A unique Irish solution needed on arms and prisoners

The decommissioning question is unique to Northern Ireland, with little precedence in other conflicts. While there have been arms transfers or demobilisations elsewhere, these have taken place under very different circumstances, such as the dissolution of the Italian leftist group Prima Lina in 1983, which handed its weapons over to the Archbishop of Milan, and the decision in 1989 by a guerrilla group in El Salvador, the FMLN, to lay down its arms to take part in elections.

In both these cases an illegal group had come to the decision that it was no longer interested in continuing the war and, therefore, found a way out by trading reintegration for arms. Other groups have been demobilised and merged with the security forces in the knowledge that they were the victors, such as in Zimbabwe.

Neither example is applicable to Northern Ireland, where a negotiated settlement has been reached and no party can credibly claim to have been victor. This means that Northern Ireland will have to come to its own solution.

The traditional Irish approach of hiding weaponry is not a defensible option when you consider that the paramilitaries no longer simply hold a couple of Mauser rifles and Thompson machineguns, but count in their armouries Sam 7 and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) missiles, heavy machineguns and enough explosives to demolish a medium-sized city.

Instead, it might be useful to divide paramilitary weapons into categories of offensive and defensive weaponry and insist that offensive weapons are handed in first.

For instance, it is difficult to justify the possession of missile-launchers or Semtex for defensive purposes in the Northern Irish context. These are weapons that can only be of use in attacking the security forces or the civilian population.

On the other hand, during a phase of building trust between former adversaries it is unrealistic to expect every weapon will be handed in. We may have to accept that paramilitaries will want to keep hand-guns and assault rifles, and this need not be seen as an aggressive act which should disqualify them from the government of Northern Ireland.

Linked to the question of decommissioning is the release of paramilitary prisoners.

The agreement contains a clear timetable for the release of all pro-agreement, conflict-related prisoners in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic by June 2000. This has already proved to be a highly unpopular move.

The lack of trust in Northern Ireland is such that many people, particularly unionists, fear that releasing prisoners before weapons are handed in is an invitation to the paramilitaries to start violence again. It is no coincidence that this was one of the issues highlighted by the unionist No campaign.

The vast majority of people in the North see little reason to reward a group of people who have been implicated in violence by releasing them, yet the agreement would have failed if the prisoners had not been part of the equation. Sinn Fein and the loyalist parties could not have left paramilitaries in jail.

The problem of releasing paramilitary prisoners is not unique to Northern Ireland. In conflicts across the world, people convicted of terrorist offences have been released as part of a conflict-resolution process. Many of these former prisoners have gone on to play important roles within society.

Robert McBride, an ANC member who planted a bomb which killed three civilians in a Durban bar, is now a diplomat. Similarly, members of the political military faction of the Basque separatist movement, ETA, who were released following a ceasefire, have subsequently been involved in the governments of both the Basque Autonomous Area and Spain through their links with the Spanish Socialist Party.

Yet the fact that people convicted of politically motivated crimes rarely reoffend and can play an important role in society is often of little solace to the victims of terrorist violence.

The position of victims is one which has to be respected even if they cannot be allowed to prevent a political accommodation because of their grievances. In addition to financial compensation and recognition, victims should also have the right to the truth: so at least they can understand why they or their loved ones were targeted and by whom.

In South Africa, Chile and El Salvador such information was gathered by truth commissions. Yet it is difficult to see how one could establish a truth commission in Ireland at this stage. For it to have any credibility such a commission would have to cover both sides of the Border and look at state as well as paramilitary violence.

That would inevitably dredge up a lot of information which many people, not just politicians with a paramilitary past, might rather was left alone. Given that the peace is still fragile, it would be dangerous to place the new Assembly under unnecessary strain at this stage.

However, in a society like Northern Ireland a truth commission could, in the longer term, act as a catharsis which might ultimately help to build a new civil society.

For the political deal to work, the gun must fall silent for good in Ireland. At some stage, the paramilitaries will have to honour the pledges made by their political allies and start the decommissioning process by destroying or handing over their offensive weaponry.

Such a move might allay the fears of the wider population in Ireland and pave the way for understanding why it is necessary to release paramilitary prisoners.

While the experience of other countries shows that it is possible to build the level of trust required to demilitarise, thus far there have been few signs in Northern Ireland that this is happening. To paraphrase the Mitchell report, the mindsets of the people in Northern Ireland will have to be decommissioned along with the guns.

Dr Michael Page is a researcher based at the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. He is the author of a forthcoming book, Prisons, Peace and Terrorism (Macmillan, November 1998), which examines the impact of prisoners on low-intensity conflicts