northern Ireland has been delayed yet again. At some point people have a right to hear from the state, especially when the state was responsible for wholesale slaughter. The Troubles in Northern Ireland are the apodictic example of the State claiming virtue where the state is equally responsible for vice. Release the inquiry. The victims deserve that much.

Omagh Revisited

I hope this won't be my last post before Christmas, but I do want to say a few words about the news that Sean Hoey, the only person to have been accused and brought to trial for Northern Ireland's 1998 Omagh Bombing, has been acquitted of charges related to the Omagh bombing and many other terrorist activities. The Real IRA's August 1998 attack in a busy market center of nationalist Omagh was the single most brutal terrorist attack during the entire period of Northern Ireland's Troubles. It also lingers as the last major attack and the one that caused the Real IRA to announce a cessation of violence. The most disquieting aspect of the acquittal is the fact that it was necessitated by incompetence and malfeasance on the part of the authorities, particularly the police. Not at all surprisingly, the public response has been outrage at those officials who effectively assured that the victims of Omagh and their families will never see justice done.

The fact that the peace in Northern Ireland has held for nearly a decade is too easy to take for granted. Not too long ago the Troubles seemed every bit as intractable as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And yet the fear is that Unionists, and particularly the paramilitaries that claim to speak and act for the unionist community, will use the acquittal as a pretense to re-engage in their own terror campaigns. When people discuss terrorism in Northern Ireland, they tend to think in terms of the Irish Republican Army and Nationalist violence. But the reality is that in Northern Ireland Unionist paramilitaries operated independent of the formidable power of the state, which itself stacked the decks against both the Nationalists and the Catholic minority.There is no doubting that the IRA was a ruthless, thuggish organization. One need look no further than Omagh to realize as much. But the IRA did not operate in a vacuum, and it was not alone in perpetuating Troubles that I hope we will continue to reference in the past tense despite the recent reminder of how that past is not so distant.

You Don't Say?

I have to admit, I did not even realize that there was any doubt, but some of the victims of the January 1972 "Bloody Sunday" shootings were innocent, according to someone who was at the time a captain with a parachute regiment of the British Army and who was on the scene in Derry that day. The fact that the revelation comes from a General, Sir Mike Jackson, is probably what makes the story important, but it really just gives official imprimatur to what we already know.

Hat Tip to HNN.

Northern Ireland, Peace, and the South African Example

There is probably no better major newspaper in America when it comes to the issue of Northern Ireland than The Boston Globe. That probably should come as no surprise given Boston's affinity for and association with the Irish. The Globe's editorial this past week on the ongoing transitions in Northern Ireland, in which the lion has laid down with the lamb, or at least Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party have gotten the provincial legislature off the ground at Stormont, is perceptive. Here is the money excerpt:

Milestones toward peace in Northern Ireland seem to arrive every six months, but until now they have not produced the breakthrough that would bring tranquility to the six counties. This time, however, the amity between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party seemed genuine as they re-started the provincial government Tuesday. If these old adversaries can get along with no more than the usual friction among coalition partners, the conflict really is over.

Some might raise eyebrows over where the Globe gives credit:

Credit for reconciling the extreme wing of Irish nationalism to nonviolent politics goes to Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, his chief lieutenant and deputy first minister in the provincial government. They were among the leaders of the Irish Republican Army (Adams denies this but few believe him), and they realized more than two decades ago that the IRA could not win the war against unionism and Britain.

Despite its potentially controversial implications, this last point is worth emphasizing: The IRA could not win the war, a war, against the British. But I am reminded of the circumstances in South Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s when most observers were well aware that the ANC could not win a war against the South African Defense Forces, the South African Police, and the other elements of the security apparatus. But there was a flip side to that coin: Neither could the South Africans completely crush the opposition movement. And so stasis led to change. Similarly in Northern Ireland, the British were never going to be able to crush entirely the IRA and its affiliated allies. And so stasis led to change. The analogy is not perfect of course -- historical analogies rarely are -- and yet its broad contours ring true. It will be easy to be warily cynical about the peace process in Northern Ireland, and yet if ever a time existed for optimism, however cautious, to trump pessimism, this seems to be it.

More Misc.

Three recent New York Times articles have caught my attention:
Fifty years after the Little Rock integration crisis shrouded the city in infamy that it has never entirely cast aside, the city is again dealing with political divisions in which race plays a role. But the divisions are not quite along the lines of what you might suspect.

Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, current director of the Homeland Security Initiative at the Aspen Institute and the author of Open Target: Where America Is Vulnerable to Attack, jumps out of his phone booth (get it? Heh.) in time to help try to rescue us from a future terrorist attack. The recommendations range from the commonsensical to the insightful, but it is always worth keeping these sorts of suggestions on the table. The threat is still out there, and if we can depoliticize the terrorism question, maybe we can even implement some of his ideas.

Finally, Colum McCann, a professor of creative writing at Hunter College and Dublin native uses personal experience to urge measured optimism about the recent advances in the always ongoing Northern Ireland peace process. Still, the Troubles once seemed every bit as intractable as the conflicts in the Middle East. There certainly is room for hope, but in geopolitics, hope must always be guarded.