Terrorism has become the modern Plague and the interesting thing about plagues is that they are terribly resilient. The same is true of terrorists. Declaring an idealistic war on ideas that are feverishly held by a very competent and motivated group of people is quite difficult. How does one deal with a plague, especially after it has broken out and spread well beyond a contained area? The French philosopher Albert Camus speaks of the strength of plagues and terrorists when he noted, “that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its times in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and book-shelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it roused up its rats again and sent them forth to die in a happy city[i].” Suppose that Camus’ city becomes an island, and then the northern portion of this island would be the most plagued. This is Northern Ireland and, depending on one’s religious or ethnic alignment, it is not a hospitable place. How can such an infestation of terrorism be dealt with and how has it been dealt with?
Northern Ireland is made up of the upper six counties of the island. It borders, naturally, The Republican of Ireland to the south and is separated from the rest of the UK by the Irish Sea. Nationalists in Ireland, both north and south, are referred to as Republicans because of their desire to establish an Irish Republic governed by Irish. In 1922 it was decided by the British government to allow the Irish independent rule, with the exception of the northern six counties. When the Ulster state was founded its slogan was: “A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People,” and the Scots-Irish population became known as the loyalist sect. This meant that the portion of Ireland which had been filled with Scots immigrants wanted to segregate and suppress the Irish Catholic population. Christopher Hitchens defines the conflict by its religious roots, however this is a bit reductionist as problem is not just a religious one, although there is much to ponder when Hitchens writes, “Sectarianism is conveniently self-generating and can always be counted upon to evoke a reciprocal sectarianism.”[ii] Northern Ireland epitomizes itself by divisive labels. It is a world of black against white, catholic against protestant, republican against loyalist, and ultimately neighbor against neighbor. The important task is to first identify the enemy or assailant and then identifying the intentions of that group.
In Northern Ireland the immediate enemy is the Irish Republican Army, which is a paramilitary organization comprised of Roman Catholic ethno-nationalists. From the label one can learn two things; first of which is that the group defines themselves both ethnically and religiously. The second fact is that the IRA is a nationalist organization. Both of these have a lot to say about their intentions in Northern Ireland. One can establish that, as a nationalist organization, the IRA would not resort to mass destruction bombings or want to become a nuclear and biological threat. The Green Book is a sort of handbook for Irish Terrorists published by the IRA and it contain a wealth of information about training tactics and political aims. The IRA sums up their goals into two categories; long term and short term. The long term goal, a very ideological goal, is to establish a Democratic Socialist Republic in Northern Ireland and to bring in the Republic of Ireland to unite the whole island. Under the segment of short term objective, however, is printed in very bold letters, “Brits out.[iii]” The immediate goal is to make Northern Ireland ungovernable. Louise Richardson has made a brilliant inquiry to the matter as both an Irishmen and a scholar on terrorist studies and she argues that one of the ways a terrorist group seeks to undermine the state and prove that it is ungovernable is to show the state that they are incapable of protecting their citizenry. This same effect is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan for the United States. [iv] How has the United Kingdom responded?
The most active period of the IRA was the 1970’s. There are several events which exemplify the actions of the British in Northern Ireland and the IRA response to those events. The Falls Road Curfew, June 3-5, 1972, was an incident that began as a British military operation to search Falls Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The situation erupted into a three day riot that ended in the arrest of 300 republicans, the deaths of somewhere between three and five individuals (the exact figure is highly disputed), and sixty civilian causalities.[v] British forces were tipped off that an arms dump belonging to the Official IRA, a splinter group of the IRA, could be found in a house on Falls Road. OIRA commander Jim Sullivan ordered his men not to retaliate; he feared that an investigation would follow and more arms dumps would be uncovered. It was the Provisional IRA, yet another splinter group of the IRA, who initiated attack with makeshift hand grenades and escalated the situation. The road, a heavily populated area and a cultural center that attracts many tourists each year, was sealed off and a curfew was put into effect which would be enforced by 3000 British soldiers. The greatest mistake of the Anglo forces was the use of tear gas to flood the area and force IRA members into the open street to be detained. Tim Pat Coogan points out that, “It’s just not possible to fire CS (tear gas) canisters down narrow teeming streets and affect only IRA lungs.”[vi] The event caused many of the anti-IRA Catholics in the area to sympathize with the cause of self-governance and independence. It gave credence the argument made by IRA members who stated that the British army was not a neutral force keeping peace between Protestants and Catholics, but a colonial force meant to pacify and anglicize the Catholic natives.
