Political violence and the deep state
We in Northern Ireland probably think we invented paramilitarism. But, as the emergence of armed militias on the streets of Washington shows, it’s now a global phenomenon, writes Professor Ugur Umit Ungor
Last week, uniformed armed men appeared in the streets of Washington, DC, without name tags, unit insignia, or other identification marks. They refused to identify themselves and explain their chain of command. A week later, vigilante militias were patrolling the streets of Philadelphia and in north-west Indiana. The American public were puzzled: if they were not army soldiers, National Guard, or police officers, who were these men, and what were they doing in the streets of American cities?
What is paramilitarism?
Paramilitarism refers to clandestine, irregular armed organisations that carry out illegal acts of violence, mostly against civilians.
My new book, Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State, is a global, comparative study that examines the phenomenon through the prism of the state. It argues that paramilitarism is the ability of states to covertly outsource and subcontract illegal and illegitimate violence against civilians.
For many people who grew up in the Troubles, paramilitarism may seem like a quintessentially Northern Irish phenomenon. Many Serbs, Turks, or Iraqis think the same: that their country is uniquely troubled with paramilitary
activity. But they are not. Paramilitarism is a truly global phenomenon that has wreaked havoc in societies as diverse as Chechnya, Indonesia, Kenya, Colombia, and Syria.
There are at least three aspects that Northern Irish paramilitarism has in common with that in other countries: the security dilemma, collusion with the state, and criminalisation.
The security dilemma between sectarian communities
The Northern Ireland conflict, as an ethno-religious (‘sectarian’) conflict, in essence is about the co-existence of two collective identity groups. The long history of relations between Protestants and Catholics, and unionists and republicans, developed into a security dilemma in the 1970s when riots erupted in 1969. The violence escalated rapidly into a protracted conflict as communities armed themselves to feel safe, but the mutual arms race paradoxically made them less safe and led to sectarian tit-for-tat bloodshed.
Take the loyalist paramilitaries. As militias armed and mobilised, gaining membership in those groups and committing violence for them was admired by young Protestant boys.
Having entered the brutal world of paramilitary violence, they rarely foresaw the consequences of their actions, as they lost friends, ended up in prison, six feet under, or in wheelchairs, and deep disilnon-violent lusionment. Their violence profoundly polarised the relationship between and within communities.
The Northern Irish scenario predated the Bosnian catastrophe, but was eerily similar to it. Impressionable Serb boys who grew up with Croat kids saw their communities retreat in 1991 into Orthodox and Catholic bubbles, respectively. Enlisting into the paramilitary groups of ruthless warlords like Arkan or Seselj seemed like a way to defend their communities and ward off danger, but on the contrary, it ended up in the sectarian nightmare of ethnic cleansing and genocide. In both cases, sectarianism was more the consequence than cause of the violence.
Collusion with the state
A lively, activist literature accuses the British Government of secretly spawning the loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland as a cold and calculated campaign. But the relations between the state and pro-state paramilitaries was never that straightforward — neither in Northern Ireland, nor in other examples. Surely, there is strong evidence for collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and powerful individuals in, and elements of, British state institutions in Northern Ireland.
But collusion was more insidious, and included such actions as passing on security information, diverting law enforcement away from loyalist crimes, failing to provide protection to threatened persons, failing to investigate loyalist killings, and providing firearms to loyalists. All of these events happened in the course of various unsolved assassinations in Northern Ireland. The fact that conclusive evidence of the killings was never produced is testimony to the effectiveness of collusion: it was designed not to be found out.
Around the same period of the Troubles, Turkey’s conflict with the Kurds escalated to the extent that by the 1990s, mysterious Turkish paramilitary groups were kidnapping, executing and torturing Kurdish civilians. On November 3, 1996, a black Mercedes crashed into a truck, killing three of its four passengers, including a top mob boss, a tribal chieftain and member of parliament, and the deputy head of Istanbul police. What were these men doing in the same car together? The accident unmasked the Turkish ‘deep state’, a secret network of collusion between the state, organised crime, and paramilitarism.
Criminalisation
After the Good Friday peace accords, feuding and criminalisation became a major part of post-war paramilitary life in Northern Ireland. The UVF and UDA attempted to change, and set up veterans’ associations, skill-building organisations, and community development. But the possibilities for politics and civic involvement were limited. As the violence of the conflict died down, the unity within loyalist paramilitary groups fragmented and conflicts simmering within them began to burst.
Notorious paramilitary leaders like Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair tried to reinvent themselves as politicians and peacebuilders. Having served long sentences for directing terrorism, after being released from jail these men often returned to a society they no longer recognised. In this vacuum, they settled scores with rival paramilitary groups, but most often ended up in organised crime. After all, their stint in prison had given them plenty of contacts.
Now, the worlds of paramilitarism and organised crime became intimately related, and the assassinations and kneecappings were carried out for reasons of drugs, money, territory and ‘respect’.
We are currently witnessing this post-war process of criminalisation in Syria, where Assad’s loyalist paramilitaries have been massacring demonstrators and opposition civilians since 2011. Since Assad has ‘won’ the war, his Shabbiha paramilitaries are off the leash and have even turned on loyalist civilians, extorting, kidnapping, racketeering, and plundering their neighbourhoods and villages. What began as a sectarian death squad
with political objectives has degenerated into an untouchable mafia involved in drug smuggling, prostitution and usurping humanitarian aid.
The Ulster archetype
Northern Ireland paramilitarism is a textbook case that is in many ways unique, but also has similarities to paramilitarism in other countries. It is not only weak states that are prone to paramilitary mobilisation. Deliberately building or tacitly condoning parallel, informal institutions of violence without oversight mechanisms is a deeply risky business. Empowering young men with weapons and offering them impunity outside of the regular security forces is a recipe for disaster.
This is well-known in Northern Ireland, Serbia, Turkey, Syria, and other countries that suffered from paramilitarism. To what extent those boys in the streets of American cities, or the instigator in the White House, are aware of this, remains to be seen.
Ugur Umit Ungor is Professor of History at the University of Amsterdam. His new book, Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State, will be published on July 9 by Oxford University Press
Their violence profoundly polarised the relationship between and within communities
Northern Ireland paramilitarism is a textbook case that is in many ways unique