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U.K. army presence in Ulster ends

LONDON: Any lingering doubts about Northern Ireland’s return to peace were laid to rest on Tuesday when nearly 40 years of British army presence in the once strife-torn province finally ended, bringing the curtain down on the longest continuous deployment of troops in Britain’s military history.

When British troops first went into Northern Ireland in 1969 to control violent clashes between Catholic and Protestant communities, it was thought that the operation would be over quickly and they would be back home within weeks. In the event, they stayed on for 38 years with troop levels climbing to several thousand at the height of sectarian violence in the seventies and getting embroiled in controversies which raised doubts about the army’s impartiality.

“Operation Banner” , under which 300,000 troops served in Northern Ireland, faced accusations of pro-Protestant bias from the Catholic Irish Republican Army (IRA). British troops and the IRA often fought pitched battles, with both sides suffering heavy casualties.

Recalling the words of historian Brian Feeney, the BBC noted that the mission very quickly turned from “keeping the two communities apart” to “fighting the IRA”.

More than 700 British soldiers were killed during the operation and the IRA lost a number of leading figures.

Despite its significance, however, the withdrawal of British troops was a quiet affair marked only by an announcement that Operation Banner had ended. While a garrison of 5,000 troops would remain, the security of the province would be in the hands of the police.

Gen. Nick Parker, head of the army in Northern Ireland, claimed that the operation had helped create conditions for the peace process. Tuesday’s move came barely weeks after the restoration of democratic self-rule in Northern Ireland. The province is now governed by a coalition of Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party.

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