Northern Ireland terror attacks make for uneasy St. Patrick's Day

seeking to maintain British rule over Northern Ireland, against the IRA, and other, smaller Republican paramilitaries, seeking to end British rule and reunify Ireland.

With a bare-majority of largely Protestant Unionists supporting British rule, and a rising near-majority of largely Catholic Nationalists supporting reunification with Ireland, Northern Ireland remains a society deeply divided. Residential neighborhoods are still heavily segregated; over 90 percent of schoolchildren attend sectarian schools; 15 meter (50 foot) tall Peace Walls physically separate rival urban neighborhoods; and more than 90 percent of voters support communally-based political parties.

The success of the Good Friday Agreement was to build intercommunal bridges through a power-sharing government structure, with a joint executive and proportional sharing of ministerial portfolios. The formerly overwhelmingly Protestant police force — long seen by Catholics as an instrument of Unionist oppression — was reformed and must now hire Catholics to achieve full parity.

The key bargain in the peace process was the agreement by the IRA to renounce violence, decommission its arms, and for its political wing, Sinn Fein, to join in the power sharing government. In return, the British government — backed by treaty with the government of Ireland — pledged to insure real power-sharing, and a referendum on Irish unity, when local elections indicate a nationalist majority. With the former extremes of Sinn Fein now dominating the Catholic vote and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Reverend Ian Paisley now dominating the Protestant vote, these former arch-enemies are now partners in the elected, power-sharing executive and Assembly.

The Agreements, however, left behind several loose ends in the form of marginal but angry republican dissident factions. Two small breakaway factions from the main IRA, which dubbed themselves the Continuity IRA (CIRA), and the Real IRA (RIRA), rejected the Good Friday Agreement and its power sharing as a “sellout” to British rule. Although on the fringe, and lacking any democratic support, the killings last week show that they can still be lethal.

In addition, the two largest loyalist paramilitaries, the UDA and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), were initially inconsistent in their commitment to the peace process. The political wing of the UVF, the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), has had some success electorally, and the PUP’s elected members, such as Assembly members Dawn Purvis and the late David Ervine, have helped the UVF engage and integrate into normal politics.

The larger, more fractious, and less disciplined UDA has had a harder time