Potholes on Northern Ireland's Road to Peace

PrintEmail

On Saturday night, dissident republicans attempted to detonate a 400 pound bomb outside the Policing Board's Headquarter's in Belfast, Northern Ireland. On the very same day police foiled an attempt to assassinate a Catholic man who had joined the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Five individuals have been questioned in connection with the plot.
 
As many commentators have pointed out, the bomb that failed to detonate on Saturday was of a similar size to the device used to kill 29 and injure almost 300 in the 1998 Omagh atrocity. The news follows reports that breakaway groups from the Provisional IRA have been planning to repeat the Omagh tragedy through a Christmas "spectacular" to further derail the volatile peace process.
 
Add to this the deaths of two British military personnel and one policeman in March (incidentally, the first fatalities suffered by the British armed forces in more than 10 years), which alone raised serious questions about how sustainable the peace process is. Despite all the political hurdles overcome in the past decade, 2009 may well be remembered as the year when the peace process faced its greatest challenges.
 
Now that is not to say we are on the cusp of witnessing horrifying events akin to that of the 1980s and 90s. September 11th led to a great deal of funding to the republican cause from Boston cease, the IRA are no longer killing 50 people a year, and the violent republican movement lost a great deal of credibility in the United States following the death of Robert McCartney.
 
Still, the threat of violence and guerrilla style attacks may well derail the peace process and undermine what little trust exists between republicans and unionists.
 
Mark Simpson, the BBC's Ireland correspondent, raises a number of key points on the peace process. He notes that although the province has enjoyed a great deal of prosperity in the last decade and despite the fact that "public opinion is against continued violence in Northern Ireland... dissident republicans seem more determined than ever to kill."
 
Simpson goes on to add that the number of individuals joining the various republican splinter groups appears to be increasing, particularly amongst Northern Ireland's unemployed youth who "have also been recruited in towns like Lurgan and Strabane." It's worth adding that recent figures revealed that as many as one in five of 18-25 year olds in Northern Ireland are unemployed.
 
Having lived in London for a while during The Troubles, I remember vividly the coverage of Ian Gow's murder and how people regularly rushed to evacuate train stations, the London Underground and entire streets following anonymous "tip-offs" and suspect packages. It seems such a long time ago--a completely different era--and for many people  the very idea of the violence resuming is either not worth contemplating or extremely hard to fathom.
 
There is most certainly a rocky road ahead. But it's also hard to remember a time when the people of Northern Ireland were so united in their pursuit for peace. Following the cowardly attacks in March tens of thousands of Catholics and Protestants signaled that they had already chosen their path, a gathering of Northern Ireland's communities that would have been unthinkable during The Troubles.
 
Just before the march, a former colleague of mine summed up the public mood in the province perfectly, when he remarked on his blog: "Two hundred years ago a few brave men and women came to this city to call for unity between Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. Today when we take a brief pause out of our working day to stand together, we will be coming together as a people, nationalist and unionist, to say not in my name and not in the name of my children. Dignified, silent and united."
 
(Image from Wikimedia)
 
Read more stories at YPNation, America's young professionals network.