"Are the Troubles Over?" by Fintan O’Toole, in The New York Review of Books (Oct. 5, 2000), 1755 Broadway, 5th floor, New York, N.Y. 10019–3780.

In the eyes of many pessimistic observers, Northern Ireland’s "Troubles," which have claimed more than 3,600 lives, were a product of atavistic Catholic-Protestant antagonism.

But "sectarian prejudice did not cause the violence," argues O’Toole, a columnist for the Irish Times. "It was, to a great extent, the violence that caused the prejudice." When the Troubles began in 1968, he says, prejudice generally "was neither very strong nor very active" in the minds of most. Mixed marriages and neighborhoods were becoming common, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was dying, and Loyalist paramilitarism was found only among "a lunatic fringe." Decades later, surveys showed that prejudice was far less evident in people who grew up before the Troubles began than among younger folk. What changed the situation, O’Toole says, was "organized violence"—of the IRA, Loyalist paramilitaries, and the state. Protesting Catholics initially demanded merely "that the emerging social realities be recognized" and Catholics be given equal civil rights. Many Catholics welcomed the British army’s arrival in 1969 to keep the peace, but the army’s "crude and arrogant behavior" destroyed that support. Catholic alienation became complete in 1972 when British paratroopers massacred 14 unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Derry. The IRA then launched an armed campaign. Yet, O’Toole points out, mass violence between Protestants and Catholics "did not take hold."

Statistics on the killings from the recent Lost Lives by three journalists and an academic, as well as another independent study, belie claims that the paramilitary groups were acting defensively. Of the 1,771 people slain by the IRA, little more than half belonged to the British armed forces, the local police, or military auxiliaries. And of the more than 1,000 killed by Loyalist paramilitaries, only 29 had IRA ties. "The overwhelming majority of their victims were innocent Catholics chosen purely on the basis of their religion," O’Toole says.

The paramilitaries on both sides had to use brutality to enforce their authority. The IRA killed 198 members of the broader Catholic community—compared with 138 killed by the British army. The IRA also was responsible for the deaths, accidental or deliberate, of 149 of its own members—34 more than the British army and police killed. The Loyalist paramilitaries similarly killed twice as many of their own as the IRA managed to slay.

Surveys conducted in Northern Ireland between 1989 and 1995 showed that almost 40 percent of the population—half Catholics, half Protestants—refused to identify themselves as either unionist or nationalist. "Their quiet, even silent, refusal to get involved," O’Toole says, "thwarted the aims of the paramilitaries. The IRA could never win enough active support, particularly in the Republic of Ireland, where most Irish Catholic nationalists live, to have a realistic prospect of forcing the British to withdraw." This reality finally sank in.

With the 1998 Belfast Agreement being implemented and all the main sources of violence "now decisively committed to the peace process," O’Toole says, the Troubles seem over. "Ordinary people . . . finally defeated all attempts to reduce them to unflinching bigots."