Is this the year of good political news?
As if the spread of freedom in the Middle East isn’t enough, now there’s this story that suggests the IRA may well renounce the violence for which it is (in)famous:
BELFAST, Northern Ireland Apr 7, 2005 — The Irish Republican Army said Thursday it will consider an appeal by Sinn Fein party chief Gerry Adams to renounce violence, a long-elusive goal in Northern Ireland peacemaking.
In a brief statement, the outlawed IRA said it received advance notice of Wednesday’s call from Adams, an alleged IRA commander, and “will give his appeal due consideration and will respond in due course.”
The IRA, which killed about 1,800 people as part of a failed campaign to abolish Northern Ireland as a British territory, has been observing a cease-fire since 1997. But the underground organization remains active on several fronts, particularly in running illegal rackets and promoting Catholic opposition to the province’s police.
The IRA’s activities and refusal to disarm repeatedly undermined the central objective of Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord: a joint Catholic-Protestant administration that included Sinn Fein. A four-party coalition collapsed in 2002, and efforts to revive the arrangement failed last December when the IRA refused to permit photos of its disarmament or to renounce crime.
Since then, the governments of Britain, Ireland and the United States have united in demands for the IRA to disband. They cite the IRA’s alleged mammoth robbery of a Belfast bank and killing of a Catholic man in Belfast as the most egregious recent examples of unacceptable activities.
Indeed: history shows that in some cases violence is a successful tool…but history also shows that there’s always the danger of a fierce backlash against it. The IRA seems to have recently run into that.
But all isn’t clear sailing yet:
The Rev. Ian Paisley, the key Protestant leader whose Democratic Unionist Party must agree to any new power-sharing deal, dismissed the latest words from Adams and the IRA as “a fine art of hypocrisy.”
Paisley said the IRA had already offered, as part of the recently failed negotiations, to disarm fully by Dec. 25, 2004, and to cease all violent activities, but had reneged on the offer.
“And now evidently they’re going to consider the matter again,” said Paisley, who called Adams a liar. “I’ve heard similar words from him for a very long time and I’ve heard great promises and the dates (for disarmament) have come and gone.”
Indeed, the words and promises would be a great first step. Then comes the implementation.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.