This is why the next few weeks will be the supreme test of the Good Friday Agreement and the political skills of all those involved. At stake is the survival of Northern Ireland’s First Minister David Trimble, and the survival of the agreement itself. Devolution Day–March 10–is rapidly approaching, technically the date when full powers are due to be devolved to the institutions set up by the agreement–the North-South Ministerial Council, cross-border bodies and the new Executive that will form the government of Northern Ireland. The deadline, however, is likely to be shunted to allow the parties more time to overcome the current impasse. Because of its size in the Assembly (it has 18 members), Sinn Fein is entitled to two seats in government, but Trimble insists he will not accept them as ministers in his cabinet unless the IRA first begins to decommission some of its vast arsenal of weapons and explosives. Was it the case, I asked Trimble, that if there was no decommissioning there would be no Sinn Fein ministers in his cabinet? “If you want to put it as simply as that, yes,” he replied.
Sinn Fein does have the letter of the agreement on its side. There is no pre-condition that says the IRA has to decommission before Sinn Fein can take its seats in government. The only obligation placed on the political parties representing the paramilitaries on both sides is that they “use any influence they may have to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years.” All Sinn Fein and its loyalist equivalents have to do is throw up their hands and say “we tried and failed” and they have fulfilled the text, if not the spirit, of the agreement.
To most outsiders, the IRA’s position is, to say the least, unreasonable. It’s seen many of its prisoners released–as have the loyalists–and the security presence scaled down in nationalist areas. Sinn Fein’s “equality” agenda is on course. So why can’t the IRA hand over a few guns and a few ounces of Semtex to break the deadlock? It could but for a combination of historical, emotional and security reasons. To the IRA, which sees itself as an undefeated army, the handing over of a single weapon would be a symbol of surrender. In the wake of its many campaigns down the century, the IRA has never decommissioned its weapons and has no intention of starting now.
The loyalist paramilitaries of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defense Association (UDA)–and its “killer” wing, the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF)–feel much the same. They are an equally important piece of the complex jigsaw of peace. Without their ceasefire and embrace of the Good Friday Agreement, we would not be where we are. Punishment beatings–a bullet through the kneecap and worse, administered by both the IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries on “criminal” elements within their own communities–have recently made headlines because of the relative absence of the bloodshed that has soaked the past 25 years. Loyalists believe, although the claim is debatable, that it was the intensification of their bloody campaign in the early ’90s that finally brought the IRA to its ceasefire and the negotiating table. In the five violent years from 1989, the UVF and UFF targeted and killed 26 members of the IRA, Sinn Fein and their families, astonishingly with a degree of inside help from the security forces who passed on confidential intelligence profiles to what republicans call the “loyalist death squads.” In the same period, loyalists also slaughtered almost five times as many innocent Catholics–the purpose being to put pressure on the nationalist community to tell the IRA to stop. Jackie McDonald, the UDA’s former commander in South Belfast, believes that it was this bloodletting by loyalist paramilitaries that stopped the IRA from winning and made the Union secure. “I think the Union is safe,” he said. “I would take great pride in thinking and saying that our organization has played a great part in this.”
So what of the loyalist arsenals, by no means all of which have been seized? Both the UVF and UDA/UFF remain adamant that they will not consider handing in any weapons until the IRA has handed in all of its own. They claim they need to hang on to them for “defensive” purposes, not only to meet any renewed IRA threat–which they think likely–but to counter attacks from the republican splinter groups of the “Real” and “Continuity” IRA. The loyalist paramilitaries, like the IRA, still see themselves as defenders of their community. They are, however, prepared to consider a policy of “no first strike.”
Having spent more than a year with them, I have no doubt they have no wish to return to the “war.” A few weeks ago, I spent an hour talking to the UVF leadership in their inner sanctum, in a small room adorned with photos of their “martyrs,” including the notorious “Shankill Butchers”–a gang of loyalist killers who carved up their victims with butchers’ knives–and a picture of Sir Edward Carson, who founded the original Ulster Volunteer Force in 1912 to resist Britain’s policy of giving a form of semi-independence to Ireland. They told me that the republican movement’s reaction to Trimble’s refusal to have Sinn Fein in the cabinet without decommissioning is the crucial indicator of the IRA’s true intentions. “If they seek judicial review through the courts or take to street protest, that’s fine,” they said. “That will show that they’re genuinely committed to democracy and peace. But if the Provos return to war, so will we.”
I had no doubt they meant it. In South Belfast, the former UFF commander, Bobby Philpott, was even blunter, warning of “war on a greater scale than any time before.” But Philpott is no warmonger. He says he’s now “retired,” having recently been released from his 15-year sentence for attempted murder as part of the Good Friday Agreement. He says he will try in his daily life “to promote the peace so we are never in a position where we even have to talk about going back to war. Politics is the way of the future. It’s time to give our children a chance.”
Given that neither the IRA nor the loyalist paramilitaries wish to give up their weapons or collapse the Good Friday Agreement, some way will have to be found to defuse the decommissioning bomb as March 10 approaches. An extended deadline or another fudge–or both–seems likely if Trimble feels he can get away with it and survive. There are two glimmers of hope. One is that Gen. John de Chastelain, the Canadian chairman of the Independent Decommissioning Body, will become the deus ex machina with a formula that guarantees that the paramilitary arsenals will remain intact but not be used: the “Rust Solution.” The other is that when all the Good Friday institutions are in place and working by the stipulated deadline of Easter 2000, the IRA may reconsider its position. This possibility was mentioned to me by one senior Sinn Fein politician. But even then, I felt he was being optimistic. The “war” may be over–at least for the time being–but peace is not yet secure.
