IRA Renounces Violence

I went to Belfast in 2003. It was truely surreal. The poor area of the city is divided between the Catholics and Protestants. You can tell who's area you are in by the painted sidewalks, red, white, and blue for Protestants and green, gold, and white for Catholics. One street was Catholic and the otherside was Protestant. In the worst areas, a giant fence was built, three stories tall. It was built that high because the two sides would catapult washing machines, refrigerators and other large projectiles at the houses on each side of the fence. There was a british army barracks on the top floor of an apartment building. The only way to get to the barracks was by helicopter. On Friday nights large gates between the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods would be closed and not opened until early Monday. Another strange thing was the identification the two communities had with other conflicts. The Protestant neighborhoods had Israeli flags and Palestinain flags flew in Catholic neighborhoods. One things is true, at this point, the remaining fighters are nothing more thugs and criminal gangs particulary on the Protestant side. The justifications for the conflict are anarchronistic. The average Irishman is more wealthy than the average Englishman. Ireland has been a democracy for decades and the Protestants who live there have not been subjugated. The Republic of Ireland should be united with Northern Ireland, but if that doesn't happen, there is no need for violence.

As I.R.A. Backs Off, Loyalist Gangs Battle One Another
By BRIAN LAVERY
BELFAST, Northern Ireland, July 30 - The Protestant paramilitary groups who were the Irish Republican Army's ruthless foes for four decades say they will wait and see if the I.R.A. upholds its promise to disarm before they make any similar gestures. But these days, it almost seems the loyalists have already switched their focus, from fighting the I.R.A. to fighting one another.

In a town called Hollywood on the outskirts of Ulster's capital, police officers have had to set up nightly checkpoints to keep warring Protestant factions apart, at a cost of $53,000 per day. They acted after hundreds of people aligned with one loyalist gang drove another gang's families out of their homes last Wednesday. Residents say the victims were evicted for selling drugs, but police officers, who have seized around $700,000 worth of hashish in Hollywood in recent weeks, say the episode was part of a turf war between rival loyalist factions.

Peter Hain, appointed by Britain as secretary of state for Northern Ireland, followed up with a strongly worded rebuke of "gangsterism masquerading as loyalism," which he said is in "self-destruct mode."