Are the Troubles set to return to Northern Ireland?
The killing of two British soldiers outside a barracks in Antrim last Saturday, followed by the subsequent killing of a police officer in Craigavon, have raised widespread fear that Northern Irelands “Troubles” might be set to blaze once more. Few people in Northern Ireland want a return to violence. The “Real IRA” and other Republican splinter groups have little in the way of public support on either side of the Irish border. Since 1997 the mainstream Irish Republican Army (IRA) has upheld a ceasefire and has decommissioned its weapons. The IRA acknowledged that the armed struggle it had commenced in 1971 had reached a stalemate many years earlier. The IRAs leadership recognised that it could not defeat the British security forces, who in turn recognised they could not defeat the IRA by military means. The 1997 ceasefire followed the rise of Sinn Fein, the political party allied to the IRA, which became the majority party among Northern Irelands Catholic population. Sinn Fein has made
