Critique

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In the Shadow of the Gun: 'Not-War-Not-Peace' and the Future of Conflict in

Northern Ireland
Jeffrey A. Sluka
Critique of Anthropology 2009 29: 279
DOI: 10.1177/0308275X09104086
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Article

In the Shadow of the Gun

Not-War-Not-Peace and the Future of Conflict
in Northern Ireland
Jeffrey A. Sluka
Massey University, New Zealand
Abstract Despite over fifteen years of peace process, political violence in
Northern Ireland has continued and a situation characterised as not-war-not
peace has prevailed. In the euphoria surrounding the establishment of the
power-sharing government in 2007, the media reported this event as representing the end of the troubles or conflict. However, significant political violence
has continued throughout the peace process and the heavily armed Loyalist
paramilitaries, unlike the IRA, have not begun to disarm and have no intention
to do so, despite this being a fundamental requirement of the peace process.
They are reserving the option and are fully prepared to return to violence in
response to any movement towards a united Ireland, and this threat is growing
because Catholic-nationalists will become a voting majority in the province over
the next decade or so. This paper argues that there is no peace in Northern
Ireland now, that the peace process has not been successfully completed, and
that the prognosis for the future of the gun and political violence in Northern
Ireland is not good. History and Protestant political culture strongly suggest that
the most likely future scenario is a resurgence of Loyalist violence and a renewed
paramilitary campaign, rather than a real and lasting peace.
Keywords ethnography paramilitaries peace process politics violence
We have now entered the end phase of our struggle. I believe that we have
begun the countdown to a united Ireland. . . . Those who attempt to interpret
our participation in implementing the Agreement as dilution of our determination to achieve Irish unity and independence could not be more mistaken.
(Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness, April 2007)1
Under DUP stewardship, unionists are now confident that the Union is secure.
(DUP leader Ian Paisley, July 2007)2

Despite 14 years of peace process in Northern Ireland, political violence

has continued and a situation characterized as not-war-not peace has
prevailed there. While the guns have been relatively silent since the war
ended, and hundreds of lives that would have otherwise been snuffed out
in the endemic ethno-nationalist conflict have undoubtedly been saved,
political violence has continued, though at a reduced rate. However, in the
local elections in May 2005 the extremist parties emerged as the two main
Vol 29(3) 279299 [DOI:10.1177/0308275X09104086]
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Critique of Anthropology 29(3)

Figure 1 Sinn Fein 32-county United Ireland t-shirt, 2007, with the
traditional republican Gaelic slogan Our day will come

Figure 2

Loyalist paramilitary mural, Belfast 2001 (from Rolston, 2003: 40)

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Sluka: In the Shadow of the Gun

parties, with Sinn Fein consolidating their position as the leading party on
the nationalist side over the SDLP, and Ian Paisleys Democratic Unionist
Party (DUP) eclipsing the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) for the first time,
becoming the major unionist party:
DUP
Sinn Fein
UUP
SDLP

182 seats, up 52 (29.6%, up 8.2%)

126 seats, up 18 (23.2%, up 2.7%)
115 seats, down 40 (18%, down 5.2%)
101 seats, down 16 (17.4%, down 1.9%)

Following these elections, Paisley announced that they represented the

burial of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement on which the peace process is
based, and he ruled out a return to a power-sharing assembly. Opinion polls
and the local elections confirmed that Northern Ireland was a completely
polarized society where the two communities were drifting even further
apart, with a hardening of attitudes as indicated in growing support for the
most militant parties.
Up until the beginning of 2007, unionist politicians repeatedly delayed
the peace process by refusing to participate with the elected representatives
of the Catholic-nationalist community in the power-sharing governmental
institutions established as the key element of the peace process. Their final
major demand, which was used to hold up the peace process for over a
decade, was for unilateral Irish Republican Army (IRA) disarmament,
outside of the peace process agreement. In order to break the stalemate
and compel unionist politicians to accept and enact their obligation under
the peace agreement to participate with Catholics in a democratic local
government for Northern Ireland, in the summer of 2005 the IRA, after
more than a quarter century of guerrilla warfare aimed at achieving a
united Ireland, unilaterally declared that their armed struggle was over,
and they subsequently disarmed and disbanded. This was verified by the
Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) in
September 2005. While the rest of the world celebrated this historic occurrence and optimistic commentators suggested that it signified that the
troubles were over and the gun had finally gone from Irish politics,
Protestant-unionist politicians responded negatively, and continued to
refuse to share political power or sit in elected bodies with the Sinn Fein
politicians who represent the majority of the Catholic community.
At the end of January 2007, Sinn Fein endorsed the Northern Ireland
police service (PSNI), and Paisley finally conceded that the major preconditions for unionist engagement with Sinn Fein had been met. He said
that this proved that the union was assured, and this paved the way for the
establishment of the power-sharing assembly. In May, two years after the
IRA disarmed, the power-sharing executive was finally established. Despite
the IRA cessation of armed struggle and the establishment of this new
government, the loyalist paramilitaries continued to refuse to begin to
disarm, and appear to have little intention of doing so, despite this being
a fundamental requirement of the peace process. This is because they are

