Shadows of war dim Irish joy on St. Patrick's Day

WASHINGTON, March 17 (UPI) -- A blood-dimmed shadow hung over the usually joyous celebration of St. Patrick's Day on Tuesday. Only two weeks ago, five shocking killings in Northern Ireland raised the specter of civil war after a decade of peace.

However, the Protestant and Catholic leaders of the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland stood side by side Tuesday in Washington, D.C., and vowed to maintain their two-year-old cooperation that is overwhelmingly supported by voters on both sides of Northern Ireland's sectarian divide.

First Minister Peter Robinson, who leads the traditionally hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, and his top deputy, Martin McGuinness, for decades one of the leaders of the Sinn Fein Catholic nationalist party, told a reception at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a block away from the White House, they rejected the men of violence in both their communities and vowed to maintain peace.

They both acknowledged that after only two years in office, their new government that has maintained peace and brought new hope to Northern Ireland remained fragile. But they insisted that the recent outbreak of violence had rallied most people of both communities to their side and made their partnership stronger, not weaker.

Two British soldiers and two Domino's Pizza deliverymen were killed in an attack outside the soldiers' base earlier this month. A policeman was shot dead in his car in the Northern Irish town of Craigavon only three days later. A pair of splinter groups of the Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Despite the loudly affirmed commitment to peace of Robinson and McGuinness, the situation in Northern Ireland remains tense. A St. Patrick's Day parade in County Armagh was canceled because of the threat of violence. Last Saturday, young Catholic nationalists rioted in the town of Lurgan, near Craigavon, protesting the arrest of three men held in connection with the recent killings.

The vast majority of Northern Ireland's 900,000 Protestants and 600,000 Catholics dread a return to "The Troubles," the quarter-century of cross-community violence and terrorism from 1969 to the paramilitary cease-fires of 1994 that cost 3,600 lives. That would be proportionately equivalent to 720,000 dead in a nation the size of the United States. In the mid to late 1960s, there appeared to be a clear majority in both communities for compromise and peace as well, but war still came.

The shocking killings of the past few weeks did not erupt out of nowhere. IRA splinter groups have been amassing weapons and attempting isolated terror attacks over the past few months, but they were repeatedly foiled by the Northern Ireland Police Service and British army forces operating in the province.

Also, although Robinson's Democratic Unionists and McGuinness's Sinn Fein have cooperated energetically and fruitfully with each other, they both represent the historically extreme, uncompromising elements in their own communities. And both parties gained power by winning support away from the more moderate elements that negotiated the historic 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement: the Official Unionist Party of Nobel Peace Prize-winner David Trimble and the Social and Democratic Labor Party.

Also, young working-class teenagers growing up in the still largely socially segregated housing estates around Northern Ireland appear vulnerable to the siren song of tribal-sectarian identity and conflict. The rise in general crime over the past decade and a growing atmosphere of lawlessness has strengthened those tendencies.

Robinson and McGuinness were both in Washington during a coast-to-coast tour of the United States in an attempt to encourage more U.S. investment in Northern Ireland. Both leaders acknowledge that investment and economic prosperity have been crucial in draining the reservoirs of frustration and hatred that fed the long conflict.

Currently, prospects still appear hopeful that the pragmatic compromise of Northern Ireland's current leaders will prevail. But the long "Troubles" started with sectarian rioting and the assassination of policemen too, and so did the Irish War of Independence against Britain back in 1919. In Ireland, nothing ever shapes the future as much as the past.