a power-sharing cabinet that includes Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing. The deal broke a 19-month stalemate over implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and restored self- government to Northern Ireland for the first time in a generation. But it’s still far too early to celebrate.
The new deal will be tested soon–and often. That’s partly because unionist good will has a strict, three-month timetable: the UUP’s ruling body will vote again in February on whether unionists should remain in the executive cabinet. If the IRA, which has killed nearly 2,000 people in its quest for Irish unity, hasn’t relinquished some of its guns by then, the fledgling government will likely implode. The unionists could well withdraw, and the British government reassert its control over Ulster. Back to square one.
What are the odds of that? At this point, the IRA has only appointed “a representative” to discuss disarmament with the international body handling the issue. But suppose for a moment the unimaginable happens, and the IRA yields its entire arsenal, estimated by security forces at 100 tons of weaponry and three tons of plastic explosives. Even then, coexistence with Sinn Fein, never mind full-fledged cooperation, would be trying for the unionists.
To many unionists, any member of Sinn Fein is an ex-terrorist. They might have a point–security forces have long held the unproved conviction that Martin McGuinness and other Sinn Fein members were in the IRA. A day after the unionists voted to concede the arms issue, McGuinness, asked by a TV interviewer whether he might be appointed the IRA’s decommissioning liaison, had to stifle a smile. “No, I am not a member of the IRA,” he deadpanned. When McGuinness was subsequently named education minister in the new government, arch-unionist the Rev. Ian Paisley castigated his moderate Protestant colleagues. “They have hand-ed over the education of your children, from day one until they graduate, to IRA/Sinn Fein,” he boomed.
Paisley’s indignation may be over the top–he’s regarded even by many Protestants as Northern Ireland’s version of the “honest bigot”–but unionist skepticism is understandable. Republicans like Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams say they want “to remove the gun from Irish politics.” But Martin Ferris, a member of Sinn Fein’s negotiating team, recently told Irish-Americans in St. Louis that the IRA would have no reason to disarm once in government. And the IRA’s view on decommissioning, as inferred from standard Sinn Fein rhetoric, is only slightly more subtle: in order to completely disarm, the republicans demand radical police reform and a full withdrawal of British troops from the territory. Unionists are unlikely to agree to either demand–unless the IRA decommissions. Catch-22.
How to escape this vicious cycle? One proposal would put IRA weapons “beyond use” in the Irish Republic and the procedure overseen by an international authority. But unionists, the IRA or both might find this arrangement unsatisfactory. For IRA true believers, implicitly recognizing the legitimacy of British rule in Northern Ireland, as the IRA did in accepting the Good Friday Agreement, was a huge concession; disarmament would be a further blow to their dignity. They also argue that the IRA ceasefire–generally intact since 1997–should be proof enough of peaceful intentions.
The ongoing sparring over disarmament doesn’t mean the Good Friday Agreement will fail. Keep in mind that the process, with all of its ups and downs, has kept a relative peace. Since the IRA and loyalist ceasefires of autumn 1994, deaths related to political violence have dropped from an average of about 100 a year to fewer than 15. Moreover, even total disarmament would not affect the IRA’s ability to rearm and improvise. The group still has weapons-procurement networks in the United States and elsewhere, and it can build a devastating bomb with weed killer and a stolen car.
Decommissioning is not really about security for either unionists or republicans. Its significance is mainly symbolic. As with so much in Northern Ireland, both sides want to be remembered, many years hence, as the winners of the conflict. They’d be better advised to aim for a future without any losers. If the IRA wants unionists to cast off their famous “siege mentality,” it’s time for the IRA to stop besieging them.
