The tricky thing about eliminating terrorism….

In the wake of Hezbollah’s demonstration of political strength yesterday in Lebanon, and President Bush’s confident speech declaring that, “[the] best antidote to radicalism and terror is the tolerance and hope kindled in free societies,” let’s take a look at another part of the world where concerted efforts have been made to extinguish terrorism — Northern Ireland. Tom Hundley reports in the Chicago Tribune on how the IRA now faces an opponent more powerful than the Protestant paramilitaries — three Catholic sisters:

The $50 million robbery of Belfast’s Northern Bank a week before Christmas, the biggest heist in the annals of British crime, was the kind of audacious Robin Hood caper that enhanced the mystique of the Irish Republican Army. But the ugly Belfast pub brawl that resulted in the slaying of a 33-year-old Catholic man by members of the IRA has seriously tarnished the organization’s image among its grass-roots Catholic supporters, especially after the victim’s five sisters defied the IRA’s unwritten code of silence and publicly demanded that their brother’s killers be brought to justice. The Jan. 30 murder of Robert McCartney has underscored the increasing criminality of the IRA and dealt a serious blow to the electoral chances of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing. It also has isolated Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and turned the McCartney sisters into local heroes. Adams has not been invited to the traditional St. Patrick’s Day celebration at the White House later this month; instead, President Bush has extended the honor to the McCartney sisters and the victim’s fiance, Bridgeen Hagans. “The support of the White House in our quest for justice will be a big help,” said Paula McCartney, a 40-year-old mother of five and part-time university student who has emerged as the family’s spokeswoman. In an extraordinary admission of just how damaging the incident has become for the IRA, its leadership issued a statement Tuesday saying it had met with the McCartney sisters and offered to impose a “punishment shooting” on the four men it says were directly responsible for McCartney’s death.

Read the whole thing — the story suggests just how difficult it might be to eliminate terrorists even when their grass roots support starts to dwindle. As Hundley points out:

Under terms of the Good Friday agreement, the IRA should have disarmed and disbanded several years ago. Instead the gunmen have turned themselves into an increasingly Mafia-like crime organization, specializing in drug dealing, extortion, money laundering and the occasional bank robbery.

Indeed, this is the tricky thing about eliminating terrorists — they can turn to other activities that lack political content but still destabilize society. The good news in this case is that the IRA’s hamhanded offer of punishment shootings has successfully united the other key domestic and international players in Northern Ireland. Needless to say the punishment shooting offer has drawn the ire and condemnation of both Great Britain and the United States. The McCartney sisters have also rejected the IRA’s offer and restated their conviction that “For this family it would only be in court where transparency and accountability prevail that justice will be done.” Over at Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell concludes:

[T]he Bush administration is sending about as clear and unambiguous a signal as one could possibly hope for [in inviting the MCartneys to the White House]. Interestingly, the signals from the North seem to suggest that Sinn Fein and the IRA recognize that they’re in real political trouble – not only because of the frost in their relations with the Irish, British and US governments, but also, more importantly, because of protests from natural constituency in the Catholic working class communities in Northern Ireland (where the murder in question has been highly controversial). For the first time in my memory, there’s a serious internal challenge to the IRA’s ability to control its own community, and to the frequently brutal actions of its hard men. Getting rid of them would be a considerable step forward for democratic politics in the North.

The uneven progress being made in Northern Ireland merely underscores this paragraph from President Bush’s speech yesterday:

Encouraging democracy… is a generational commitment. It’s also a difficult commitment, demanding patience and resolve — when the headlines are good and when the headlines aren’t so good. Freedom has determined enemies, who show no mercy for the innocent, and no respect for the rules of warfare. Many societies in the region struggle with poverty and illiteracy, many rulers in the region have longstanding habits of control; many people in the region have deeply ingrained habits of fear.

This statement would also seem to hold for more affluent, more literate, and yes, more democratic societies as well.