It was an article of faith that the Good Friday agreement would tear down the walls dividing Catholic and Protestant Northern Ireland. But five years after the historic accord, the walls have grown higher in many places.
The real walls, the ones made of corrugated steel and barbed wire that separate the Catholic and Protestant enclaves, have been reinforced in time for the summer marching season, when Protestant parades cut through Catholic neighborhoods, regularly touching off serious rioting.
PHOTO: NYT
The other walls that divide people, the ones that were to be dismantled under the 1998 accord's formula for two bitter enemies to learn to share power, also remain. Community activists say that, although life is undeniably better than before, the institutions that sprung from the accord have failed to bridge Northern Ireland's deep sectarian divide.
PHOTO: NYT
With yet another political crisis effectively suspending the political institutions forged out of the agreement, many here feel that all sides need to go beyond politics if this divided society is to knit itself together. For now, even the real walls, with their new 3m extensions of wire mesh, can do little to stop the rocks and Molotov cocktails and slurs from coming over the divide with regularity.
The most imposing of these barriers -- referred to here with Orwellian irony as "peace walls" -- stretches for 3km along Springfield Road, dividing West Belfast's Falls Road neighborhood from Shankill Road. Falls Road is a predominantly Catholic community; Shankill Road is mostly Protestant.
Tommy Gorman and Noel Large come from opposite sides of that divide. Gorman, born Catholic, supports the Irish nationalist pledge to force the British out of the six northern counties and unite the island as one republic. Large, born Protestant, is a British loyalist who thinks the province should remain under the crown.
Once mortal enemies in the 30-year sectarian conflict that has claimed 3,352 lives, Gorman and Large now work together to try to defuse the threat of summer violence. They successfully handled their first challenge last weekend in the Protestant Orange Order's Whiterock parade, which cuts along the Catholic side of the Springfield Road.
That was a huge improvement over last summer, when the Whiterock parade sparked some of the worst rioting in recent years. Last year, nationalists were furious that loyalist marchers were permitted to enter the Catholic neighborhood along Springfield Road. Violence broke out, and police moved in with water cannons and rubber bullets. Twenty-six police officers and 50 civilians were injured.
The story of how Gorman and Large have worked together to make sure such violence does not recur this summer indicates just how far Northern Ireland has come since 1998 and how much farther it has to go if the two sides are to achieve a lasting peace.
Even in the shadows of the walls, people would agree with Gorman and Large that things are better now than they were before the peace deal. Far fewer funeral corteges for "martyrs" wind through Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. There are signs of an improving economy. Important reforms of the police force are underway. Several inquiries are unearthing injustices of the past. Hundreds of prisoners on both sides have been released.
The pace of life is no longer dictated by street violence and bombings. That means more freedom of movement, especially for young people. As the threat of sectarian hatred fades, Belfast's once boarded-up city center is bustling with life. The huge plate-glass windows in a recently completed waterfront development reflect public confidence that the Irish Republican Army's bombing campaign is over.
Still, few would call this a real peace.
Fundamental differences between the two communities have not changed: Protestant unionists and loyalists want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom; Catholic nationalists and republicans want the province to be part of a united Ireland free of British rule. Segregation in housing, schools, and the workplace remains the order of the day.
The British military presence, though less visible, still pervades the city. Loyalist paramilitaries cling to their guns and their creed: "No surrender." The IRA has not fully decommissioned its stockpiles of weapons and has not convinced the British government that a vaguely worded statement in April represented a genuine end to its armed uprising.
The Good Friday accord defined a sweeping new set of power-sharing relationships among the British and Irish governments and the political parties in Northern Ireland. The framework was accepted in a referendum in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in May 1998. The first elections of the new Northern Ireland Assembly were held one month later, restoring local government after 26 years of direct rule from London.
But this spring, the British government acted against what it called the failure of the IRA to live up to the peace deal, canceling the assembly elections that were to have taken place May 29 and reimposing direct rule. Power-sharing institutions such as the North-South Council, established under the 1998 accord to enhance cross-border cooperation, are all effectively on hold.
The political turmoil has created a vacuum. In Northern Ireland, such vacuums have too often been filled with violence. So leaders on all sides fear a return to sectarian clashes during the season of rival political marches. They worry that if such clashes reignite a cycle of violence, the Good Friday process could be at stake.
The marching season is most explosive along the "interface areas," where Catholics and Protestants live cheek by jowl, separated in most places only by the peace walls. Activists Gorman and Large first met in the early 1980s in the storied Crumlin Road Jail. Gorman, now 58, was interned without trial for allegedly taking part in the building of a bomb for the IRA in a foiled plot to target a British military barracks. Large, 45, was an assassin for one of the more murderous Protestant loyalist paramilitary groups and was convicted of gunning down four republicans. They both admit to taking lives in the conflict and they both express regret for the militancy of their past. But neither wants to dwell on remorse. They would rather put their energy into working together to make their community better.
"It may get rough again this summer," Large said. "But if it does, the main thing is, we will have people there to pick up the pieces and put it all back together again."
The marching season refers to a series of summer parades led by Protestant fraternal organizations such as the Orange Order, celebrating the 17th-century battles that brought British dominance and Protestant hegemony. Especially when they cut through Catholic neighborhoods, the marches often erupt in violence.
"We're hoping it will be quiet because a lot of work has been done here," said Large.
Gorman, who became an IRA volunteer in 1969 and still characterizes himself as "a true republican," reflected on his past, saying, "I thought I was doing the right thing back then by dismantling the state, and rebuilding it."
The community faces a tougher task next weekend, when the marching season reaches its peak during the Protestant celebrations of the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, in which the Protestant King William defeated the Catholic King James II.
"We've worked hard, so we are keeping out fingers crossed," McGlone said. "But what we are all realizing is that those walls will not come down through a political process. It is only through talking to each other and marshaling our own communities on the street that we will put an end to the violence. It's going to have to come from the ground up."
The task of her organization is to help people see beyond the walls.
"The walls allow people to see what they want to see on the other side, the image of their enemy," she said.
"When a rock comes over the wall in a loyalist neighborhood, they see 200 IRA men with balaclavas. When a rock comes into a republican neighborhood, they see a loyalist paramilitary force with machine guns. The truth is it's usually just 11- and 12-year-old boys throwing stones.
"So what we are trying to do with the phones is to communicate and get rid of the wall mentally, even if just about everyone in these neighborhoods believes they should be kept there physically."
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