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Critique of Anthropology 29(3)

reserving the option and are fully prepared to return to violence in

response to any hint of movement towards a united Ireland. This has always
been the fundamental raison detre for their existence in the first place,
and support for this position not only still exists but is growing because
movement towards a united Ireland is inevitable as Catholic-nationalists
become a voting majority in the province over the next decade or so.
This article argues that there is no peace in Northern Ireland now, that
the peace process has not been successfully completed, and that the prognosis for the future of the gun and political violence in Northern Ireland
is not good. History and Ulster-Protestant political culture strongly suggest
that the most likely future scenario is a resurgence of loyalist violence and
a renewed paramilitary threat, rather than a real and lasting peace.
In what follows, I review the main aspects of ongoing conflict during
the peace process years, which demonstrates that the situation has not been
one of peace but rather not-war-not-peace a semi-permanent state of
peace process, which is somewhere between war and peace but not peace
itself and present a prognosis for the future of conflict in Northern
Ireland. My main conclusion is that because the peace process has not
addressed the fundamental cause of the conflict and both sides believe it
leads to their mutually exclusive political aspirations as expressed in the
opening quotes above there is a high statistical probability for increasing
conflict and even a return to war in the near future, as Catholics become
the majority in Northern Ireland and move inevitably towards a united
Ireland. I believe that this is the main reason the loyalist paramilitaries have
not disarmed:3 it was the direct threat of UVF/Protestant violence which
led to partition in 1920 in the first place; loyalist violence always underpinned Protestant domination after that; and loyalist paramilitaries and
their supporters remain today fully prepared to resort to whatever violence
is necessary in the future in order to maintain the union and prevent a
united Ireland and this is regardless of power-sharing or any other political arrangement which is made in Northern Ireland.

Not-war-not-peace: political violence during the peace

process, 19942007
The new ethnography of war is based on studying civilian experiences in
war zones, particularly where as in Northern Ireland war becomes a
normal part of life rather than an exceptional event that disrupts it. This
new perspective investigates how the inhabitants of war zones adapt to
living under trying conditions and how culture and social relations are
transformed as a result (see Lubkemann, 2008; Nordstrom, 2004; Richards,
2005). The contemporary anthropological approach to studying war
perceives war as a social project, and advocates that we should not make a
categorical distinction between war and peace but think in terms of a

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Sluka: In the Shadow of the Gun

continuum. This allows us to recognize the important new insights that

many wars are long periods of uneasy peace interrupted by occasional
eruptions of violence; war is often a state of mind shared among participants, peace can often be more violent and dangerous than war, and
fighting often draws upon the social and organizational skills people deploy
to sustain peace (Richards, 2005).
This article builds on an earlier publication on the peace process up
until 2005 titled Silent but Still Deadly: Guns and the Peace Process in
Northern Ireland (Sluka, 2007), which, like this article, started with two
diametrically opposed quotes: The gun of the IRA has been taken out of
Irish politics (Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, 26 September 2005) and
The gun has not gone out of Irish politics (DUP leader, Reverend Ian
Paisley, 26 September 2005). There, I introduced Carolyn Nordstroms
concept of not-war-not-peace as a model for describing and understanding the nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland during the peace process
years since 1993. Nordstrom writes:
There is a political reality we do not have a name for. In Angola, I have heard
people call it a time of not-war-not-peace. Essentially, it is a time when military
actions occur that in and of themselves would be called war or low-intensity
warfare, but are not so labelled because they are hidden by a peace process no
one wants to admit is failing. (2004: 1667)

Today, there are many ongoing peace processes, including in the

Philippines, Mexico, Indonesia, Burma, Kashmir, India, Northern Ireland,
Palestine, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Angola, Mozambique, Sudan,
Somalia, Congo, Uganda, Djibouti, Eritrea, Cte dIvoire, Nagorno
Karabakh, Sri Lanka and a number of other places around the world.
Nordstrom argues that many of these contexts represent a kind of surreal,
liminal political space which is neither war nor peace. There is still violence,
and many of the conditions that obtained during the war years continue,
largely unchanged or only slightly modified. The soldiers and paramilitaries are still there, they are still armed, and they still operate,
organize, recruit, train and acquire new weapons. The informal and illegal
networks (e.g. the black market or underground economy) developed
during the war still operate. The political issues that underlie the conflict
remain largely unresolved, but an illusion of peace is maintained; it is not
real peace, but it is more peaceful, so to speak, than it was during the war.
Nordstrom argues that peace, like war, becomes institutionalized and
bureaucratized. This scenario helps to explain why countries undergo
round after round of political violence; why war keeps breaking out time
and again. In a very real sense, it is the same war, a war that never ended
except on paper (2004: 170).
In spite of the peace process, between the paramilitary ceasefires in
1994 and 2007, a reduced level of political violence continued in Northern
Ireland. Not all of the armed groups declared ceasefires and even those

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that did were responsible for continuing violence. In particular, despite

officially maintaining their ceasefires, the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) were responsible for
sectarian attacks in which Catholics were killed and injured, and loyalists
killed and injured each other in a series of inter-paramilitary feuds.
Deaths from political violence during the peace process, 19942007
The figures listed below include fatalities only not those injured or who
escaped injury in politically motivated attacks. The most conservative
figures come from Amnesty International Annual Reports (19952008):
1994:
1995:
1996:
1997:
1998:
1999:
2000:
2001:
2002:
2003:
2004:
2005:
2006:
2007:

From IRA ceasefire 31 August: 3 (2 by loyalists, 1 by republicans)

9 (4 by loyalists, 5 by republicans)
15 (4 by loyalists, 11 by republicans)
19 (14 by loyalists, 5 by republicans)
55 (19 by loyalists, 36 by republicans)4
8 (4 by loyalists, 4 by republicans)
18 (15 by loyalists, 3 by republicans)
19 (14 by loyalists, 5 by republicans)
12 (8 by loyalists, 4 by republicans)
12 (8 by loyalists, 4 by republicans)
4 (3 by loyalists, 1 by republicans)
12 (9 by loyalists, 3 by republicans)
4 (3 by loyalists, 1 by republicans)
3 up to October (3 by republicans)

