Mon Sep 14, 2015 | 2:07 AM EDT
By Kate Holton
BELFAST (Reuters) -
When IRA-linked gunmen turned their fire on one other this summer they triggered a political crisis in Northern Ireland's fragile government of pro-British unionists and
republicans working for a united Ireland.
They also revealed an uncomfortable truth: 17
years after a U.S.-brokered truce to end three
decades of sectarian violence, the province
remains riven with old enmities.
The immediate cause of this particular crisis
was the murder of a former Irish Republican
Army member, Kevin McGuigan, outside his
Belfast home last month.
Police say the killing was revenge for the murder of another former IRA member, Jock Davison, in May over a feud that went back decades.
Police said the murders were evidence that the IRA, that fought for independence from Britain and was supposedly disarmed under the terms of the 1998 'Good Friday' peace agreement, continues to operate in the criminal underworld.
Nor does it operate alone, security sources,
police and politicians said. Some members of
the armed groups on both sides of the conflict
are thriving, their focus now on racketeering.
The new generation of armed groups may be
much smaller and less sophisticated than the
military-style structures that were involved in the deaths of 3,600 people during the so-called Troubles, these sources said, but they continue to exacerbate the religious tensions while profiting from crime.
Veterans of Northern Ireland's war warn that if
the politicians fail to get a grip of the situation,
the segregation along sectarian lines that still
exists in many parts of the province can only
get worse, exploited by these groups.
One of those briefly arrested in relation to the
McGuigan killing was Bobby Storey, a senior
member of the Sinn Fein party that was once
the political arm of the IRA.
Storey, who was released without charge, said there was no basis for his arrest and those behind the murder were enemies of Sinn Fein's embrace of peace.
The police declined further comment.
Sinn Fein, part of Northern Ireland's power
sharing government, says the IRA has "left the
stage".
The police's assertion that the IRA still exists, however, drove the pro-British Unionists to withdraw most of its ministers from government, bringing it to the brink of collapse.
The unionists say paramilitary activity must be
tackled if Northern Ireland is to move forward.
"To have stability in the future we need to deal
with that cancer at the heart of government
now," said acting First Minister Arlene Foster, a Unionist who survived a bomb attack on a
school bus at the age of 17.
"TEAR DOWN THIS WALL"
While life has changed for many in bustling
central Belfast, parts of Northern Ireland remain divided.
The divide is felt strongest in the working class
areas of Belfast where there is little integration
and little obvious economic benefit from the
peace.
"I have no friends on the other side of the
community and I believe I never will," said Jake, a 57-year-old community worker who stood smoking on the Protestant Shankill Road underneath British flags fluttering from every building and lamp post.
While a multi-million pound make-over draws
tourists to the capital Belfast, to the docks
where the Titanic was built and to the area's
rolling green hills, the sprawling low-rise Belfast estates still carry the scars of the conflict.
To be sure, the end of what amounted to a war
is enormous progress. Cross-community
initiatives have taken off.
There is a level of integration that would have been unthinkable in the past.
As a result, Peter Shirlow, director of Irish
studies at the University of Liverpool, said
Northern Ireland was now a very different place to the one that gave rise to sectarian violence in the late 1960s.
The paramilitary groups who have moved into
crime have failed to keep support from the
wider community, he said. "I'm not saying there won't be some sporadic violence, but simply we no longer have the conditions of 1968. During each crisis, people have sabre-rattling and said we will fall back into the past, I have never seen any evidence of that," he said.
Shirlow said he took heart from the fact that of
the 17 people so far arrested over the Aug. 12
murder of McGuigan, the majority have
generally been in their 50's - "part of the
Troubles generation" - and not new recruits.
But 38-year-old Kerry still walks the long way
round to avoid a Protestant area when she
visits her family on Belfast's Catholic Falls
Road.
Kerry declined to give her last name. "If you're brought up surrounded by politics and hate then you will continue to be political and full of hate. I've just kept myself to myself, lots of
us do," said Kerry, speaking in the shadow of
the so-called "peace walls", 15-metre high
'fences' that separate Catholic and Protestant communities.
A survey for the Economic and Social Research Council showed that the majority of people under 30 support mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants, however less than half also believe there will be lasting peace.
"NO SURRENDER"
Murals on Protestant streets warn of the IRA -
"They Still Exist You Know" - while others
celebrate the lives of paramilitary gunmen and
Queen Elizabeth.
The Shankill Historical Society sells babies bibs with the Protestant resistance call: "My cry is No Surrender".
In the nearby Catholic Falls Road area, murals
link the fight for a united Ireland to the
campaigns led by Nelson Mandela and Martin
Luther King.
Jude Whyte, a peace campaigner who lost his
mother in a pro British bombing in 1984, said
many people in Belfast still lived parallel lives,
with separate social lives, separate education
systems and separate sports - a modern day
apartheid.
"Society is anything but normal here," Whyte
told BBC Radio. "(We have) walls that divide
white English speaking Christians from each
other. You could live your whole life in Belfast
and never meet a Protestant, ever."
"They do say tall walls make good neighbors," said Jake, referring to the "peace walls" that
were meant to be erected as temporary
structures in 1969 but instead multiplied. "It would be premature to remove them."
