After 12 years of peace, terrorism has returned to the streets of Northern Ireland, the UK province whose peace deal between bitter tribal rivals has long been held up as an example of how intractable community divisions can be overcome.
In just three days, two British soldiers and a policeman have been gunned down by two splinter groups from the now disbanded Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Significantly however, while the terrorists are back, terror has not returned — yet. Instead there is widespread anger coupled with a muted concern that these cold-blooded murders could presage the start of a return to the terrible 29 years of “The Troubles,” when Republican and Protestant gunmen battled each other and the security forces. Some 3,600 people, including 2,000 civilians, perished to the bomb and the bullet. Thousands of silent protesters from all communities gathered yesterday in Northern Irish cities to demonstrate their disgust and fury at the assault by the two Republican killer groups that are attempting to destroy the hard-won peace and plunge the province back into bloodshed.
Indeed, these three murders appear to have brought the Republican and Unionist communities together in a quite remarkable way. Certainly the rival political leaders, who until now have shown each other considerable distrust, have united in their outright condemnation of the killings. Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, the latter now Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, were strident in their condemnation of the crimes and their demand that the Republican community refuse to shelter the killers. Such words are the more singular because both Adams and McGuinness were actually commanders in the Provisional IRA and were themselves once supporters of violence.
However, thanks to the albeit tortuous implementation of the 1998 Good Friday Peace agreement, the “Provos” have abandoned the gun, decommissioned their weapons and turned exclusively to the ballot box. Sinn Fein is no longer the political wing of a left-wing Republican terror movement. It is simply a political party, operating in both parts of Ireland with a political goal of peaceful reunification. Given the European Union’s own ultimate aim of political as well as economic integration, a generation from now the Irish reunification issue may seem meaningless.
But for the present, former Republican terrorists and former diehard Unionists (who once vowed never to talk to Sinn Fein) are united in their grief and anger at the renewal of violence which they both protest is pointless. Unionist leader Peter Robinson has compared the killers to Al-Qaeda, fanatics without a true cause nor a true constituency among reasonable men. His Sinn Fein colleagues have not disagreed.
There seems no reason to doubt the unity of purpose between rival Northern Ireland politicians and the communities they represent. Therefore, the crimes of the two dissident Republican terror groups would appear to have been counterproductive. Far from endangering the peace process, they have actually strengthened it. Fearful memories of the past are dominated by a revulsion at these killings and a determination to regard their perpetrators as the mindless, criminal thugs they are.
