UNITY?

Five years after the 'Good Friday' agreement, Belfast finds unity elusive (Charles M. Sennott, 7/6/2003, Boston Globe)

For most residents, an effective segregation still cuts across society in Northern Ireland. Overwhelmingly, the two sides attend separate schools and live in neighborhoods that are religiously and politically homogenous. This reality has been barely altered by the Good Friday agreement, political leaders on both sides say.

Some analysts have suggested that the Good Friday agreement's veneer of success for the middle and upper classes is hiding a deepening sectarianism, one that only reveals itself in the violence of the interface areas.

Cecelia Clegg, codirector of a project called Moving Beyond Sectarianism funded by Trinity College's Irish School of Ecumenics, said: ''It seems all the strain of the unresolved aspects of our communities are playing out on the interfaces. What we are seeing is that the Good Friday agreement dealt with the wider, structural cooperation between the two communities. But there has not been enough planning on how to help the two communities come together to live in peace.''

Although Springfield Road has been plagued by sporadic outbreaks of violence over the years, the community work there done by the likes of Gorman and Large has had some important success. Clegg and political leaders on both sides see the work on Springfield Road as a model for efforts at conflict resolution in Belfast's other pockets of violence, such as Short Strand and Tiger's Bay.

''The intensification of sectarianism is about a failure of political leadership,'' McGlone said. ''There hasn't been enough acceptance by both sides that they are both equally responsible for the violence. We have to make people accountable to each other; that is what we are trying to do here along this wall. And that is the missing piece of the Good Friday agreement, or as we around here call it, `the missing peace.' ''

God Bless Charles Sennott, years covering the Middle East and most recently the Iraq War aren't enough, now he's in Northern Ireland. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 6, 2003 2:39 PM