The figures show a total of at least 193 deaths (107 by loyalists, 86 by

republicans). Higher figures are presented by British Irish Rights Watch
(2007), which identifies up to 240 conflict-related deaths during the peace
process to July 2007, and the CAIN Web Service (2007), which identifies up
to 263 to March 2007. That indicates an average of from 16 to 22 deaths per
year from political violence since peace replaced war in Northern Ireland.
There also continued to be a large number of politically motivated
punishment shootings and beatings by paramilitary groups of people
within their own communities during the peace process years. While there
was a gradual decline in the number of republican punishment attacks until
they ceased after the IRA disbanded in 2005, this was offset by a large
increase in the number of such attacks by loyalists.
Punishment shootings and beatings, 19952005
The figures listed below are from Amnesty International Annual Reports
(19962007).
1995:
1996:

Reports of shootings and beatings increased, but no figures

provided.
151 by loyalists, 175 by republicans.

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1997:
1998:
1999:
2000:
2001:
2002:
2003:
2004:
2005:
2006:
2007:

150 shootings and 72 beatings; breakdown not provided.

More than 200 shootings and beatings; breakdown not provided.
138 by loyalists, 68 by republicans.
136 shootings and 132 beatings; breakdown not provided.
212 by loyalists, 119 by republicans.
206 by loyalists, 106 by republicans.
203 by loyalists, 101 by republicans.
An average two shootings and two to three Catholic victims of
sectarian assaults every week; breakdown not given.
Shootings and beatings by paramilitary groups continued.
Figures not provided.
Figures not yet available.

In 1995, the year following the ceasefires, there were no reported punishment shootings by republicans and only three by loyalists. Beatings,
however, increased by over 300 percent, and this trend continued until, in
2000, the recorded number of punishment shootings (136) exceeded the
number of beatings (132). This increase was partly explained by the failure
of the British government to rule that punishment shootings and beatings
were breaches of the ceasefire. In the years following the signing of the
Good Friday Agreement up to the end of 2005, the number of loyalist
punishment attacks has been greater than the number or republican
attacks in each year, and, between 1999 and 2005, loyalist paramilitaries
accounted for 65 percent of punishment beatings and 69 percent of shootings. During that period there was a gradual reduction in such punishments, and in 2006 the number was at its lowest since the 1994 ceasefires.
This was mainly because the IRA ceased punishment attacks after they
formally ended their armed struggle in July 2005. However, while it
appears that paramilitary punishments are on the decrease, other forms of
violence have been on the increase.
Besides these killings, shootings and beatings, there were a few fatal
and hundreds of non-fatal sectarian attacks, nearly all against Catholics.
The everyday forms of sectarian violence against Catholics in Northern
Ireland continued, either in spite of or because of the peace process. This
included lynching and beatings of Catholics by loyalist mobs; vandalism,
stone-throwing, and petrol and nail-bomb attacks against Catholic homes,
schools, churches, businesses and sports facilities; ethnic cleansing, where
Catholics were intimidated from their homes; and attacks on Catholic
children travelling to and from school. The rioting and sectarian violence
against Catholics that have traditionally marked the Orange Order
marching season in July and August not only continued each year but
actually increased compared to before the peace process. The peace
process years have been marked by increasing sectarian attacks against
Catholics, apparently a sign of Protestant alienation from and anger with
the peace process.5

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In 2008, despite nearly a decade and a half of the peace process and
ceasefires, all of the armed parties to the conflict continued to be active in
some form. The security forces had only partially demilitarized their
operations, and none of the paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, with
the notable exception of the IRA, have disarmed or disbanded.
Armed groups in Northern Ireland, 2007
All of these groups including the British security forces are required to
either demilitarize (security forces) or disarm completely (paramilitaries)
as part of the peace process agreement:
Republican (Catholic):
Irish National Liberation Army (INLA): On ceasefire, but has not disarmed
or disbanded.
Real IRA (RIRA): Small breakaway group, responsible for disastrous premature bomb explosion in Omagh in 1998 which killed 29 and injured
hundreds. Nearly inactive, but in 2007 increased their low-level
campaign of mostly hoax and incendiary bomb attacks.
Continuity IRA (CIRA): Even smaller breakaway group. Like RIRA, also
began to escalate in 2007.6
Loyalist (Protestant)
Ulster Defence Association: On ceasefire, but violence against Catholics has
continued, and feuds with other loyalist paramilitary groups have
increased. Split into two factions following a feud in 2007.
Ulster Volunteer Force: Like UDA. In May 2007 they issued a statement
declaring an end to their military activities and that their arms had
been put beyond use, but this was considered a stunt since they did
not engage with the disarmament commission and a new UVF hit-list
targeting republicans was discovered the previous month.
Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF): Like UDA, but claimed to have stood
down at end of 2005 in response to end of IRA campaign.
Their associated death squads Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), Red
Hand Commandos, Red Hand Defenders, Protestant Action Force,
etc.: Like UDA. In 2007, the UDA claimed that they stood down the
UFF.
Security forces
British Army: At the end of July 2007 the British army officially ended their
counterinsurgency campaign in Northern Ireland, although a permanent military garrison of 5000 troops will remain.
Royal Irish Rifles (formerly Ulster Defence Regiment): The locally
recruited Ulster Protestant battalions were gradually being disbanded.
Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI); partly reformed and partly demilitarized.

