The defeat of the moderates

Belfast (od of ours special reporter)

Three years after a peace deal between the British government and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) declared a permanent ceasefire, Belfast seems almost back to normal. The city center and the recently renovated port district are teeming with luxury shops and new office buildings, and crowded pubs and numerous clubs testify that people are no longer afraid to go out at night. Apart from heavily armored police Land Rovers on the streets and helicopters constantly circling over the heads of passers-by, almost nothing mentions the thirty-year period of fierce clashes between Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries in which thousands of people died. That period in which both the IRA and the Protestant "Avengers", as well as the formally neutral British security forces, used their dirtiest means is simply called the "Age of Troubles" here (Unrest). For three years it seemed that the troubles were over forever and that the tormented province was finally moving in the direction of peace and prosperity. However, the results of the recently held elections for the British Parliament, local assembly and government (Stormont) remind us that trouble is much closer than it seemed until yesterday.

DEFEAT MODERATE: In those elections, the second in a row since the Parliament of Northern Ireland was dissolved in 1972, the moderate parties of Catholics and Protestants suffered a heavy defeat, while those who went to the elections with extremist programs profited. On the Catholic side, the moderate Social Democratic Labor Party (SDLP), which advocates secession from Great Britain without the use of violence, was beaten to a pulp by Sinn Féin, a party whose leadership is closely linked to the IRA. On the Protestant side, the number of moderate Ulster Unionist MPs under the leadership of David Trimble, one of the main architects of the peace agreement, was almost halved, and their seats were taken by supporters of Ian Paisley, a militant priest who campaigned openly for the annulment of the peace agreement. Worse, David Trimble could easily lose his leadership position in his own party due to an election loss and be replaced by one of several hawks chasing his place. By the way, he has publicly threatened to resign as First Minister of Northern Ireland at the end of July. Trimble's resignation would automatically mean the dissolution of Stormont and the calling of new elections or, more likely, the suspension of local government and the return of Northern Ireland to direct London rule.

Most analysts believe that the main cause of Trimble's defeat was the IRA's failure to fulfill its obligation to surrender or destroy its weapons stockpile, which it had committed to by signing the treaty. This created the impression among the Protestant majority that the Republicans had not completely renounced violence, and led them to vote for hardliners in their own ranks. Namely, during the negotiations with the IRA, the British government made a number of concessions: it released from prison all arrested and convicted members of the IRA, including those who planted bombs in pubs and shopping centers until a year ago; it included Sinn Féin, whose leaders were until recently members of the IRA Military Council, in the provincial government; she agreed to a thorough reform of the police force in Northern Ireland, and even to the removal of the adjective "royal" from her name; finally, it established a series of interstate bodies with the southern Republic of Ireland to bring the northern and southern parts of the Island closer together.

A complex process of devolution was also launched, which would gradually give local authorities more and more autonomy in relation to London. All these concessions, achieved with American mediation, did not sit well with the Protestant community, and when the IRA did not honor its part of the agreement, it felt betrayed. "Sinn Féin and Ian Paisley went to the election with simple, easy-to-understand messages fueling fear of the other side," says the SDLP's Alistair McDonnell, explaining his party's defeat. "We sacrificed partisan interests for higher interests, and now we're paying the guild." Trimble's unionists have a similar explanation, claiming they are the victims of a double fraud: not only has the IRA not disarmed, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair has broken his written promise to would, if that did not happen, dissolve Stormont, so he left Trimble to pull the chestnuts out of the fire himself. A good illustration of the position he found himself in is that in his own constituency, his neighbors threw stones at him and called him a traitor.

ONCE TERRORIST - ALWAYS TERRORIST: On the other hand, Sinn Féin and Paisley's strong-arm supporters are full of victory. "We have said from the beginning that the agreement is phallic in every way and will not work," says a representative of Paisley's party. "The people gave us our right." Paisley's supporters say Sinn Féin belongs in prison, not in government. “There is no country in the world that would agree to negotiate with terrorists on an equal footing, let alone bring them into power.” Paisley and his supporters like to compare Gerry Adams, the charismatic leader of Sinn Féin, to Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. who was executed last week. "Once a terrorist, always a terrorist," they say, expressing open regret that there is no death penalty in Britain and that Adams outlived McVeigh.

