A "peace wall" in Belfast/Wikimedia
Events in recent weeks in Northern Ireland, including a feud in the IRA in Belfast and tottering power-sharing institutions at Stormont, have highlighted once more that, far from being a ‘post-conflict’ society with an ‘historic’ peace agreement, it remains a region in pre-post-conflict mode where history isn’t over just yet.
This is not, however, due to the ‘ancient hatreds’ often projected on to this complex canvas by the simplifying gaze of superficial observers. Indeed, as the all-too-similarly dysfunctional nature of post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina and Lebanon demonstrates, it is the consistent application of this stereotyping perspective by representatives of the ‘international community’—the most powerful states with a regional investment—which is the real problem, regardless of the fine-grained variety of the cases in point. For it leads, as in all three related agreements—Belfast (1998), Dayton (1995) and Taif (1989)—to the same outcome.
