PROGRAM

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT AND NORTHERN IRELAND
FARHAN HANIF SIDDIQI

In the literature on conflict studies, conflict management is best understood as a way of mitigating the armed aspect of the conflict and relates to ‘bringing the fighting to an end, limiting the spread of the conflict and, thus, containing it’ (Wallensteen 2002, p. 53). It is also considered a generic term which covers ‘the whole gamut of positive conflict handling’ (Mial et. al 2001, p. 21). On the other hand, conflict resolution is more of an ambitious project as it is intrinsically concerned with parties to the conflict negotiating their identities and in the process making them more acceptable to each other or dissolving them so that peace prevails.

The present paper will apply the process and techniques of conflict management with reference to Northern Ireland. It will be concerned mainly with phases of acute violence between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on the one hand and the British Army and Ulster Unionists on the other from the late 1960s onwards culminating in the announcement of a ceasefire by the IRA in 1997 and the onset of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. It has to be stated more than anything else that the process of conflict management, entailing the limitation, mitigation and containment of violent conflict, has been reached in Northern Ireland. No major incident involving the IRA or the British Army has been reported in recent years and both parties are cautiously treading on the path of substantive conflict resolution.

The paper will chart the historical development of the conflict since 1920 when Home Rule was introduced in Northern Ireland as a province of the UK with its own devolved parliament in Belfast. At the core of the Northern Irish society are the Protestants (majority group) and the Catholics (minority group). The problem accentuated after the Protestants established a ‘tyranny of the majority’, which discriminated against the minority Catholics in almost all spheres of life including the political, economic, social and cultural. It was thus not surprising when the minority population resorted to civil disobedience or insurrection against their status in Northern Ireland.

The presence of the British Army since the late 1960s complicated matters further and between 1969 and 1988 over 2700 people died in Northern Ireland as a direct result of political violence and what the British government termed as ‘terrorism’. On the whole, Northern Ireland presents an interesting case study where religious and ethnic sentiments and loyalties produced a conflict of immense magnitude, which tested severely the working of British democracy and its associated political institutions.

* Lecturer, Department of International Relations, University of Karachi