NORTHERN Ireland was a sectarian battleground for almost 30 years. The British authorities struggled to contain violence including terror bombings on the UK mainland and ethnic cleansing in Northern Ireland itself. So brutal and widespread was the aggression, so deep the enmities and suspicions between the rival Protestant and Roman Catholic communities, the conflict appeared endless.
But nine years ago most of the violence stopped. The Good Friday peace agreement began a process in which the terror gangs on both sides disarmed and then foreswore violence. Elections led to a power-sharing executive in which bitter rivals tried to work together. To the despair of the Irish and British governments who had brokered the peace deal, they failed and the executive was suspended. Fresh elections have just been held which reinforce the leading position of the two hard-line Republican and Protestant parties. Dublin and London have given the new Northern Irish assembly members a deadline to agree on sharing power. Like previous deadlines, it is bound to be broken. However, what has not been broken is the peace that was established in 1998. It is now indeed almost unthinkable that whatever the continuing political squabbles, terrorism will return to Northern Ireland.
What is happening today in Northern Ireland will have to happen one day in Iraq, when it becomes apparent to all factions that the endless bloodshed and tit-for-tat killings is achieving nothing except profits for gravediggers. The point will come when the professional terrorists of Al-Qaeda will be rejected by the communities in which they shelter and Iraqis will accept that somehow they will all have to live and work together. They actually have one major advantage over the citizens of Northern Ireland — a constitution approved overwhelmingly in a free vote in October 2005. This sets out the principles and mechanisms for power sharing.
And when peace comes, it will not bring a sudden return of the sunshine of security and stability. There will be a long process in which sectarian rivals move toward the inevitable solution of power sharing. It has so far taken the politicians of Northern Ireland nine years and the process is still not complete. Terrorist thuggery continued for a good part of that time and Republican splinter groups still mount occasional murderous attacks.
But the key for Northern Ireland as it will be for Iraq is that the men of violence, even though their savagery has become a way of life, recognize at last that all the murder and maiming is achieving absolutely nothing. What however is so disturbing is that it took almost 30 years for this recognition to come to Northern Ireland’s Republican terrorists. For years, they were funded by US sympathizers. As they moved away from terror so the Protestant paramilitaries lost their rationale. Now all that remain are gangs of common criminals. It is unthinkable that Iraqis must endure decades more pointless savagery like Northern Ireland. The men of violence must learn quickly that peace is their greatest victory.
