When the British Army arrived in Northern Ireland it was welcomed by many Catholics, who believed it would act as a neutral peacekeeping force which could protect them from brutal Protestand mobs such as the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Special Ulster Constabulary. Things began to go wrong, however, with the imposition of the 1971 Special Powers Act. This provided draconian powers of internment without trial, and it was immediately used to imprison 342 men, almost all of whom were Catholics without any connection to violence or the IRA. This by itself greatly widened support for the IRA, which had been a fringe organization within the Republican community.
Marches and demonstrations were illegal, but there was a strong feeling that these unjust laws must be repealed, so the IRA was prevailed upon to stay away and a march was planned for January 30, 1972. Meanwhile a crack unit of British paratroopers had been deployed to the area. 15000 people joined the march, which was peaceful except for a group of youths who threw stones at soldiers manning a barricade. The British Army had positioned snipers behind and above the rally, and they opened fire with live ammunition. Thirteen protesters were killed, many shot in the back or while tending to the wounded, and all unarmed. The army claimed that it had reacted to information received indicating a danger of attack by nail bombs and IRA snipers.
The coroner, a retired British Army officer, said:
It strikes me that the Army ran amok that day and shot without thinking what they were doing. They were shooting innocent people. These people may have been taking part in a march that was banned but that does not justify the troops coming in and firing live rounds indiscriminately. I would say without hesitation that it was sheer, unadulterated murder.
Nevertheless the official inquiry, conducted by Lord Widgery, exonerated the Army of any wrongdoing – in what was clearly a political coverup. A furious Irish Republic demanded UN intervention, but Britain had a veto on the Security Council, so the matter was not carried forward.
The massacre of Bloody Sunday were a watershed in the history of Northern Ireland. It legitised the tactics of the IRA in the minds of Irish Catholics, and led to decades of violence before peaceful means to resolve the situation would again have credibility.
The point of this history lesson is that the situation is being recreated in a more terrible form in Iraq at the moment. As others have pointed out, when the army is used to occupy a country, violence inevitably escalates. At the point where the occupying force loses control, whether deliberately or not, it’s credibility as a peacekeeping force is irretrievably damaged and it comes under seige from the whole community rather than just extremist elements within the community. Coming back from such a position is extremely difficult. As in Northern Ireland and a series of other colonial occupations, there is a poisonous inevitability to the situation. From one perspective it looks as if the population must be protected from extremists in a situation where the population’s loyalties are always questionable. From the other side it looks as if the troops and the extremists are as bad as each other, but at least the extremists are of the same religion and ethnicity. Both sides descend into revenge killings, arbitrary kidnappings, torture and intimidation.
The United States has a terrible record in battles for hearts and minds. In Iraq they have squandered all the capital they gained by ousting Hussein by failing to restore services or quell violence. They are now bunkered down protecting US commercial interests like the oil and leaving the remainder of the country in the hands of death squads (note, note), and sectarian gangs and militias.
It’s a long way back from such a situation, and the pattern evinced by Haditha is not promising. The US should be taking a careful look at the mistakes of the past, or it may be doomed to repeat them.