The goal of achieving paramilitary 'acts of completion' failed, but at least fewer people died in the North this year in violence related to the security situation, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
Violence related to the Troubles in Northern Ireland claimed the lives of 10 people in 2003, which marks it as one of the most peaceful years in Northern Ireland since the conflict began 34 years ago.
Figures compiled by the Belfast office of The Irish Times show that loyalists were implicated in most of the killings.
There have been fewer killings in only two other years since the first ceasefires of 1994 - nine people were killed in 1995 and seven in 1999.
During 2003 the UDA feud accounted for four and possibly five deaths, including that of a senior UDA commander, John "Grugg" Gregg, while the UVF killed one man during the assembly election campaign and a Catholic was beaten to death in a suspected loyalist sectarian attack.
The IRA almost certainly killed Gareth O'Connor in Armagh, notwithstanding the fact that that organisation denied involvement in his disappearance.
The "Real IRA" killed a man in west Belfast, while a Provisional IRA member was killed as he was possibly preparing to engage in a so-called punishment attack in south Armagh.
Much of the political focus of 2003 was on persuading the IRA in particular, but other republican and loyalist paramilitaries as well, to end all activity.
The goal of achieving paramilitary "acts of completion" failed, but at least fewer people died this year from violence related to the security situation.
The UDA began 2003 as it left 2002 by continuing the murderous feud in which the notorious Lower Shankill loyalist, Johnny Adair, was a central figure.
This latest bout of internecine killing dated back to the UDA killing of an LVF drugs figure, Stephen Warnock, in September last year.
The subsequent LVF and UDA fallout left three more men dead before the end of the year.
Ostensibly this was a power struggle between these two organisations, but Adair exploited the dispute by showing solidarity with the LVF, against his own UDA organisation.
The other so-called UDA brigadiers viewed it as an incipient attempt to take over total control of the organisation.
Adair's C Company on the Lower Shankill was blamed for the December 2002 murder of 22-year-old Jonathan Stewart, who had relations in the UDA but was not centrally involved in the organisation.
Just two days into January and the UDA bloodletting continued as Roy Green was shot dead in Belfast in retaliation for Mr Stewart's murder.
It was claimed that Green, who was a UDA member associated with Adair, had colluded in the young man's murder.
The dispute simmered on through January. On one occasion Gina Adair, wife of Johnny, was the target of an apparent failed assassination attempt by the overall UDA leadership.
Adair himself was expelled from the UDA, although his Shankill base remained solidly behind him.
Adair and his associate, John White, were described by their enemies as "dead men walking".
Luckily for Adair in mid-January the Northern Secretary revoked his release licence and sent him back to prison.
He was still able to direct operations, however.
It was the attack on Gina which triggered what was described as "Adair 's final act of madness", according to loyalist sources.
On February 1st members of C Company shot dead 45-year-old UDA commander John Gregg alongside a UDA colleague, Robert Carson, shortly after they left the Belfast car ferry terminal, returning from a Glasgow Rangers game. Adair had blamed Gregg for the attack on his wife.
Gregg, like Adair in his heyday, was something of a loyalist icon over a failed attempt to kill the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams.
It was "too big a hit, even for Johnny Adair". Shortly afterwards scores of UDA figures who were loyal to the general leadership descended on the Lower Shankill Road , intent on vengeance.
Gina Adair, and her son, Jonathan, John White and about 50 others fled by ferry, first to Scotland, and then south to England.
The battle was both a personal power struggle and a turf war over who should have control of the UDA drugs-trafficking business. Adair thought he was invulnerable, but he lost badly.
Old habits may have died hard for the exiled renegade UDA figures as Bolton police arrested a number of them, including Gina and Jonathan Adair on suspicion of drug-dealing. Republicans asked how English police could be so quick in tackling the gang while police generally failed to apprehend them on drugs offences while living in Belfast.
They asked if this was because so many UDA people were allowed a free hand by police Special Branch in return for acting as informers.
In late May Alan McCullough, one of those who fled to England with C Company, made the biggest mistake of his short 21-year-old life by believing he could return home.
He was murdered by Adair's UDA enemies after senior figures in the organisation assured him that he would be safe.
In May Jim Johnston, a senior figure in the Red Hand Commando which is linked to the UVF, and who lived in some opulence in Crawfordsburn, was murdered at his north Down home.
A drugs figure, his death was linked to the death of Stephen Warnock. The finger of suspicion pointed at both the LVF and UDA.
The North's new Assets Recovery Agency, modelled on the Republic's Criminal Assets Bureau, froze £1.5 million in assets belonging to Johnston.
Mostly the loyalist paramilitaries turned on themselves, but in late November loyalists, possibly linked to the UDA, beat to death a 21-year-old Catholic, James McMahon from Lisburn, in a brutal sectarian attack.
As the election campaign was getting under way the UVF murdered 31-year-old John Allen from Ballyclare, Co Antrim, in a separate dispute between loyalists.
The UVF is linked to the Progressive Unionist Party, and while the party's leader, Mr David Ervine, condemned the murder the killing may have damaged the PUP's election prospects.
Mr Ervine was returned in East Belfast, but colleague, Mr Billy Hutchinson, lost his seat in North Belfast.
The IRA is believed to have murdered Gareth O'Connor, a young Armagh man who disappeared in May this year.
His family blamed independent IRA members for his suspected abduction and murder.
The family said people should think long and hard before voting Sinn Féin in the election, but their comments had little or no effect.
In March Keith Rogers, an IRA member aged 24 from Cullaville, Co Armagh, was shot dead during a confrontation between two groups totalling up to 20 men.
It was claimed at the time that Rogers was part of an IRA gang planning a "punishment" shooting, and that he died when the intended victim and his family and friends resisted the threat.
In mid-August the "Real IRA" murdered Daniel McGurk, a father of six, after he stood up to a gang who attacked him at his home off the Lower Falls in west Belfast.
Last year 15 people died, while 22 were killed in 1996, 21 in 1997, 18 in 2000 and 19 in 2001.
The deaths in the 1980s and early 1990s often topped the 100 figure while the 1970s was the worst decade, with 1972 the worst year of all, when almost 500 died.
Eighteen people died in 1969, which is generally viewed as the year when the modern Troubles started.