Word: iras
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...sharp contrast of old and new Belfast raised one overriding question: Did Northern Ireland's Catholics get anything they wanted? Northern Ireland, after all, still belongs to the Queen. I asked a former IRA car bomber. "We got absolutely nothing," Marion said. "We were betrayed...
...paper at least, the 1998 agreement between the IRA and the British government was what started to put an end to the violent conflict. But at the bottom of it the IRA lost the will to fight...
...lingering doubt I had that the conflict was truly over disappeared when I saw the Europa. There wasn't even a car bomb barrier out front. The place was full of families, many of them American, coming home for Easter. Ex-IRA foot soldiers out front offered driving tours of the old IRA battlefields. Who would ever have thought Northern Ireland would be turned into a theme park...
...This year's IRA parade on Easter morning was one of the most anodyne, sentimentalized events I've ever seen, made up mostly of little boys and old men not even bothering to pose as veterans. A half a dozen marchers carried wooden rifles, but the Republican banners were furled - on orders from the IRA's leadership. Armored police Land Rovers were parked inconspicuously on side streets, but they were there to protect the marchers from Protestants rather than keep a watch on them...
...Marion joined the IRA when she was seventeen, showing up at an IRA "call house" every day after school. She was never sure what the night's mission would be, but often as not it involved delivering a car bomb. She was (and still is) beautiful, and easily passed through the British checkpoints. "You never forget the smell of sodium nitro benzene" - the improvised explosive used by the IRA in the early days. "It smelled like marzipan...