The IRA pledges a farewell to arms

As British officials continued their hunt for Muslim extremists in what they described as their biggest security operations since World War II, another group that used fear and violence for decades - the Irish Republican Army - announced Thursday it was permanently abandoning military operations.

The decision by the IRA - which used assassinations and bombings to pursue its goal of a Northern Ireland free from British rule - is a poignant coda to one era of terrorism. Politically, it also offers a possible break in the standoff between Northern Ireland's Catholics and Protestants that for months has stymied progress toward a peace accord.

The IRA statement directed all units to cease armed activity now and pledged to pursue its aims through politics, a move that some officials and experts said offered the best hope of reaching a lasting political settlement since Catholic-Protestant relations broke down in December.

The IRA said it had invited two independent witnesses, from the Protestant and Catholic churches, to verify that it will put its massive arsenal of guns and explosives beyond use, but it gave no dates for starting or completing the process.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed the announcement as "a step of unparalleled magnitude in the recent history of Northern Ireland."

"This may be the day when finally after all the false dawns and dashed hope, peace replaces war, politics replaces terror on the island of Ireland," Mr. Blair said.

But Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which favors continued union with Britain, reacted more skeptically. Some unionists responded to the IRA pledge by noting that disarmament has for years been a frustrating stop-start process that has yet to provide conclusive proof of the republican movement's commitment to peace.

Jeffrey Donaldson, a member of Parliament form the hardline DUP, said, "We've no indication in this statement of when that will be done, they simply say it will be done as soon as possible," he says. "We don't know whether that means one week, two weeks, six months, a year, so obviously we need to wait and see what happens there."

Elsewhere in mainland Britain, reaction was muted by the sense that the IRA threat has been supplanted by the new menace of Islamist terrorism.

But in some ways the IRA announcement, as it reflects the fits-and-starts weaning from violence of a guerrilla movement, is a product of the rise of Islamist extremism, some experts say.

"This announcement has 9/11 written all over it, because that terrible day changed forever the way Americans, the Irish, the British, many people view freedom-fighter struggles," says John Hulsman, a specialist in European affairs at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Before the shock of Sept. 11, 2001, the idea had currency that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, but that's not true any more," says Mr. Hulsman, who has focused on the Northern Ireland conflict. "If there's any beneficial side effect to the rise of Muslim extremism it may be the realization that we live in a different time when violent extremism is not acceptable. The IRA and Sinn Fein [the Irish republican movement's political wing] seem to be finally recognizing this."

Hulsman says 9/11 also took its toll on the IRA because it accelerated a distaste for violence that had been growing among the guerrilla army's crucial American supporters. American moral and financial support, centered in the Irish-Catholic community, was key to the movement's survival.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3