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The declaration of a ceasefire by the Irish Republican army on August 31, 1994, has raised hopes that peace may at last be at hand for the troubled province of Northern Ireland. But caution is still required. While the IRA has announced a complete cessation of violence--a tautology since there is no such thing as an incomplete cessation--opinion is sharply divided as to-whether yesterday's gunmen have whole-heartedly embraced the democratic process, or whether the ceasefire is merely a tactical move. Only time will tell. Some fear that the IRA is merely testing the political waters and could return to violence if negotiations do not go its way. As one British official has said, without a permanent peace, the implied threat of violence would hang over any all-party talks set up to discuss the future of Ulster.(1) That the threat of terror remains is beyond dispute: one-time IRA chief of staff Gerry Adams, now head of the organization's political wing, Sinn Fein, recently told the Boston Herald that a resumption of the military campaign was still possible under a new Irish Republican leadership.(2)
Such menacing ambiguity is a favorite ploy of a group that has long bragged of seizing power with "a ballot box in one hand and an armalite rifle in the other." Although President Clinton declined to meet with the 45-years-old Adams during the Sinn Fein leader's September trip to Washington--saying that the organization had not gone far enough by declaring the ceasefire permanent--other U.S. politicians with large Irish constituencies have fallen over themselves to meet with a man that Irish historian Conor Cruise O'Brien calls "the principal apoloist for political violence for the last 15 years."(3) Few have paused to look closely at IRA methods or motives, to consider whether it has plans beyond painting Northern Ireland's red mailboxes green.(4)
BEGINNINGS
"They blow up policemen, or so I have heard, and blame it on Cromwell and William the Third." So runs the words of one satirical song about the motivations of the Irish Republican Army. But while it still cloaks itself in the traditional mantle of Irish nationalism, the IRA has always found other threads to weave into the garment, other justifications for its actions, other reasons to kill. For much of its...