By the way, the activists of Paisley's party, with their gestures and rhetoric, irresistibly reminded this correspondent of the supporters of radicals in Serbia, that is, SDS in Republika Srpska. They are ready to wax frothy for hours about the incorrigible treachery of the Catholics and the incurable naivety of Blair, but even their top officials are tight-lipped when it comes to Paisley's concrete plans for the future. Reverend Paisley himself, in a short meeting with journalists on the day of the election victory, stated the thesis that "all journalists are sinners who need to have the Gospel hammered into their heads". It was supposed to sound like a joke, but it seemed to this journalist, perhaps because of Paisley's imposing figure and booming voice, that the methods of that silence would not be gentle, that the reverend was asking something.

Sinn Féin representatives, on the other hand, seem more authentically confident in rejecting the accusation that they have called the agreement into question. "Nowhere in the peace deal does it say that the IRA has to disarm by any specific time," says Conor Murphy, a Sinn Féin MP at Stormont. That will happen only when the British government proves its good intentions, and that is still a long way off." According to Murphy, all the alleged concessions by London are only cosmetic. "Apart from freeing political prisoners, they did almost nothing," he claims and adds: "They did not partially withdraw the army, as they claim, but only regrouped it." My neighborhood in Armagh is still a war zone, with helicopters flying over us and raids every hour. The army and the RUC (Royal Ulster Gendarmerie - ed. nov.) are still waging war against the Catholics. Until that stops, there is nothing to disarm, but we will respect the ceasefire.” Murphy, who served two years in an English prison in the 1980s for possessing explosives, says Sinn Féin's main concession was that it agreed to take part in government at all. Murphy's position is well illustrated by the fact that the roof of the Parliament building is dominated by a statue of Britain and motifs emphasizing London's sovereignty, and a large Irish flag stands in his office in the same building. "Our goal is an independent Ireland as soon as possible, and we see this as an interim solution," he says.

POLITICIANS, A NE SOLDIERS: Denying that they are intransigent on disarmament, Sinn Féin representatives stress their commitment to a ceasefire and indicate that they have agreed to international (US) inspections of three of their weapons depots. Then, although they adamantly refuse to hand those weapons over to anyone, they hint that they might agree to destroy them themselves, by flooding the underground warehouses with fresh concrete. In addition, they remind that the two largest protestant paramilitary units - the Ulster Volunteer Front (UVF) and the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) - did not agree to the agreement, or even to a ceasefire. The other day, the police found several hundred kilograms of explosives in an empty apartment in a protestant suburb, probably owned by one of these groups. The seizure of the explosives provoked the anger of the neighborhood, who attacked the police with oysters and Molotov cocktails. A senior RUC officer confirmed to this journalist that Protestant terrorists are a bigger problem than Catholic terrorists at the moment, because the IRA has more control among Catholics than the UVF and UFF among Protestants, because they are at odds with each other and have no political wings. However, the IRA's monopoly is already crumbling: since the signing of the peace agreement, on Good Friday 1998, at least two formations have broken away from the IRA and continued terrorist attacks. It is about the so-called To the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, who accuse Adams of betraying the republican cause by entering Stormont. This is ironic because in the late XNUMXs Adams, as a young IRA commander, opposed the soft policies of his superiors and founded his "Provisional IRA", which later became the only one. However, representatives of both Sinn Féin and the police agree that the breakaway factions have no long-term chance of survival.

The problem, then, is the politicians, and if the peace agreement breaks down, the blame will fall on them. Optimists point out that Reverend Paisley's party, despite all his rhetoric, has recently stopped talking about canceling the agreement and started talking about changing it. "If the deal fails, London will take direct power, and they will no longer be MPs or ministers," says one official familiar with the local situation. "You know, once a man gets into power and sits in the chair, it is very difficult for him to get out afterwards. That goes for Sinn Féin as well." During the coming week, it will become clear whether the agreement, thanks to some Solomonic solution, can still be maintained, either by disarming the IRA at the last minute, or by some Blair maneuver to keep Trimble in power. Otherwise, trouble is just around the corner.