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Sluka: In the Shadow of the Gun

Two major events are indicative of the loyalist violence that has
increased during the peace process years. In 1998, violence flared in
Northern Ireland before and after the adoption of the Good Friday Peace
Accord. In July, violence erupted during protests by the Protestant Orange
Order and other groups over the Parades Commissions decision to re-route
a Protestant march away from a Catholic neighbourhood in Portadown, and
three Catholic boys aged 8, 9 and 10 were killed when their home was firebombed by loyalists. In September 2005, another wave of rioting and intense
street violence by Protestant mobs and paramilitaries swept Belfast and
other towns in Northern Ireland as unionists expressed their anger over
developments in the peace process. UVF units fired on the police, and their
supporters threw petrol and blast bombs and hijacked and burned vehicles,
after PSNI raids as part of an investigation into a UVF show of strength.
This occurred five days before a controversial Orange Order march in west
Belfast, which the UVF insisted it would push through a flashpoint area
despite being banned from doing so by the Parades Commission. The
violence was organized by the UVF and UDA. Following this, the British
government declared that they still recognized the UDA ceasefire, but no
longer accepted that the UVF was observing theirs.

Progress and ongoing issues and conflicts in the peace process

Since I published my previous article on the peace process up to 2005,
there has been some progress but also significant continuing violence and
difficulties with the peace process. On the positive side, in May 2007 the
new power-sharing assembly was finally launched, with DUP leader Ian
Paisley as First Minister and Sinn Feins Martin McGuinness as Deputy First
Minister. This was remarkable, given that up until then Paisley had insisted
that the Good Friday Agreement on which the peace process is based was
dead and that the DUP would never sit in government with what they
termed Sinn Fein/IRA. So it was stunning that, in May 2007, Paisley was
sworn in as First Minister in the power-sharing government with Sinn Fein,
declaring his new-found conviction that it would lead to peace and prosperity in the province. He said that it was now time to move on from the
conflict and put the past behind us, and that I can say to you today that I
believe Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate
will no longer rule. How good it will be to be part of the wonderful healing
in this province today.7 In the lead-up to the new power-sharing assembly,
in March Paisley was photographed with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams,
and following the establishment of the assembly he was photographed
with Martin McGuinness. The symbolic importance in the minds of the
unionists of Paisley sitting with Sinn Fein leaders and the DUP working
with Sinn Fein was powerful. To many DUP supporters it was unthinkable,
even unbelievable. The media and others emphasized the symbolism of

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Critique of Anthropology 29(3)

Figure 3 Northern Ireland: former arch-foes, Ian Paisley and Martin

McGuinness, share power in the new provincial government (US News &
World Report, 21 May 2007: 26)
this rapprochement, but this development caused serious division among
unionists.
The other good news is that on 31 July 2007 all British military personnel in Northern Ireland were recalled to their barracks, bringing an end to
the longest continuous campaign in British army history. Although a
permanent British military garrison of 5000 troops will remain, this move
was seen as publicly bringing an end to the military counterinsurgency
campaign in which 763 members of the British forces died. During the war
years, the British army, including the Ulster Defence Regiment, normally
had about 18,00020,000 troops in the province.
However, on the negative side, there have been so-called negative
peace dividends and serious ongoing conflicts and issues in the peace
process. During the peace process, apparently because of the peace process,
there has been a dramatic increase in the suicide rate in Northern Ireland,
which has been blamed on a breakdown in community solidarity and loss
of a sense of purpose following the peace process. The rise in suicides has
been particularly pronounced in north and west Belfast, and matched by
increasingly anti-social behaviour by disaffected youths.8 There has also
been a dramatic rise in the use of hard drugs in Northern Ireland, as a
result of the decrease in IRA policing actions (punishments) coupled with
an increase in drug-pushing by the loyalist paramilitaries,9 and in increase
in racist and homophobic hate crimes (Monaghan, 2007).

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The main points of the 1998 Good Friday Peace Accord which are still
problematic and undermine progress towards a real and lasting peace are:
Constitutional Issues: The British and Irish governments agree;
To recognize the legitimacy of whatever choice is freely exercised by a
majority of the people of Northern Ireland with regard to its status,
whether they prefer to continue to support the Union of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland or a sovereign united Ireland.
But requires a majority in Northern Ireland consent to achieve a
united Ireland; until then, the union (status quo) will prevail.
Reconciliation and victims of violence.
Economic, social and cultural issues, including parity of esteem for both
the British and Irish traditions.
Decommissioning of paramilitary arms.
Security (demilitarization of security forces and emergency legislation).
In 2008, the main ongoing conflicts and issues in the peace process
centred on these issues, the continuing activities of both loyalist and
nationalist paramilitary groups, and political killings and punishment
shootings and beatings, as described above. Beyond this, the key points of
conflict in the peace process include the issues of loyalist arms, sectarian
attacks and inflammatory Orange Order parades, collusion between the
loyalist paramilitaries and state security forces, the status of the Irish
language and other cultural parity of esteem issues, and the use of MI5
for ongoing intelligence gathering, mostly against republicans.
Loyalist arms and paramilitaries
Throughout the peace process and since the IRA disarmament in 2005, the
loyalist paramilitaries have refused to engage in the disarmament process.
In drawing up the peace accord, the consensus on the issue of disarmament
was that it was an essential part of the peace process which required an
effort to decommission all of the guns in Irish politics, including those held
by the security forces and both the republican and loyalist paramilitaries.
The agreement was that all armed parties would gradually and verifiably
disarm simultaneously as the political institutions got up and running. An
Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) was
set up headed by retired Canadian General John de Chastelain to oversee
the disarmament process, but unionists effectively exploited this issue for
years to prevent the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement until
the IRA disarmed in 2005.
In Northern Ireland, there are 87,000 licences for 140,000 weapons
virtually all of them held by Protestants. These are not part of the decommissioning process. On top of that, there are thousands of illegal weapons
in the hands of the loyalist paramilitary groups. By the end of 2007, despite
their ceasefires, there still had been no progress towards decommissioning of loyalist arms, and none of the Protestant paramilitary groups had yet

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engaged in any meaningful fashion with the disarmament commission.

