ESSAY
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Arguments: The Limits of the Northern Ireland Analogy
THIS IS THE SECOND in our occasional series, Arguments, in which Z Word writers examine certain recurring themes in the ongoing debate about the Middle East.
The analogy between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the conflict in Northern Ireland is one that is frequently drawn. With President Obama's appointment of George Mitchell as his Special Envoy to the Middle East, the Irish comparison has come under renewed scrutiny, by dint of Mitchell's previous role as the Clinton Administration's Special Envoy to Northern Ireland.
There are, nonetheless, significant flaws with this analogy. The essay by Henry McDonald which we publish here illustrates some of those flaws. It is drawn from the final chapter of Henry McDonald's book, Gunsmoke and Mirrors - How Sinn Fein Dressed up Defeat as Victory, available from the website of Macmillan Ireland.
Joking Apart
It was arguably the most unlikeliest of places to illuminate the chasm between Irish republican and Islamist terrorism. The 'Star Letter' of the January 2008 edition of the British toilet humour magazine/comic 'Viz' counter-posed the terrorism of the IRA and Al Qaeda.
The correspondent, one Nick Pettigrew from London, wrote: '30 years ago, the Irish were our most feared terrorists and now they have theme pubs everywhere. So by 2047 will Britain be full of Islamic Extremist theme pubs? Because I don't much like the sound of that.'
On a frivolous level the joke is a cheap jibe at the Irish, all the Irish, including all of those Irish, the majority on the island and beyond, who detested the 'armed struggle.' But on another plane the quip actually exposes the radical difference between republican paramilitaries and the soldiers of extreme Islam. Because it suggests that despite all the ruthlessness, dedication to cause and self-sacrifice Irish republicans have always had other worldly concerns. Their universe was not completely consumed by an all encompassing theology even if at times republicans behaved fanatically and acted as if on some messianic mission.
The contrast is worth exploring because since the peace process, the cease-fires and the present historic compromise at Stormont it has become fashionable to quote the North of Ireland as a good example for other conflicts, as a template to bring all those other interminable struggles across the planet to an end.
At present it has become vogue in certain British Foreign Office circles,among former members of MI6, pro-Arab sections of academia and the liberal press to draw comfort from the example of the Irish peace process.
In particular a number of influential voices in British public life have been arguing that once upon a time it was taboo to talk to the IRA. However secret channels set up between the Provos and British Intelligence (and hence Her Majesty's Government) eventually bore fruit with the 1994 cease-fires and all the changes that flowed from it. Hence, these voices contend, if only the West could do the same with Islamist movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East and even some sections of the Taliban in Afghanistan there could be room for optimism, even an end to these conflicts.
On the surface this thesis appears seductive: if the most sophisticated terrorist organisation in the western world can be brought in from the cold then surely the same can be done with the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah.
However, the formula is in fact entirely bogus and anti-historical.
Tactics and Strategy
The parallels between the Irish republican death cult and the Islamist one appears at first to be remarkably similar. Groups like the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah seem to revel in the iconography of martyrdom. One of the most striking things you notice on a first visit for instance to the Shia heartlands of south Lebanon was the profusion of posters of fallen fighters and murals depicting their new status in a rainbowed paradise after-life of flowing fountains and doves along the walls of towns and villages where Hezbollah and the more openly pro-Syrian Amal were dominant. The iconic imagery, in terms of both tone and style, are almost exactly like those murals of the Irish hunger strikers and fallen IRA 'volunteers' that prior to the latter stages of the peace process covered the walls of west Belfast and Derry, even down to the ubiquitous beards. Moreover, the willingness of IRA and INLA prisoners to sacrifice themselves on hunger strike, to starve themselves to death in pursuit of political causes, seemed to equate with the self-immolaters who strap bombs to their bodies killing themselves as well as their enemies. But in fact this is where the comparisons end and the contrasts begin.
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