One of the more infamous incidents was Bloody Sunday (January 30, 1972). The British Army fired upon a group of unarmed protestors who were illegally demonstrating in Derry, Northern Ireland. What is troubling about this event was the unusual amount of top military figures in Derry during the incident as well as the British Army’s intense anticipation of the protest. No reason was ever given for the ban. Perhaps it was that the British Army was given misleading information about what the protestors were up to.[vii] It was a grave error on part of the British and is still subject to much controversy, as no formal apology has ever been made. The reaction to the deaths of thirteen people that day was extremely violent. In the Republic of Ireland, the Gardaí (Irish Policemen) simply avoided a mob which proceeded to burn down the British embassy in Dublin. The Saville inquiry, a committee appointed to examine the events of the massacre, was expected to return with a ruling in late 2009, but has delayed its report to late 2010. It is no surprise that this event villainized the British army. Bloody Sunday was also used as a recruitment tool by the IRA. So many felt angered by the events that they felt compelled to join. They fell into what Louise Richardson called a “desire for revenge.”[viii] Not only did IRA members feel the need to retaliate against the atrocities, but civilians did as well. These were not the deaths of IRA guerillas wearing balaclavas, but these were students and parents in street clothes. The message sent by the British Army that day did not resonate well in the Catholic community.
The unilateral internment, known as Operation Demetrius, was a decision made by Stormont (the former Northern Ireland seat of government, which was controlled by protestants) to detain, indefinitely, terrorist suspects. What made this issue terribly controversial and so opposed by republicans in the north was that the legislation, intended to bring in all terrorist suspects, only targeted the IRA. The Ulster Defense Force, a protestant paramilitary organization, was ignored despite being the instigators of most of the violence.[ix] 350 were detained in an early morning raid on the day the law was enacted by Brain Faulkner, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Twelve people, including two women, died in the early raids as objects of suspicion, but no concrete evidence was given for the lawful detainment of the 350 original detainees and the 200 that would follow. The experiment proved to be a last gasp of an organization in its death throes. Britain had urged Faulkner to detain a few members of the UVF to maintain an air of equality, but the Prime Minister ignored any warnings. Since Faulkner and Stormont were unable to bring Northern Ireland under control, parliament was prorogued later that year. Self-governance in Northern Ireland ended in 1973. The situation had proved to be far too complicated for anything less than direct English intervention.
Another disastrous aspect to the internment was the violation of the Human Rights agreements made by the British government with other European powers. The British Army was accused of depriving detainees of sleep, implementing a starvation diet, making prisoners stand spread eagle against walls for hours at a time, submitting them to continuous and monotonous noise, and hooding detainees except during interrogation. The five techniques were in direct violation of article three of the Convention on Human Rights.[x] However, the court did not actually visit the barracks where the accused were being held. The court ruled that the techniques were not used in the context stated in article three and dismissed the case. The North Irish, however, did not so easily forget. Recruitment numbers shot up once again and the IRA had become an object of pity.
The Falls Road curfew (or Rape of the Falls as it is known by the local inhabitants) of June 1972, the induction of unilateral internment in August 1971, and the Bloody Sunday Massacre of 30 January 1972 have all played into the hand of the IRA by generating support which has not been seen since the Anglo-Irish war of 1916-1921. These were intended police actions by the British government which hoped to prevent terrorist attacks and civil unrest from occurring, yet all share the common trait of having gone terribly awry. This is similar to the circumstances of the American military in Iraq, where prolonged policing in the area has caused a breakdown of stability in the region. It is difficult to decide if the IRA successful in their efforts or the constant ineptitude of the British army alienates the inhabitants. The Green Book clears this up. The IRA maintains that, “We exploit these mistakes by propagating the facts. So it was with their (The British) murderous mistakes of the Falls Road curfew, Bloody Sunday, and internment, which were exploited to our advantage support-wise…”[xi] The plague’s greatest allies are those that it feeds off of, as Camus tells us in the haunting closing sentence of his story. The problem of the IRA hides, like Camus’ plague, on book-shelves and in bedrooms. The British, those who have been charged cure the plague, have only succeeded in spreading it
[i] Albert Camus, The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays (Everyman's Library) ( New York: Everyman's Library, 2004), 272
[ii] Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2009) pg 19
[iii] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 558
[iv] Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007) pg 78
[v] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 345
[vi] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 334
[vii] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 334
[viii] Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007) pg 90
[ix] Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal and the Search for Peace (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 126
[x] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 438
[xi] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 552
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