They had frequently suspended their contacts with the IICD; continued to
be involved in political violence including sectarian violence against
innocent Catholic civilians, attacks and death threats against republicans;
and widespread criminality including racketeering, drug dealing and
extortion; and they had been plagued by internal divisions and a series of
bloody feuds within and between them in which dozens died.10 In particular: in 2000 a feud in the Protestant lower Shankill Road district in Belfast
led to 13 deaths and the forced removal of up to 1000 residents as the area
sorted itself into exclusive UDA and UVF territories; a feud in 2005, when
the UVF tried to wipe out the breakaway/rival LVF, led to six deaths; and
a major new feud between rival factions of the UDA in March 2007 resulted
in a split into two organizations.
The largest paramilitary organization in Northern Ireland, the UDA
was not declared illegal until the dying days of the troubles in 1992, after
they had killed about 370 people, most of them innocent Catholics killed
in sectarian attacks; since the peace process began they have also killed a
large number of Protestants in the rash of internal feuds, many of them
their own members. It is now accepted that the British government helped
develop and sustain the UDA as a classic counter-gang acting as the states
proxy killers. Despite police reports that they were heavily involved in
extortion, drugs and other crimes, the UDA had negotiated a controversial
grant from the government for 1.2 million for a Conflict Transformation
Initiative to renovate certain loyalist areas, provided they commenced
decommissioning their arms.
In April 2007, a UDA leader ruled out weapons decommissioning
because he claimed that loyalists still feel threatened. Despite the IRA
disarmament and ending of their armed campaign, he said that the people
he represented still did not feel safe, and that decommissioning was still
not on the radar.11 That same month, a new UVF hit-list of over 150
republican murder targets was discovered. Two members of the security
forces were involved in obtaining the information from the police
computer system and delivering it to a UVF death squad, raising issues of
ongoing collusion. The following month the UVF issued a statement declaring that it was assuming a non-military civilianized role and that its arms
had been put beyond use. It said that the basis for this decision included
that the mainstream republican offensive had ended and the principle of
consent was firmly established, and thus the union was safe.12 As mentioned
above, this was widely viewed as a political stunt, because they still refused
to engage meaningfully with the IICD.
In August 2007, the government gave the UDA 60 days to begin the
decommissioning process, otherwise the Conflict Transformation Initiative
grant they ha dbeen offered would be cancelled. When the deadline passed
in October, the grant was cancelled by Social Development Minister
Margaret Ritchie, who then received a death threat from a UDA death

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squad.13 In November 2007, the UDA announced that they were standing
down their military wing (sic) the Ulster Freedom Fighters. 14 They stated
that their arms would be put beyond use, but stressed that this did not
mean they would be decommissioned.15
Sectarian violence and Orange Order marches
As noted above, sectarian attacks, mainly against Catholics, have increased
as a result of the peace process, and there have been ongoing annual
confrontations over the hundreds of sectarian Orange Order marches held
to mark the Twelfth, the anniversary of the 17th-century Battle of the
Boyne victory over Catholics. Sectarian attacks and provocative marches that
force themselves through Catholic districts, where people feel threatened
and intimidated, are everyday and annual demonstrations of anti-Catholic
bigotry, which reveal a lack of commitment to the equality required for
progress towards real and lasting peace.
Collusion and the need for a truth commission
British state agencies, such as the Northern Ireland police, are still stifling
freedom of information regarding the unfinished business of the quest
for truth concerning state killings directly through the shoot-to-kill policy
and indirectly through collusion with loyalist death squads (Rolston and
Gilmartin, 2000). In June 2007, despite the fact that Police Ombudsman
Nuala OLoan had issued a damning report on collusion between RUC
Special Branch and loyalist death squads, the Crown Public Prosecution
Service announced that no members of the Crown forces would be charged
in a number of collusion investigations. Amnesty International said the
decision represents an indictment of the administration of criminal justice
in Northern Ireland and the prosecutorial authorities, in particular.16 It is
now firmly established that collusion was part of the British governments
counterinsurgency campaign against militant republicans; British intelligence agencies armed loyalists and directed them to kill people (Sluka,
2000). Sinn Fein has called for the establishment of an international truth
commission as part of the healing process;17 this commission needs to be
independent because the British government simply cannot be trusted to
oversee investigation into its own secret dirty work. This issue is not going
to go away; for example, new shoot-to-kill hearings began in October
2007. At the beginning of November 2007, in her final press interview,
departing Police Ombudsman OLoan warned that the kind of collusion
she exposed between the British security forces and unionist paramilitaries
could happen again. She said Northern Ireland risked its future if there was
no effort to grapple with the past, and that she feared for her life following criticism by unionist politicians.18 Today, conflict resolution theory
suggests that there is a fundamental link between peace and justice, and
that seeking to resolve conflicts without providing justice is doomed to
failure.

