What’s behind the unrest in Ireland?
LONDON >> Young people have hurled bricks, fireworks and gasoline bombs at police and set hijacked cars and a bus on fire during a week of violence on the streets of Northern Ireland. Police responded with rubber bullets and water cannons.
The streets were calmer Friday night, as community leaders appealed for calm after the death of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s 99-year-old husband. But small gangs of youths pelted police with objects and set a car ablaze during sporadic outbreaks in Belfast.
The chaotic scenes have stirred memories of decades of Catholic-Protestant conflict, known as “The Troubles.” A 1998 peace deal ended largescale violence but did not resolve Northern Ireland’s deep-rooted tensions.
A look at the background to the new violence:
Why is it a contested land?
Geographically, Northern Ireland is part of Ireland. Politically, it’s part of the United Kingdom.
Ireland, long dominated by its bigger neighbor, broke free about 100 years ago after centuries of colonization and an uneasy union. Twenty-six of its 32 counties became an independent, Roman Catholic-majority country. Six counties in the north, which have a Protestant majority, stayed British.
Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority experienced discrimination in jobs, housing and other areas in the Protestantrun state. In the 1960s, a Catholic civil rights movement demanded change, but faced a harsh response from the government and police. Some people on both the Catholic and Protestant sides formed armed groups that escalated the violence with bombings and shootings.
The British Army was deployed in 1969, initially to keep the peace. The situation deteriorated into a conflict between Irish republican militants who wanted to unite with the south, loyalist paramilitaries who sought to keep Northern Ireland British, and U.K. troops.
During three decades of conflict more than 3,600 people, a majority of them civilians, were killed in bombings and shootings. Most were in Northern Ireland, though the Irish Republican Army also set off bombs in London and other British cities.
How did the conflict end?
By the 1990s, after secret talks and with the help of diplomatic efforts by Ireland, Britain and the United States, the combatants reached a peace deal. The 1998 Good Friday accord saw the paramilitaries lay down their arms and established a Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government for Northern Ireland. The question of Northern Ireland’s ultimate status was deferred: it would remain British as long as that was the majority’s wish, but a future referendum on reunification was not ruled out.
While the peace has largely endured, small Irish Republican Army splinter groups have mounted occasional attacks on security forces, and there have been outbreaks of sectarian street violence.
Politically, the powersharing arrangement has had periods of success and failure. The Belfast administration collapsed in January 2017 over a botched green energy project. It remained suspended for more than two years amid a rift between British unionist and Irish nationalist parties over cultural and political issues, including the status of the Irish language. Northern Ireland’s government resumed work at the start of 2020, but there remains deep mistrust on both sides.