(Additional reporting by Amanda Ferguson, and Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Editing by Guy
Faulconbridge and Janet McBride)
By Kate Holton
BELFAST (Reuters) -
When IRA-linked gunmen turned their fire on one other this summer they triggered a political crisis in Northern Ireland's fragile government of pro-British unionists and
republicans working for a united Ireland.
They also revealed an uncomfortable truth: 17
years after a U.S.-brokered truce to end three
decades of sectarian violence, the province
remains riven with old enmities.
The immediate cause of this particular crisis
was the murder of a former Irish Republican
Army member, Kevin McGuigan, outside his
Belfast home last month.
Police say the killing was revenge for the murder of another former IRA member, Jock Davison, in May over a feud that went back decades.
Police said the murders were evidence that the IRA, that fought for independence from Britain and was supposedly disarmed under the terms of the 1998 'Good Friday' peace agreement, continues to operate in the criminal underworld.
Nor does it operate alone, security sources,
police and politicians said. Some members of
the armed groups on both sides of the conflict
are thriving, their focus now on racketeering.
The new generation of armed groups may be
much smaller and less sophisticated than the
military-style structures that were involved in the deaths of 3,600 people during the so-called Troubles, these sources said, but they continue to exacerbate the religious tensions while profiting from crime.
Veterans of Northern Ireland's war warn that if
the politicians fail to get a grip of the situation,
the segregation along sectarian lines that still
exists in many parts of the province can only
get worse, exploited by these groups.
One of those briefly arrested in relation to the
McGuigan killing was Bobby Storey, a senior
member of the Sinn Fein party that was once
the political arm of the IRA.
Storey, who was released without charge, said there was no basis for his arrest and those behind the murder were enemies of Sinn Fein's embrace of peace.
The police declined further comment.
Sinn Fein, part of Northern Ireland's power
sharing government, says the IRA has "left the
stage".
The police's assertion that the IRA still exists, however, drove the pro-British Unionists to withdraw most of its ministers from government, bringing it to the brink of collapse.
The unionists say paramilitary activity must be
tackled if Northern Ireland is to move forward.
"To have stability in the future we need to deal
with that cancer at the heart of government
now," said acting First Minister Arlene Foster, a Unionist who survived a bomb attack on a
school bus at the age of 17.
"TEAR DOWN THIS WALL"
While life has changed for many in bustling
central Belfast, parts of Northern Ireland remain divided.
The divide is felt strongest in the working class
areas of Belfast where there is little integration
and little obvious economic benefit from the
peace.
"I have no friends on the other side of the
community and I believe I never will," said Jake, a 57-year-old community worker who stood smoking on the Protestant Shankill Road underneath British flags fluttering from every building and lamp post.
While a multi-million pound make-over draws
tourists to the capital Belfast, to the docks
where the Titanic was built and to the area's
rolling green hills, the sprawling low-rise Belfast estates still carry the scars of the conflict.
To be sure, the end of what amounted to a war
is enormous progress. Cross-community
initiatives have taken off.
There is a level of integration that would have been unthinkable in the past.
As a result, Peter Shirlow, director of Irish
studies at the University of Liverpool, said
Northern Ireland was now a very different place to the one that gave rise to sectarian violence in the late 1960s.
The paramilitary groups who have moved into
crime have failed to keep support from the
wider community, he said. "I'm not saying there won't be some sporadic violence, but simply we no longer have the conditions of 1968. During each crisis, people have sabre-rattling and said we will fall back into the past, I have never seen any evidence of that," he said.
Shirlow said he took heart from the fact that of
the 17 people so far arrested over the Aug. 12
murder of McGuigan, the majority have
generally been in their 50's - "part of the
Troubles generation" - and not new recruits.
But 38-year-old Kerry still walks the long way
round to avoid a Protestant area when she
visits her family on Belfast's Catholic Falls
Road.
Kerry declined to give her last name. "If you're brought up surrounded by politics and hate then you will continue to be political and full of hate. I've just kept myself to myself, lots of
us do," said Kerry, speaking in the shadow of
the so-called "peace walls", 15-metre high
'fences' that separate Catholic and Protestant communities.
A survey for the Economic and Social Research Council showed that the majority of people under 30 support mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants, however less than half also believe there will be lasting peace.
"NO SURRENDER"
Murals on Protestant streets warn of the IRA -
"They Still Exist You Know" - while others
celebrate the lives of paramilitary gunmen and
Queen Elizabeth.
The Shankill Historical Society sells babies bibs with the Protestant resistance call: "My cry is No Surrender".
In the nearby Catholic Falls Road area, murals
link the fight for a united Ireland to the
campaigns led by Nelson Mandela and Martin
Luther King.
Jude Whyte, a peace campaigner who lost his
mother in a pro British bombing in 1984, said
many people in Belfast still lived parallel lives,
with separate social lives, separate education
systems and separate sports - a modern day
apartheid.
"Society is anything but normal here," Whyte
told BBC Radio. "(We have) walls that divide
white English speaking Christians from each
other. You could live your whole life in Belfast
and never meet a Protestant, ever."
"They do say tall walls make good neighbors," said Jake, referring to the "peace walls" that
were meant to be erected as temporary
structures in 1969 but instead multiplied. "It would be premature to remove them."
(Additional reporting by Amanda Ferguson, and Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Editing by Guy
Faulconbridge and Janet McBride)
Semper Fidelis
![[Image: SyAa0qj.png]](https://i.imgur.com/SyAa0qj.png)
USMC
USMC
Nemo me impune lacessit