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MI5 security issue

In October 2007, for the first time, British military intelligence (MI5) took
charge of all British security operations in Northern Ireland, assuming the
dominant role in intelligence gathering, including spying on republicans.
MI5 has operated in Ireland for many years and has carried out several
murders and bombings, including the shooting in February 1989 of Belfast
defence lawyer Pat Finucane. MI5 will not be subject to investigation by the
Ombudsmans office, and this suggests that the way is open for a recurrence
of collusion, murder and related crimes. The original Patten Report was
clear that an accountable police force should be in charge of intelligence
matters; instead unaccountable security services will lead on intelligence
policing.
Parity of esteem and the Irish-language conflict
As part of the equality agenda for peace, there is supposed to be parity of
cultural esteem between the two traditions. However, beginning in 2006,
conflict over state support for the Irish language emerged which represents
the central example symbolic of the ongoing culture war and failure of
parity of esteem in post-war Northern Ireland. The British government had
promised to introduce an Irish Language Act to help preserve the language
in Northern Ireland, but Paisley and the DUP made the Irish language a
political football by promising to veto any such legislation. They said that,
since the Ulster-Scots dialect of English received less funding than Irish, no
more funds could be allocated to Irish. The determination of unionist politicians to block recognition of the Irish language is a demonstration of antiIrish bigotry. Unlike Scotland and Wales, Northern Irelands Irish speakers
are afforded no legal protection and their rights as Irish speakers are not
recognized. After the power-sharing assembly was re-established in July 2007,
the DUP compared nationalist support for the language to a cultural war,
and the British government backed down on the proposed legislation under
unionist pressure.19 While Northern Ireland is a bicultural society, it has
always been ruled as a monocultural British province.

Conclusion: peace, war, neither or both the future

of the conflict
In 2001, the Northern Ireland census revealed major changes in the demographic structure of the population, with serious political implications for
the future. For religious background, the Northern Ireland Census of 2001
gave the following figures:
Total population:
Protestant:
Catholic:
Other and no religion:

1,685,267
895,377 (53%)
737,412 (43.8%)
52,478 (3.2%)

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Traditionally, a 1 million Protestant majority made up two-thirds of

the population and a half-million Catholic minority one-third. Now, due
to the higher Catholic birth-rate and increasing Protestant emigration,
Catholics are nearly half the population, and this trend is continuing
rapidly; by 2007, among those up to 24 years of age, Catholics were already
a majority. The clear indication is that there will be a continuous rise in the number
of voters supporting nationalist parties at the expense of unionist ones, and some
demographers predict that Catholics would be the majority and hold most elected
positions in Northern Ireland within ten years.
Thus, the main reason for the bitter conflict over the peace process20 is that
Catholics see it as a stepping stone towards a united Ireland as a process
that goes from peace, to power-sharing, to gradual movement towards a
united Ireland when they become a voting majority. This is anathema to
Ulster unionists, and explains their deep distrust of and refusal to fully
engage in the peace process. They want peace, but only on their terms; they
want to maintain partition, the union, and their dominance in Northern
Ireland, and they cannot guarantee this if they share power with Catholics,
who will soon be the majority. That explains why the loyalist paramilitaries
have not even begun the decommissioning process, and the greatest likelihood is that they will not disarm while they perceive any threat to the future
of the union. As such, despite the establishment of the power-sharing
government, the peace process will remain in doubt for the foreseeable
future.
The fact is that Northern Ireland was never intended to be a democratic polity, but rather a one-party Protestant state dedicated to maintaining unionist domination. Thus, the challenge to peace in Northern Ireland
is not the guns per se, but the same political causes that have always been
responsible for bringing the gun into Irish politics in the first place the
mutually exclusive national aspirations of Irish-Catholics and BritishProtestants, and the question of whether the north of Ireland should
remain a part of the UK or be reunited with the rest of Ireland.
The peace process in Northern Ireland has an unreal if not surreal
quality because it is based on a fundamental error namely, the notion that
one can solve a serious conflict a war while utterly ignoring its causes. The
cause of the conflict in Northern Ireland is the partition of Ireland; the fact
that the Catholic people of Northern Ireland have never consented to
being part of the UK and have never wavered in their support for a united
Ireland; and the fact that the Protestant-dominated sectarian Orange
State established after partition never made any effort to gain their
consent, instead effectively establishing a one-party Protestant dictatorship
that discriminated against them and treated them as disloyal, dangerous,
second- or even third-class citizens (Farrell, 1980).
The hard reality remains that both sides of the conflict are still
committed to mutually exclusive political aspirations and there has been
no discernible movement towards reconciling these aspirations. As the two
quotes which opened this paper indicate, in 2007, at the time when the new

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power-sharing government was finally established, the Unionist parties

insisted that this secured or guaranteed the union, while at the same time
Sinn Fein insisted that it guaranteed a united Ireland. In April 2007, Sinn
Feins Martin McGuinness told an annual Easter Rising commemoration
that the countdown to a united Ireland was under way, and that Sinn Fein
was:
. . . the only party with the courage to say it aloud, and encourage proper
management of the transition. Those who attempt to interpret our participation in implementing the Agreement as a dilution of our determination to
achieve Irish unity and independence could not be more mistaken.

