It's ironic that President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday at this crucial point in the Iraq War. More than 30 years ago British troops were deployed to the streets of Belfast, where they were met by a generally welcoming and supportive local population. The British army began a "hearts and minds" campaign to cement its support within the Catholic community, just as it's doing now in Basra. Over the following months and years, however, relations between troops and the local Catholic community deteriorated and street violence escalated.
Britain is still pursuing a final resolution to this conflict.
During the past few weeks, British troops advancing into Basra have been using techniques for urban warfare that they developed in Northern Ireland. Reports from the front and discussions in the media emphasize both the technical skills and practical experience that the British army brings to the task. Less attention, however, is being paid to the other lessons that could be drawn from the Northern Ireland experience. Of course, Northern Ireland is not Iraq. But if there are lessons to be learned from Belfast on how to protect a vehicle checkpoint and how to conduct house searches, maybe we should also be thinking about the political lessons from the British army's experience there.
Even if large sections of the Iraqi population welcome the troops initially, the experience of Northern Ireland tells us how fragile such a welcome can be. If but a few civilians become involved in clashes with those troops, there is the danger of a rapid escalation in violence. And even if a majority of Iraqis regard the British and American presence as benevolent at first, this could quickly change depending on how troops behave on the ground; a harsh response by troops to small-scale opposition, for example, could provoke wider hostility. If a stable Iraqi government with widespread support does not emerge quickly, conflict on the streets could make it impossible for any regime relying on the United States and Britain to gain widespread support. The cycle of escalation could therefore be much swifter than it was in Northern Ireland.
The British army took over day-to-day policing of Northern Ireland's Catholic neighborhoods in 1969. Some young people got into scraps with the army, and when it responded harshly -- often arresting innocent bystanders in the process -- more people grew hostile to the troops. Over the next three years, there was a complete breakdown in relations between the army and the local Catholic population, and a significant minority of the Catholic population gradually came to support an armed campaign by the Irish Republican Army. Even those within the Catholic community who opposed the IRA nonetheless withdrew their support from the British army. That lack of support was just as damaging to the British army and government as the growth of the IRA.
The relationships built with local children and with the local community were skin-deep. Some of the kids who hung around the army bases and were friendly to the troops at first ultimately joined the IRA and attacked British soldiers. And the fact that troops were regularly rotated out meant that each incoming unit had to build new relationships from scratch. The connections that troops make with local communities in Iraq may provide heartening news footage but ultimately are bound to be superficial and short-term. They just can't compete or compare with the ties that link people to one another within those communities.
Blair is pressuring Bush to minimize the scale and duration of U.S. military involvement in forming a postwar Iraqi government and instead let the United Nations lead the way. It doesn't seem too farfetched to imagine that the British are recalling their disastrous experience in Northern Ireland. After all, they know how quickly an army can lose the support of the population it patrols and controls. If British and American troops become directly involved in policing and patrolling Iraqi towns and cities, they could easily become embroiled in a long-term urban warfare situation that would be very difficult to extricate themselves from. And that is surely in no one's interest.
Niall O Dochartaigh is a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles and a professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
