The Brexit process, last time I wrote about it, seemed to be having positive vibrations for the Brits, but it appears that the Irish may not be doing so well, as Professor Carolyn Gallaher and Professor Kimberly Cowell-Meyers note on Lawfare:
On April 7, young people in the Protestant community in the Shankill Road area of Belfast commandeered a bus and set it on fire. Later that night, Protestant and Catholic youth hurled incendiary devices at one another across so-called peace lines—formal and informal barriers that separate places where the two communities border one another. This capped a week of unrest across Northern Ireland. Since the violence started, 88 police officers have been injured. …
Commentators warned that Brexit would destabilize the peace process, and it did. It is difficult to know if unionists, who overwhelmingly supported leaving the European Union, were engaged in magical thinking when they insisted Brexit wouldn’t undermine the GFA, or if they were calculating that Brexit would strengthen their hand against nationalists. In the end, the Northern Ireland Protocol, which lays out the post-Brexit ground rules governing trade between the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland, did not favor unionist interests.
During negotiations, a key sticking point was where to place the border for customs checks. The EU vigorously opposed reestablishing a land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. During the Troubles, the border had been heavily militarized, and guard posts were often subjected to attacks from the IRA. After the GFA, border infrastructure was dismantled and the border virtually disappeared. Because both countries were part of the EU, people and goods could cross the border without passport or customs checks. This contributed to peace-building by encouraging economic development throughout the island and neutralizing the border issue as a source of conflict between the competing identities of nationalists and unionists.
Unfortunately, there’s almost certainly no easy solution: each side is aggrieved. Look for this to continue to heat up. And, of course, the old stories continue:
Newer leaders—many born in the 1990s—have taken the reins of burgeoning criminal enterprises, selling drugs and extorting local businesses.
And they certainly have no motivation to calm the waters, do they? Sounds like a rough ride is in store for Belfast.
