This is a story no one should believe, a plot line not only too good to be true but one that media outlets in Europe and the United States have conditioned our brains to reject out of hand. A tale of three cities — London, Dublin and Belfast — so outrageously absurd that the words “Northern Ireland” and “peace” appear in the same sentence, as Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble sign the same piece of paper.        HOW COULD IT HAPPEN? There are many factors, of course, but at the basic level people in Northern Ireland simply tired of being led by those without the imagination to see beyond the violence. The people of Northern Ireland — Catholic, Protestant and indifferent — finally said, “Enough!”        Of course, it took 800 years, but let’s enjoy the moment. What happened on Good Friday in Belfast finally ended the primacy of ideology over reason that has held sway in Ireland and in British policy toward Ireland.        A caveat is in order: the previous Tuesday, Trimble had decided not to accept the draft agreement presented by the chairman of the talks, George Mitchell. That hiccup could have imperilled the peace process. But at the same time, it is important to remember that the fate of the province is not in Trimble’s hands, nor in the hands of his nationalist rivals. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has pledged to put the agreement to the voters of Northern Ireland with or without the recommendation of the Ulster Unionists, Sinn Fein or any other faction. And, for a variety of reasons, that is nothing but good news for peace.         DEMOCRACY, AT LAST        Thanks to a favorable intersection of events, the political dynamic that kept the Catholic Irish and the Protestant Ulsterman at each other’s throats all these years has changed. As the peace process entered its final few days, the fear among the province’s political leaders was not that they’ll be blamed for selling out their tribe if an agreement is reached, but rather that they’ll be blamed for restarting a war no one wants if the agreement fails.        The settlement produced by the talks guarantees that Ulster remains British until a majority of its residents feel otherwise, something Catholic birth rates might affect in the second half of the next century. The agreement will restore a modicum of democracy to the province by reviving Northern Ireland’s defunct parliament. Controversially, it also gives the independent Republic of Ireland a voice in the affairs of the province in return for Ireland dropping its constitutional claim on the North. Taken together, it is a blueprint for making the border between the north and south of Ireland irrelevant.        For decades, Northern Ireland’s politics fell far short of what would pass for democracy in post-Cold War Africa. Since the height of “The Troubles” in the early 1970s, the province has been ruled not from Belfast but from London via the Northern Ireland office, with the province’s political leaders serving as Britain’s ward bosses. Unionist members of Parliament doled out the largesse to their communities and the moderate Catholics of the Social Democratic and Labor Party did the same in the Catholic parts of the province. Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing that normally had one or two members of Parliament, boycotted the Westminster Parliament in protest, further tipping the balance toward the unionists.        As recently as 1994, the voice of Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams was banned from airwaves in Britain and Northern Ireland. Such a system perpetuated taboos and misconceptions and strangled many a well-meaning initiative. Northern Ireland’s voters, with limited power to truly effect the conditions under which they lived, largely fell in line behind “their man,” whoever he was, accepting his vetoes or pronouncements as one roots for the home town football team.

PEOPLE POWER        The IRA’s cease-fire of 1994, though it only lasted 18 months, changed all of this. After a few months of grizzled disbelief, the people of Ulster — Catholic and Protestant alike — began to revel in the first taste of “normal” life many had ever experienced. Moreover, property values rose, joblessness began to fall, tourism — tourism in Northern Ireland! — began to come into its own.        It didn’t take long for this to translate into political sentiment. By 1995, polls showed a majority of unionists and a majority of nationalists — the ideological code names for Ulster Protestants and Irish Catholics — both favored a compromise solution that would prevent a return to violence.        As the process has continued — and even through the period of February 1996 to July 1997, when the IRA tired of the stalled peace talks and resumed the bombings — the people of Northern Ireland were putting unprecedented pressure on their political leaders to get the talks restarted. Perhaps for the first time in the history of the province, political power was flowing from below rather than trickling down from arrogant leaders who cut their own deals with the British, on the one hand, and the guerrilla groups on the other.        Attitudes once hardened around tribal imperatives have come unglued. A BBC poll in early March, for instance, showed that more than three-quarters of “Irish nationalists” in the North are prepared to accept a settlement that falls short of Irish unification. The same poll found that 55 percent of Protestant unionists were in favor of direct talks with Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams.        Those who have bucked this trend have paid a political price. Ian Paisley, the once ubiquitous embodiment of pro-British unionism, has seen his party reduced to irrelevance by his boycott of the talks. Similarly, pro-British loyalist groups and Irish nationalist dissidents who oppose the truce and continue their mayhem appear to be small and unable to shake the consensus even with murder. They will also be short work if the IRA, in the wake of an agreement, decides to tip the wink to British intelligence.         THE DISCIPLINE QUESTION        In fact, the great wildcard is not if dissident gunmen on both sides will try to use violence to kill the peace — everyone knows they will.        The question of the hour is whether the Irish Republican Army, regarded by intelligence groups as one of the world’s most professional guerrilla organizations, can maintain its discipline in the face of the compromise its leadership has now signed to.        The current nationalist dissident groups — the Continuity IRA and the “32 County Sovereignty Committee” — don’t appear in themselves to be capable of carrying on the struggle. But Irish and British intelligence say these groups are actively recruiting from among IRA men known to be unhappy with anything less than Irish unity.        In response to this concern, Adams has often stated that “the IRA is a disciplined military organization,” which, if not quite true, isn’t far off.        But it’s worth remembering what happened to the last Irish nationalist to compromise on this issue. Michael Collins (yes, the guy Liam Neeson played in the movie), led the original IRA, the one that fought the British into pulling out of the southern 26 counties in 1920. Collins’ signature on the treaty that accepted the partition of the North into a British-ruled province was his death warrant. The IRA split and Collins died in an ambush set by his former comrades. It is inconceivable that Adams, a student of Irish history if he’s a student of anything, has not pondered the parallels.

Foreign & Commonwealth Office of Britain and Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland conflict archive web site
Government of Ireland

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