Northern Ireland Essay

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Northern Ireland

From 1968 to 1992 Northern Ireland was plagued by sectarian violence between the Protestant majority, who favored their Union with Britain, and the Catholic minority, who didn't. As a province of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, prior to the beginning of the 1968 "troubles," had an independent government dominated by Protestant Unionists. However, their insistence on treating the Catholic minority as second class citizens, and the resulting outbreak of violence in 1968, forced the British to flood the province with British troops in order to keep the warring parties apart. This sparked an all out insurrection on the part of the nationalist Irish Republican Army (IRA) which in turn precipitated a policy of counter-intelligence operations by the British. But these operations have called into question how to reconcile the notion of domestic law with the need to conduct counter-intelligence operations. Finally, while British intelligence may have been able to predict the outbreak of the "troubles," British politicians did not and their response to the out break of violence was a series of blunders and policy changes that could be described as "schizophrenic."

As Northern Ireland was an self-governed province of the United Kingdom, its government was dominated by the majority Protestants who were pro-Union with Britain and used the state to discriminate against the native Catholic Irish.

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This situation came to be because "a Unionist government dominated the State and Protestant/Unionist interests de facto became the State's." (Dingley 2009, Chapter 2) Not only were the official police forces stridently Unionist, there were also a number of Unionist paramilitary organizations which held legal standing and were instrumental in instigating violence against Catholics. Because the conflict took place within the United Kingdom and was primarily a sectarian one, between two religious groups with divergent political ideals, the British had no choice but to intervene with troops and try to separate the warring parties until a political settlement could be reached.

The British Army used counter-insurgency (COIN) operations in Northern Ireland in an attempt to gain support from the Catholic minority, to protect those that the IRA targeted, and to support the policies of the government. However, in order to accomplish these goals the operations often were not in accordance with the laws in place to protect citizens against unlawful intrusions against their rights. COIN operations often involved such things as "shoot to kill policy, the over-zealous use of….....

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