In December 2001, the US State Department listed four Protestant paramilitary organizations as terrorist groups: the Ulster Volunteer Force. The British government decided to divide Ireland into two distinct communities, Protestant and Catholic, after a guerrilla war led by the legendary Irish nationalist Michael Collins, which ruled as a colony for more than a century.
The conflict was both political and religious, and the predominantly Catholic south of the island was the location of the independent Republic of Ireland. The unrest erupted nearly 40 years ago, when Northern Ireland’s religious unrest became known as “unrest,” when Irish Catholic nationalists, who favored unification with the Irish Republic in the south, began a war against the loyalist Protestant paramilitaries who supported continued British rule. Many Catholic republicans in Ulster complained of being treated as second-class citizens, and so they sought to unite Northern Ireland into a Republic of Ireland. The decision of the Irish Government to remain part of the United Kingdom.
Residents of Belfast and Derry were sealed off in barbed wire-separated neighborhoods and patrolled by masked guerrillas. During the war, more than 3,500 people were killed, thousands more were injured and lives maimed, and suspected terrorists and civilians were caught in bombings and crossfire. The conflict in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles, began in the late 1960s and ended after the Good Friday Agreement of Belfast in 1998. As History seems to repeat itself just last month A series of violent clashes in Belfast and Londonderry (also known as Derry), in which cars were set on fire, projectiles and petrol bombs thrown at police. The Northern Ireland Executive held an emergency meeting on Thursday in Belfast to discuss the violence. It condemned the riots and condemned riots and attacks on police, according to the Irish Times. The recent conflicts were sparked because of the effects cause by the application of Brexit on the economy.
In the past, the conflict became more difficult to understand because it was not only about Catholics who wanted to create a united Ireland or an independent Britain, but also about keeping Northern Ireland part of the United Kingdom. The conflict was focused on Northern Ireland, meaning relatively few communities felt the traumatic effects disproportionately.
At the heart of Northern Ireland’s politics is a divided population that experiences the state in very different ways. Simply put, the majority of Northern Irish people consider themselves British and want it to remain part of the United Kingdom, even though they are only a minority in Ireland as a whole. The majority of the Republic of Ireland, with a population of just over 1.5 million, is also predominantly Protestant.
Irish Catholicism is defined as Catholic, although more and more people do not consider themselves to belong to this category. Ulster Loyalism emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an alternative to the Catholic Church. A small minority of loyalists called for an independent Protestant state in Ulster because they believe they cannot rely on the support of the British government, while Ulster nationalism experienced the rise of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in Northern Ireland during the Irish Civil War.
In the northern province of Ulster there is a Protestant majority that wants to maintain a political tradition called unionism, while the island has a Catholic majority that wants self-government. As tensions for power rose and intensified – the division between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland – tensions flared between loyalists and Catholics in Ulster and the Catholic Church.
The conflict in Northern Ireland is the result of the conflict between the Ulster Unionists and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the six north-eastern counties of Ireland, which are part of a separate state within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The source of conflict is between the Ulster Unionists and the Catholic nationalist and loyalist population of Northern Ireland. Other republican factions, including elements of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and its efforts to achieve a united and independent Ireland, include Sinn Fein, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and elements of the Catholic nationalist population, led mainly by the Provisional Irish American Army (IRA). The IRA is supported by a number of local army units, as well as paramilitary groups and paramilitary organizations.