He also stressed that as republicans entered the final lap in the journey
towards a united Ireland, they must try to understand the anxieties of
unionists for whom such change was a terrifying prospect.21 Sinn Fein has
told their supporters that the peace agreement and power-sharing assembly
are part of a transition to a united Ireland in time for the centenary of the
1916 Easter Rising. That would be 2016, within a decade from today. This,
of course, is utterly unacceptable to Ulster Protestants, who will soon be a
minority.
Most of the media reporting on the peace process has observed that it
seeks to align or somehow reconcile the conflicting aspirations of Ulsters
Protestant majority, who want to remain part of the United Kingdom, with
those of its large Catholic minority, who yearn for united Ireland.22
However, within a decade, that will be reversed and it will be the mutually
exclusive political aspirations of Ulsters Catholic majority and its large
Protestant minority. This represents a fundamental reversal of the political
status quo in Northern Ireland, and a democracy on that basis will inevitably mean movement towards a united Ireland and future conflict over
the same issue the conflict has always been about namely, the partition of
Ireland. What will be the reaction of the loyalist paramilitaries to that
emerging scenario: peace or war? As the loyalist peace process mural
(Figure 2) indicates, their paramilitaries are prepared for both. As long
as they were the majority, Ulster unionists always claimed to be great
believers in democracy: will they have the same commitment to democracy when they become a minority and face the growing challenge to
them threat of impending Irish reunification?
The establishment of the power-sharing assembly in May 2007 was
greeted with optimism and even euphoria, and many media commentators
stated that it symbolized that the conflict in Northern Ireland was over and
peace established. This is not surprising, since DUP leader and new
Northern Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley declared that the conflict was
over23 and even Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said that the two great
traditions on this island are [now] reconciled.24
But despite the peace process, the social structure of Northern Ireland
is still characterized by ethno-national stratification, and if not for the rise
in the Catholic population, the political structure would still be one of

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domination and subordination not the equality promised by the return

to democracy in the power-sharing government. That is, the only thing that
has really changed in Northern Ireland is the demographic balance and
the consequences this is having. Northern Ireland remains essentially as
much a colonial as a postcolonial society, and is as sharply divided and
ethnically segregated as it has ever been, with more than half the population living in areas that are at least 90 percent Protestant or Catholic. An
investigation of the level of fear in north Belfast in 2003, based on data from
more than 4500 people, found that only one in 12 worked in areas where
there was a majority from the other religion, just under half (48%) were
afraid to travel for work or leisure through an area dominated by the other
side, even in daytime, and between one-third and two-thirds believed their
job opportunities were limited by fear.25 One would have thought that with
the war over there would be no more need for the peace lines, but they
are still there and in June 2007 it was announced that a new 25-foot high
security fence would be built in north Belfast to protect Catholic homes
from increasing sectarian attacks.26
Partition and the Northern Ireland Orange State were based on structural discrimination and inequality, which continues, particularly at the
level of council politics in areas such as Lisburn. The governments LabourForce Survey Religion Report published in 2007 confirmed this pattern by
showing that unemployment among Catholics remained twice that of
Protestants, despite the peace process, increasing employment, and
educational parity between the two communities.27 This is also despite
the British-introduced attempts to reform this pattern 10 years after the
equality provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, almost 20 years after
the 1989 Fair Employment Act, and 30 years after a similar Act in 1976. The
peace process agenda is aimed at equality but the raison detre of partition is the maintenance of Protestant domination, and there is little
evidence that Protestants have any real commitment to equality with
Catholics. One recent sign of this since the establishment of the powersharing assembly occurred in May 2007, when unionists defeated a
Sinn Fein motion calling for new equality legislation. The DUP opposed
the legislation on the grounds that previous equality legislation had
discriminated against Protestants, such as the requirement for balanced
recruitment into the civil service and police.28
Bernadette McAliskey is one of the few who have commented on the
surreal nature of the peace processs avoidance of the fundamental cause
of the conflict, and reminds us of what most seem to have forgotten when
she observed that:
For now, at any rate, the war is over. War, however, is a limited military exercise.
The real question that reigns is not about the war, which was a consequence,
rather than a cause. The real question is left unanswered, temporarily
forgotten. It is about equal rights, human rights and fundamental freedoms. It
was the [civil rights] campaign for these things that descended into war for
many reasons too well rehearsed to deserve space here.29

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Similarly, Mick Hall has argued that the peace process:

. . . was never designed to resolve the core issue that brought about the conflict
in the first place the continued presence of the British state in Northern
Ireland and the undemocratic statelet they established; instead, its purpose
has been to close down militant opposition while willing these conflicts to future
generations, in the process maintaining the status quo, whilst placing the blame for
the conflict on the victims of the occupying power those who resisted the
undemocratic partition of Ireland. (emphasis added)30

The fundamental issue at hand is that the peace process is based on

equality, consent and justice, but Protestants and Catholics have fundamentally conflicting notions of what these mean. For Protestants, equality
and consent mean something akin to biculturalism in the sense that
decisions about the future of the province must be supported by both
communities, and not just by a majority of the population of Northern
Ireland as a whole. That is, by consent they mean exclusively their consent,
and not that of Catholics, and they do not support biculturalism in the
sense of parity of esteem that is, equal respect and rights for both of the
peoples, cultures, or traditions involved. Unionist politicians apparently
have no interest in supporting Irish culture and identity (parity of
esteem), and they continue to reject any recognition of or support for the
Irish language or any Irish cultural tradition.31 The culture war over the
Irish language is just one obvious manifestation of this. For Catholics,
consent means the traditional form of democracy that is, that decisions
must be supported by a majority of the population of the province as a
whole and equality means equal respect and treatment of both traditions.
Thus, we can see what the grounds for future conflict are going to be.
There is good reason to believe that Ulster unionists have no real commitment to democracy if it cannot guarantee the union, and they have
demonstrated that they do not support cultural equality. Conflict is likely
to increase rather than decrease as this becomes apparent in the next
decade in response to Catholic moves towards a united Ireland.
Critical analysis reveals that the current peace is based on a fundamental deceit: that is, the fact that both sides of the conflict are convinced
that it provides a guarantee of their mutually exclusive political aspirations.
Unionists believe it guarantees the union, because they believe the principle of consent means Protestant consent, while nationalists are equally
convinced that it guarantees movement towards a united Ireland because
the British government has promised that they will abide by the wishes of
the people of Northern Ireland on the constitutional question. Nationalists presume this means all the people, not just the Protestant community,
and that no community should have a unilateral veto over the wishes of the
majority. But the British government may choose, or not, to recognize all
the people as the people of Northern Ireland. At this point, there is no
way to tell which way they will blow on this when the crunch comes, but
history would suggest that they will support the unionist position.

