LONDON (AP) – Young people have thrown bricks, fireworks and petrol bombs at police and set fire to hijacked cars and a bus during a week of violence on the streets of Northern Ireland. Police responded with rubber bullets and water cannons.
The streets were quieter Friday night, as community leaders appealed for calm after the death of Prince Philip, the 99-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth II. But small gangs of youths attacked objects at police and set fire to a car during sporadic outbreaks in Belfast.
Chaotic scenes have removed memories of decades of Catholic-Protestant conflict, known as “The Problems.” A 1998 peace agreement put an end to large-scale violence but did not resolve the deep tensions in Northern Ireland.
A look at the background to the new violence:
WHY IS NORTHERN IRELAND A COMPETITIVE LAND?
Geographically, Northern Ireland is part of Ireland. Politically it is part of the United Kingdom.
Ireland, long dominated by its larger neighbor, was liberated about 100 years ago after centuries of colonization and an awkward union. Twenty-six of its 32 counties became an independent, predominantly Roman Catholic country. Six northern counties, which have a Protestant majority, remained British.
The Catholic minority in Northern Ireland experienced discrimination in jobs, housing and other areas of the Protestant state. In the 1960s, a Catholic civil rights movement demanded change, but faced a harsh response from the government and police. Some people on the Catholic and Protestant sides formed armed groups that increased violence with bombings and shootings.
The British army was deployed in 1969, initially to keep the peace. The situation deteriorated and became a conflict between Irish Republican militants who wanted to join the south, loyal paramilitaries trying to keep British and British troops out of Northern Ireland.
During three decades of conflict, more than 3,600 people, mostly civilians, died in bombings and shootings. Most were in Northern Ireland, although the Irish Republican Army also fired bombs on London and other British cities.
HOW DID THE CONFLICT END?
In the 1990s, after secret talks and with the help of diplomatic efforts from Ireland, Britain and the United States, the fighters reached a peace agreement. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 allowed paramilitaries to lay down their arms and establish a Catholic-Protestant government to share power in Northern Ireland. The question of the final status of Northern Ireland was postponed: it will remain British as long as this is the desire of the majority, but a future referendum on reunification was not ruled out.
Although peace has largely lasted, small separate groups in the Irish Republican army have launched occasional attacks on security forces and there have been outbreaks of sectarian violence on the street.
Politically, the power-sharing agreement has had periods of success and failure. The Belfast administration collapsed in January 2017 due to a failed green energy project. He remained suspended for more than two years amid a rift between the British unionist and Irish nationalist parties over cultural and political issues, including the status of the Irish language. The Northern Ireland government resumed work in early 2020, but there is still deep mistrust on both sides.
HOW HAS THE BREXIT COMPLICATED?
Northern Ireland has been called the “problematic son” of Brexit, the UK’s divorce from the European Union. As the only part of the UK that borders an EU nation, Ireland was the most complicated issue to resolve after in 2016 Britain voted closely to leave the 27-nation bloc.
An open Irish border, over which people and goods flow freely, sustains the peace process, allowing the people of Northern Ireland to feel at home in both Ireland and the UK.
The British Conservative government’s insistence on a “tough Brexit” that pulled the country out of the EU’s economic order meant the creation of new barriers and controls on trade. Both Britain and the EU agreed that the border could not be in Ireland because of the risk posed by the peace process. The alternative was to put it, metaphorically, in the Irish Sea, between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
This agreement has alarmed British unionists, who claim it is weakening Northern Ireland’s place in the UK and may strengthen Irish reunification petitions.
WHY IS VIOLENCE BREAKING NOW?
Violence has largely occurred in Protestant areas of the second city of Belfast and Northern Ireland, Londonderry and its environs, although riots have spread to Catholic neighborhoods.
Britain left the EU’s economic embrace on 31 December and new trade agreements quickly became irritating to unionists in Northern Ireland who want to remain in the UK The first trade problems, exacerbated by the pandemic of coronavirus, caused some empty supermarket shelves, which fed the alarm. Border personnel were temporarily removed from Northern Ireland ports in February after a threat of graffiti targeting port workers appeared.
There was anger because British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had long insisted there would be no new trade controls as a result of Brexit, had downplayed the magnitude of the changes in leaving the EU. Some in the British loyalist community in Northern Ireland feel as if their identity is under threat.
“Many loyalists believe that, de facto, Northern Ireland has ceased to be part of the UK as it was,” University of Ulster policy professor Henry Patterson told Sky News.
Unionists are also angry at the police decision not to prosecute IRA-linked Sinn Fein party politicians who attended the funeral of a former Irish Republican Army commander in June, despite coronavirus restrictions.
Meanwhile, illegalized armed groups continue to operate as criminal drug gangs and continue to exert influence in working-class communities, although major paramilitaries have denied involvement in the recent riots.
Many of those involved in the violence were teenagers and even children up to 12 years old. They grew up after the problems, but live in areas where poverty and unemployment remain high and where sectarian divisions have not been cured. Two decades after the Good Friday peace agreement, the concrete “walls of peace” still separate the Catholic and Protestant areas of the Belfast working class.
The coronavirus pandemic has added new layers of economic damage, educational disruptions and blockage-induced boredom.
Despite calls for peace from political leaders in Belfast, London, Dublin and Washington, the knot of problems can be difficult to resolve.
“These are areas of multiple deprivation with the feeling of not losing much,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast. “And when (people) mobilize through social media by telling them, ‘Enough is enough, now is the time to defend Ulster,’ then many of them (too many) respond to that.” .