Breaking the cycle of violence

By Paul Sussman, CNN.com writer

A wounded civilian is taken away from the scene of the Bloody Sunday shootings in 1972

(CNN) -- For more than 30 years the words Northern Ireland have conjured images of violence and bitter sectarian division.

During that period the six counties that make up Northern Ireland -- Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone -- have witnessed a depressing catalogue of death and injury as Catholics and Protestants fought each other.

Between 1966 and 1999 a total of 3,636 people were killed and 36,000 injured as the conflict spread beyond Northern Ireland's borders onto the British mainland and elsewhere. Most of the victims were innocent civilians.

Despite this legacy of violence and mistrust, remarkable steps been taken recently towards achieving peace.

Since 1997 a fragile ceasefire has held among the main paramilitary groups, while the Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998, offers the best hope of a lasting settlement to the violence for well over a generation.

As former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, chairman of the all-party peace talks, said after the signing of the treaty: "This agreement proves that democracy works and in its wake we can say to the men of violence and those who disdain democracy: Your way is not the way."

The roots of conflict

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell brokered the Good Friday Agreement during a paramilitary ceasefire

The period known as "The Troubles" is merely one link in a long chain of religious bitterness and conflict stretching back across centuries of Irish history.

Since the reign of Henry VIII (1509-49), when Catholic Ireland was brought under the rule of Protestant England, tension has existed between the two faiths.

During the reign of James I (1603-25) large numbers of Protestants were settled in the north of Ireland, creating a Protestant majority in the region that exists to this day. Following the defeat of the Catholic James II (1685-88) by the Protestant William of Orange (1689-1702) at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, most of the land in Ireland was handed over to Protestant control.

The Government of Ireland Act of 1920 recognised this de facto religious division by splitting the country into two separate political units, a predominantly Catholic south and a predominantly Protestant north.

The south subsequently cut all ties with Britain, becoming the independent Republic of Ireland in 1949. The six counties of Northern Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom.

It is this political division, compounding centuries of religious animosity, that lies at the heart of the Northern Ireland conflict.

Most of Northern Ireland's minority Catholic population, mistrustful of the Protestant majority, would prefer to belong to a single, united Ireland. Most of its Protestants, on the other hand, are determined to remain a part of the UK.

The result has been an ongoing cycle of protest and violence as paramilitary groups from both sides of the sectarian divide have sought to press home their point with bombs and guns.

The vast majority of the region's population eschews violence. But the two communities remain deeply suspicious of each other, and it is this legacy of antagonism and mistrust that the current peace process is seeking to dismantle.

A fragile peace

The Northern Ireland Assembly meets at the Stormont Castle complex outside Belfast. It was also the site of negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement.

The Good Friday Agreement has transformed the politics of Northern Ireland.

It created a 108-member Assembly and 14-member executive body in which both Catholic and Protestant political representatives sit together in government, only the second time such power-sharing has occurred since 1920 (the first was the short-lived Sunningdale Agreement of 1973-74).

The main paramilitary groups are maintaining an uneasy ceasefire, the British military presence is being scaled down, the IRA has begun decommissioning its weapons, and inward investment has started to pour into the region as international companies have taken heart from the continued peace.

For all that, though, the agreement remains merely the first tentative step on a long road to a complete and lasting cessation of hostilities.

An array of seemingly intractable problems remains to be solved. While the major paramilitary groups have for the moment laid aside their weapons, splinter factions such as the republican Real IRA and loyalist Red Hand Commandos have failed to call a ceasefire.

The worst single atrocity of "The Troubles," the Omagh bombing of 1998, occurred 13 weeks after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Meanwhile an ongoing feud between loyalist paramilitary factions has claimed several lives and left numerous people injured.

The loyalist paramilitary group Red Hand Commandos is among the splinter factions that have not declared a ceasefire

Perhaps most alarming, a significant section of the population, predominantly Protestants, are at best lukewarm in their support of the peace process. In the May 1998 referendum on the agreement, an estimated 96 percent of the Catholic community supported it as opposed to only 52 percent of Protestants.

The violence and disorder that regularly erupt between the two communities during the Protestant marching season is a sign of how far the process still has to go before "The Troubles" are truly a thing of the past.

Despite such difficulties, there is a wide determination to make the peace last. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a 1999 speech to the House of Commons: "I accept that this is often and has to be an imperfect process and an imperfect peace, but it is better than no process and no peace at all."