Word: irelander
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...difficult to say for sure if this week's events are part of a sustained dissident campaign of civic disruption or simply acts of sporadic, copycat violence. Either way, the individuals behind this new threat to Northern Ireland's increasingly fragile peace have clearly studied their history books. A similar campaign of low-level, civic disruption by the Provisional IRA in the late 1960s and 1970s led to the mass deployment of British troops on Northern Irish streets and triggered one of the bloodiest periods in the 30-year sectarian conflict known as the Troubles. (See pictures of new hope...
...know that what the dissidents really want is British troops back on our streets, a huge security clampdown and retaliation by loyalists", says Dolores Kelly, a moderate nationalist member of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Retaliation by loyalist paramilitary groups - who carried out bomb attacks and shootings on Catholic civilians and republican terrorists during the Troubles - could spell disaster for Northern Ireland. A return to the tit-for-tat killings of the past would almost certainly spell the end of the power-sharing government that the dissidents oppose. (Read: "Policeman Shot Dead in Northern Ireland...
...Spring and early summer has always been a fraught time in Northern Ireland. Republicans hold events to commemorate the anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916 - an anti-British rebellion in Dublin that was violently suppressed by British troops - while the Orange Order holds marches across the province to mark the victory of the Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic James II in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Although the "marching season" has passed off relatively peacefully in recent years, it's feared the actions of an emboldened dissident movement could once again ignite these historical rivalries...
...those who lived through the dark days of Northern Ireland's past, the rationale behind the latest disturbances is irrelevant. They just want the violence - and the implied promise of more - to stop. "These past few days there's been a funny atmosphere in the air as if something was going to happen," says Arlene, 62, who lives in a republican neighborhood, as she takes a cigarette break outside a city center bingo hall. "In our day, we had to look over our shoulder 24/7. Nobody wants to go back to that...
...pictures of the British Army leaving Northern Ireland...