Making a realistic assessment of this year's manoeuvrings on both sides in Northern Ireland is virtually impossible until we see their results next year, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Earlier this winter a group of journalism students attending a seminar in memory of a good friend, the late Irish Times spitfire journalist, Ann Maguire, wondered did we Belfast-based reporters ever tire of the politics of repetition to the power of infinity, as in the rolling crises that pass for normality up here.
They got two answers. "We're not allowed to get bored" was the first. "Anglo-Irish and, more particularly, Northern Ireland politics can be painstaking, repetitive and tortuous, but it is history in the making" was the second.
It flows slowly, sometimes it is a stagnant pool, but it remains very serious business because people are still dying and being maimed because of this history.
Strange, but as we look back on 2002 the first thought is to look forward and wonder what we will be reviewing 12 months hence. Will history, hope and politics have finally joined at Tony Blair's fork in the road? Will the IRA have carried out that still unspecified "act of completion" urged by Blair in his October Belfast speech, or will it fall tantalisingly short, as before, and frustrate everyone who wants to see the Belfast Agreement safely anchored.
And if the IRA does take that quantum leap on to the Policing Board and fully away from active paramilitarism, will unionism, as before, engage in the negative politics of rancour and sullen disparagement? Next year should be a make-or-break one. We could have devolution restored or direct rule entrenched. The first option will always be a bareback rodeo ride, but it remains the surest way of safeguarding the relative peace and the evolving political process.
At the time of going to press, 14 people died in Northern Ireland this year in killings that relate to the so-called Troubles. The IRA was almost certainly responsible for one, if not two, of these, while loyalists were involved in 10.
Republicans and loyalists persisted with "punishment" attacks. Again, the majority were perpetrated by loyalists, the most macabre being the November "crucifixion" of Harry McCartan in Belfast's loyalist Seymour Hill. It was the same story at the interfaces, where both sides engaged in violence, but again loyalists were cited by police as the chief offenders.
While the IRA was hardly blameless considering its additional alleged foreign escapades and its intelligence-gathering at Castlereagh and Stormont, the uneven unionist focus on the IRA throughout the year rankles with nationalists.
It was the year of two Ulster Unionist Council convocations where Jeffrey Donaldson forced David Trimble further on to his territory, although the UUP leader still believes he can out-manoeuvre his potential anti-Agreement nemesis. The IRA carried out its second act of decommissioning this year, nicely timed just ahead of the May elections the Republic. it also apologised to "non-combatants" killerd and injured. It didn't do much harm, but not much good either, such was the level of distrust and recrimination in the Northern body politic.
We escaped relatively unscathed from another Drumcree. The Stormont institutions went about their business fairly efficiently, but because of the mutual bad blood one sensed an ever-present Sword of Damocles hanging over the Assembly and the Executive.
The Ulster Unionists would have brought the Executive and Assembly crashing down by this coming January if the IRA, through its inability to keep to the margins, hadn't left former Northern Secretary John Reid with little option but to pre-empt the UUP and suspend the Stormont institutions in October. The timing of the espionage revelations triggered suspicions that the "securocrats" were conniving to switch the blame for collapse from David Trimble on to Gerry Adams. Regardless, for most of this year politics was heading for a fall.
Continuing direct rule will make redundant 108 Assembly members - apart from those who double- or treble-job in Westminster and Europe - and create a dangerous political vacuum. And it's not only the politicians who miss devolution. While some ordinary unionists welcome government from London, most of them, albeit with misgivings, embraced the local power that devolution bestowed.
Nationalists and republicans took to devolution ungrudgingly. They will vehemently resist government from Westminster, unless it has a very green North-South tinge.
Assembly elections are scheduled for May, although in the absence of an end to the impasse there is some uncertainty over whether they will be called. The huge strides forward made by the DUP and Sinn Féin (at the expense of the UUP and the SDLP) in the local and Westminster elections of 2001 are likely to be repeated if the elections go ahead and if politics are still rutted in recrimination and stalemate. Certainly, if Trimble is to have any chance of withstanding the challenge of Peter Robinson he must have a deal in which the IRA is seen to answer Blair's appeal to break with the Kalashnikov.
This year, Mark Durkan went on the offensive and established his control over the SDLP. It is difficult to see how he can prevent Sinn Féin maintaining its edge over his party. But if he can keep within close electoral range of Gerry Adams, that will be a considerable achievement in itself.
Apart from the great positive of the continued progress on policing, to such an extent that Sinn Féin is inching its way towards the entrance door of the Policing Board, 2002 was the year where politics made two steps forwards and two, sometimes three, back.
It made sense, therefore, that Tony Blair, with a nod of assent from Bertie Ahern, decided to go for broke. He took this gamble when he, like many others, lost patience with the snail's pace progress of politics. Let republicans rely solely on the ballot box and all outstanding elements of the Belfast Agreement will be speedily implemented, he pledged.
Which is where we are now: the two governments hosting multi-party talks that are running in tandem, be absolutely certain, with secret talks involving Dublin, London and republican leaders. All the ingredients are there for a deal, but that's no guarantee of success.
If a deal is do-able, expect Blair and Ahern in Hillsborough or Belfast for the final stages of negotiations. Their brief? To crack heads and take the kudos. If a deal isn't achieved by springtime, then in 12 months' time we could be where we are now, maybe even further back.
The Christmas census figures might help concentrate minds. They illustrate the almost even division of Northern society, and their message appears obvious: that the cross-community consensual principles of the Belfast Agreement remain the best way forward. Politicians and paramilitaries will have to heed that message sometime, but whether they can do so in 2003 remains problematic.