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assessments are certainly encouraging,
critical views, such as those frequently
expressed in the non-partisan
Northern Irish left-liberal magazine
Fortnight, cannot be omitted.
According to an editorial of the
magazine published in the summer of
1998,“the institutionalized sectarianism
of the Assembly will make permanent
the catholic/nationalist versus
protestant/unionist paradigm”
(Fortnight, Editorial, 372, July-August
1998, p.5.)
One may assume that the
consociational structure of the
agreement, which has shown a
tendency to cement sectarianism, was
adopted regardless of the
decommissioning and security issues
that engendered the establishment of
the twin track solution. The powersharing
model seems to have been the
only real governmental option since
1973. We want to limit, however, our
observations and findings to the
impact the ambiguities of the Agreement
had on security related issues. In
this context, we will touch on the rarely
discussed problem of the prevailing
partisan approach towards
decommissioning, and thereafter assess
the attempts to develop a package deal
during the implementation process by
linking other disputed matters of
security, such as demilitarisation and
police reform, with the sensitive issue
of decommissioning.
Double standards
and hypocrisy: the
partisan approach
towards
decommissioning
Unlike other post-conflict
governments, such as those in Lebanon
or South Africa, the power-sharing
executive in Belfast was not conceived
to be a government of reconciliation
or of social transformation. Instead, a
far more pragmatic approach was
employed, which simply aimed to
assemble all relevant political actors
around the governmental table; this is a
more imposing task than it sounds for
many of these individuals had never
really talked face-to-face until their first
day in office. Security issues were not
to be dealt with around this table as
responsibility for such matters rested
with the British authorities. The twin
track approach helped to circumvent
the establishment of mechanisms to
deal with the problem posed by the
continued availability of arms among
the conflicting parties in the province.
The matter of ending the war by
abandoning the tools of violence
remained the exclusive domain of
British security forces and the IRA,
despite an intensification of violence,
predominantly carried out by
disillusioned Loyalists. The difficult
and sensitive process of restructuring
the state’s monopoly of power in post-
Agreement Northern Ireland included
disarmament of paramilitary
organisations (with a focus on the
illegally held weapons), downsizing of
state forces, and the reform of police
and justice. The fact that the new
power-sharing government had
legitimate stakes but no authorised
responsibilities in this process,
prepared the ground for hypocrisy of
all kinds and permitted the emergence
of biased approaches and double
standards, especially in the
controversial field of decommissioning
Most players, during negotiations and
the post-Agreement implementation
phase, focused on the
decommissioning of IRA weapons
when considering disarmament—a
rather narrow interpretation of the
provisions on decommissioning within
the Good Friday Agreement. This
tendency was also reflected in public
opinion, which could be discerned in
the innumerable newspaper articles
written on the issue between April
1998 and December 2001; over 90
percent of these articles referred to
decommissioning as a requirement for
B·I·C·C
‘‘fudging’’ the arms
Republicans. There were, of course,
reasons behind this imbalance. “The
significance of decommissioning lay in
that it was made the touchstone for
placating the unionist community
throughout the peace process” (Schulze
and Smith, 2000, p.81). The
Unionist position of not joining a
government with a party linked to a
private army, and the state’s threat
perception, shaped by the quantity and
quality of the IRA arsenal (see Box D),
may have justified the establishment of
this one-sided approach towards
decommissioning, but was it a
politically wise strategy considering
that the removal of all paramilitary
weapons was the final goal? “Threats
to the peace process have come mainly
from dissident groups such as the Real
IRA, the Continuity IRA, the Loyalist
Volunteer Force, and the Red Hand
Defenders, which have no political
representatives, are not parties to the
Good Friday Agreement, and therefore
would not be subject to the unionist
requirement of decommissioning”
(Stevenson, 2000, p.15).
One may argue that the limitation of
the decommissioning demand to those
groups with political representation
reduced the credibility of the issue as a
whole, and in the same vein
represented a subtle admission that
neither of the two major Unionist
parties felt they possessed the
necessary clout and support to “use
any influence they may have, to achieve
the decommissioning of all
paramilitary arms”, as stipulated in the
decommissioning paragraph of the
Agreement. This unbalanced and
“partisan” approach to disarmament
limited the potential of cross
community conflict resolution initiatives,
such as addressing the removal of
the tools of violence on both sides, as
an adequate response to ongoing
violence. The strategy developed its
own momentum, fostering
accommodation in the sectarian
trenches and re-invigorating the
fundamental complexities of the
specific Northern Irish conflict
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