I traveled to Belfast in Northern Ireland with the Ireland Program about two weeks ago. I think it may be the most interesting place I've ever been, both for its own sake and for the insight it gives into other hotspots of the world. Hopefully most people know some of the history of Northern Ireland, but I'll summarize it briefly anyway.

In 1921, the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland won their freedom from Britain, but at the cost of the partitioning of the six counties that make up Northern Ireland. These counties remained part of the United Kingdom because they were predominantly Unionist and Protestant. However, a full one-third of the population of these counties was Catholic.

Over the next 80 years, Catholics in those counties were oppressed and often persecuted. Starting in the mid-1960s, for a variety of reasons, they began to fight back. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) was reborn, and for 30 years Northern Ireland experienced "The Troubles," guerrilla warfare between the IRA, Britain's army, police forces and several Unionist paramilitaries.

During the next 30 years, 3,500 people lost their lives, often dying on the streets of Belfast, victims of shootings and bombs. Finally, in 1998, the most recent peace process started, and with the Good Friday agreement a cease-fire began. The violence in Northern Ireland has mostly stopped since then and the government is moving forward.

Our visit there was amazing. I had expected this to be a quiet war, one that was no longer visible or perhaps never had been. I quickly realized how wrong I was when our tour of Belfast began with the guide pointing out an empty lot and telling us that it used to be the forensics mortuary until the IRA blew it up.

The war that shook Belfast for so long is in no way hidden. Murals of paramilitary men with machine guns decorate hundreds of buildings, relating their willingness to die for the cause to all who pass by. Almost every corner has its story of death and every street has run with blood.

We met with a minister in the government of Northern Ireland and discussed the radical changes that the peace process has released. The former leader of the IRA is now a minister in the government. Thousands of prisoners convicted in connection with IRA and Unionist paramilitary crimes have been released, meaning that there are literally hundreds of convicted murderers on the streets in Northern Ireland. The concessions on both sides have been huge but necessary for peace.

Northern Ireland is fascinating in its own right. The play between causes that both sides deeply believe in and the conviction that fighting destroys the things worth living for is impressive to see. But Northern Ireland also opens up a unique perspective into the conflicts the United States is currently involved in — Afghanistan and Israel.

The perspective that Northern Ireland gives on Israel is both hopeful and depressing. Northern Ireland shows that, no matter how sharp the division or how long the conflict, eventually people tire of the body bags. I find Northern Ireland hopeful because it lets me believe that eventually the people of Israel and Palestine will tire of war as well and will be ready to make the concessions necessary for peace.

However, the same situation makes me ask just how long it may take for that spiritual exhaustion to set in. Northern Ireland has been struggling to be free for more than 200 years. The sheer length of this fight is frightening because, though the results give one hope that the fight will end in Israel, too, I have to wonder when that end will come. How many people will die before that time? How long will the Holy Land run with blood?

The perspective on Afghanistan is equally disturbing. I know that I, growing up, always sided with the IRA, feeling that they were fighting for their freedom, religious and political. Historically, the American sympathy has been with the IRA. But the fact is that the methods they used — snipers, grenades, rockets, bombs — are the tools of terrorists. The IRA were terrorists, but because they were terrorists that we agreed with in some way, we called them rebels, revolutionaries and freedom fighters.

We are now a country firmly united against the evils of terrorism. Their means are cowardly, their aims evil and they represent all that is wrong with the human condition. But not more than 10 years ago, we were a country who not-so-secretly sided with a different set of terrorists. The juxtaposition of the IRA and al-Qaida in this way forces us to ask some serious questions about our moral position. Can we truly claim the high ground against terrorism, or must we admit that, we, too, have supported some shady fights?

Marlayna Ann Soenneker is a junior psychology and theology major. Her column appears every other Thursday. She can be reached at msoennek@nd.edu.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

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