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The term power-share means to govern jointly, often with your

enemies. Though power-sharing helped end civil wars in El Salvador and
South Africa, broken pacts caused civil wars in places like Angola, Lebanon
and Sierra Leonne. Power-sharing really means democracy, which
Northern Ireland never really had, since it was always a one-party sectarian
(Protestant) and monocultural (British) state. In a new book, Kenneth
Bloomfield (2007) suggests that prospects for a successful polity and
tolerant community in Northern Ireland remain obscure because what
peace means has been undefined, and that genuine peace requires more
than the absence of war. Bloomfield recognizes my point, that while socalled terrorism and armed conflict have been reduced, part of the cost
has been the movement of electoral support away from moderation and
towards more militant wings of unionism (the DUP) and nationalism (Sinn
Fein). This shows that the fundamental cause of the conflict has not
changed; only its expression has moved away from violence and back
towards constitutional politics. Thus, the conflict in Northern Ireland has
not ended, but only changed, which reinforces Max Webers argument that
Conflict cannot be excluded from social life . . . peace is nothing more
than a change in the form of the conflict or in the antagonists or in the
objects of the conflict, or finally in the chances of selection (Max Weber,
cited in Coser, 1968: 232).

Notes
Portions of this article were originally presented at the annual meetings of the
American Anthropological Association, 28 November 2007.
1 Reunification Coming SF, Irish Republican News, 9 April 2007.
2 Paisley Vows to Block Irish Language Bill, Irish Republican News, 21 August
2007.
3 There are also other reasons, including criminal activity and big man politics
among competing loyalist paramilitary leaders.
4 The large number this year was mainly due to the premature bomb explosion
in Omagh which killed 29 people.
5 In 2007, there were a small number of arson attacks on Orange Halls in
retaliation for similar attacks on Catholic churches and schools.
6 The increase in RIRA and CIRA attacks on 2007 was met with large-scale
counter-terrorism operations by the Northern Ireland police (PSNI), which in
turn sparked riots and running battles with republican youths armed with
stones and petrol bombs, reminiscent of the war years.
7 History, Hype, and Hope, Irish Republican News, 8 May 2007. Paisley, heretofore
renowned as an anti-Catholic arch-bigot, also announced he had abandoned the
apocalyptic rhetoric he was once famous for, spoke out strongly against racism
and sectarianism, referred positively to his own Irish roots, expressed his willingness to work with the Irish government, and said that he had discovered that
tears have no political colour, they have no religious colour (Victims Get
Sidelined, Irish Republican News, 2 July 2007). Unfortunately, space does not

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8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31

allow more discussion here of the significance of what has been deemed by some
media commentators the New Paisleyism.
Adams Speaks Out Against Suicide, Crime, Irish Republican News, 26 September
2007.
IMC Sees Problems from IRA Stepping Down, Irish Republican News, 30 October
2006.
On the loyalist paramilitaries since the peace process see Gallaher (2007).
UDA to Remain Armed, Irish Republican News, 4 April 2007.
UVF Issue Statement on New Role, Irish Republican News, 3 May 2007.
UDA in Disarray, Irish Republican News, 6 November 2007.
In fact, a UDA death squad.
Welcome Up to a Point for UDA Move, Irish Republican News, 13 November
2007.
Collusion Killers Go Free, Irish Republican News, 25 June 2007.
No Turning Back for Truth Campaign, Irish Republican News, 14 August 2007.
Departing Ombudsman Warns of Collusion Danger, Irish Republican News,
6 November 2007.
Unionists Attack Use of Irish Language, Irish Republican News, 9 October 2007.
This and other perceptive media references such as a troubled peace process
producing a faltering transition towards something like peace are expressive
of the not-war-not-peace situation.
Reunification Coming SF, Irish Republican News, 9 April 2007.
US News & World Report, 12 April 1998.
Institutions Mark Renewal, Irish Republican News, 16 July 2007.
The Republican Party Heads North, Irish Republican News, 18 September
2007.
Eamonn McCann, Photocalls Do Not Reflect Street-level Reality, Irish Republican News, 26 April 2007.
New Peace Line Divides School, Irish Republican News, 4 June 2007.
Employment Discrimination Continues Report, Irish Republican News,
25 June 2007.
Unionists Block Equality Bill, Irish Republican News, 28 May 2007.
Bernadette McAliskey, Negotiating War and Peace, Irish Republican News,
30 October 2006.
Mick Hall, The Great Peace Swindle?, Irish Republican News, 2 October 2007.
For example, compare official support for the annual Orange Order parades
with the near total lack of support for St Patricks Day or any other Irish heritage
events.

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birw.org/Deaths%20since%20ceasefire/deaths%20since%201994.html
CAIN Web Service (2007) Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland, 19942002
by Malcolm Sutton, 20037 by Martin Melaugh, URL (consulted October
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Sluka: In the Shadow of the Gun
Coser, Lewis (1968) Conflict: Social Aspects, in D. Sills (ed.) The Encyclopaedia of
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Jeffrey Sluka is an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Massey

University, New Zealand, and a specialist on social conflict with extensive fieldwork
experience in Northern Ireland. He is the author of Hearts and Minds, Water and
Fish: Popular Support for the IRA and INLA in a Northern Irish Ghetto ( JAI Press, 1989).
He also edited Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), and co-edited (with Antonius Robben) Ethnographic Fieldwork: An
Anthropological Reader (Blackwell, 2007).

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