Iraq and Ireland Are Different

BELFAST, 3 April 2003 — Although the British Army has spent more than three decades involved in conflict in Northern Ireland, it is doubtful that the experience will be of huge benefit to its men on the streets of Baghdad.

So many differences exist between Iraq and Ireland, there is likely to be surprisingly little read-across between the two conflicts. They have different rules, a very different enemy, different weapons and most of all different purposes.

The troubles dragged on for so long that a majority of troops have probably been based in Northern Ireland, some of them undertaking half a dozen or more tours of duty.

But the war in Belfast and Londonderry was an unusual exercise, not just in its longevity but also in its character. Above all it was a low-level form of conflict, for the most part aimed at containment. By contrast Baghdad is likely to see sustained and intense conflict.

Two striking and perhaps ominous points stand out. First, although the army fought against the IRA for all those years, the result in the end was not a clear military victory over terrorism but in effect stalemate.

The other ominous feature is that it took the army a long time — years in fact — to adapt to the facts of military life in Northern Ireland. During that time the security forces suffered substantial casualties.

In the first four years of open conflict, up until the end of 1974, the army lost two hundred men. A further one hundred locally-recruited soldiers and police were also killed. In the same period the republican death toll, at 160, was just over half that number.

It was not until the late 1970s that the authorities put real thought into the question of becoming properly organized. When they did death rate dropped considerably, and both the authorities and the IRA settled in for a long haul.

Military casualties dropped for a time, although they rose again in the late 1980s and then fell significantly in the 1990s. In these later years the army improved its techniques considerably, but troops still proved vulnerable to surprise attacks, often while off-duty. The IRA quickly abandoned the large-scale gunbattles of the early 1970s, latterly opting almost without exception for hit-and-run attacks. The pattern was a gun or bomb attack on patrols and military bases, followed by a swift retreat.

The pattern of fighting on Baghdad’s streets will obviously be very different to this, given that the Iraqis appear to be planning a mixture of guerrilla activity with more conventional warfare.

Over the course of the troubles the IRA used many weapons during a campaign which in total led to 500 military deaths. Its tactics included sniping attacks and bombs of many varieties, such as booby-traps and remotely-detonated devices.

Using plastic explosives they developed many types of homemade but lethal mortars, rockets and improvised hand-grenades. On occasion they also used heavy weaponry such as the heavy M60 machineguns which killed eight members of the security forces.

The IRA never used suicide tactics on the streets, but it invented the tactic of the “human bomb.” They forced workers employed by the army to drive to military checkpoints and then detonated bombs in their vehicles.

In response to this array of weaponry, the soldier’s standard weapon was his rifle. Automatic weapons were only occasionally used, often by undercover units such as the SAS. The army greatly outnumbered the IRA: Its problem generally lay in catching them in the act.

Although it developed many sophisticated items of technology, the army used no rockets or mortars, no hand-grenades or artillery of any kind. Armored vehicles were plentiful, but they were used for patrols or transporting troops rather than as front-line fighting vehicles. There were no tank battles.

The usual armament for landrovers, which were used for the bulk of urban vehicle patrols, consisted of the familiar sight of two soldiers with rifles protruding from a hole cut in its roof.

Much use was made of helicopters, but their functions were generally confined to transport, surveillance and casualty evacuation. They were not used as gunships, as they have already been in Iraq; nor was there ever any bombing from the air.

In other words, Northern Ireland has been largely an infantry war, shorn of the sort of heavier weaponry which has already been deployed in Iraq. Yet despite these measures 160 civilians died at the hands of soldiers, as well as 130 IRA and other paramilitants.

The Parachute Regiment in particular was involved in many civilian deaths. In addition to the fourteen shot dead in Londonderry on Bloody Sunday in 1972, the Paras were responsible at least 35 troubles deaths, including a number of children and two Catholic priests, often in highly controversial circumstances.