A new Belfast

People in India should be curious how the tiny territory of Northern Ireland has tackled terrorism and wonder whether there are lessons to be learnt.

...... an awful lot of people who are so-called Al Qaeda are actually radicalised, young, disenfranchised British. The more you can get into those communities and build confidence in them, the more chances you have of making them see the crazy way theyre going.

Sir Hugh Orde, Chief Constable, Police Service of Northern Ireland

DESPITE all my travels to different parts of the world, Northern Ireland was unexplored territory until a fortnight ago when work took me to Belfast. I am happy I went because I had always imagined Northern Ireland to be a decrepit and disturbed region to be avoided by anyone who did not have strict business to transact there. I was possibly not alone in nursing such a misconception. All this odium that the place had acquired over a century was because of the Irish Republi can Armys (IRA) ruthless tactics to press for secession from Great Britain. The IRA nearly killed the entire British Cabinet led by Margaret Thatcher in Brighton in 1984 and was responsible for several bombings in London.

What I saw, however, was a slick modern Belfast where life was in good order and shape. There was no sign of panic or distress and no visible police presence either in the city or during my two-hour train journey along the coast from Dublin. Of course, for a city of 270,000 people (the wider Belfast Metropolitan Area has nearly 650,000 people), I did not see too many people on the streets even though it was a weekday. Nevertheless, there was sufficient commercial activity, including office construction, to support the claim that everything was normal. I was told on authority that the city attracted substantial foreign investment, especially from the United States, and this gave some assurance to Britain, which has been criticised for taking on too much of the economic burden of looking after an area that had been battered for decades by terrorism.

In fact, Lord Rana, who hails from the Punjab and has adopted Belfast as his permanent home for more than three decades, told me that he has been campaigning for enhanced interest from Indian entrepreneurs. I cannot but endorse his call because Northern Ireland Belfast to be specific has come a long way from the intense IRA violence of the troubled 1990s. (The IRA announced a ceasefire in 1994 and went back on it for a while in 1996 following the London Dockland bombing, only to call a halt to violence the following year. In July 2005, it announced an end to armed campaign and promised to dump all its arms.)

It is an entirely different matter that the tactics abandoned by the IRA were, much to the chagrin of hardliners, promptly seized upon by the dissidents and posed grave problems to the police. With limited popular support, the dissidents, who belong to the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, are more of a nuisance value than a danger to the peace that the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 ushered in. The agreement signed by the British and Irish governments was endorsed by all political parties except the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and by the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum held in May 1998.

People in India should be extremely curious about how such a tiny territory has tackled terrorism and wonder whether there are lessons to be learnt. A lot of credit should go to the sagacity of former Prime Minister Tony Blair in bringing the IRA to the conference table and convincing it of the wisdom of abjuring violence. At the same time, one cannot underplay the heroic role of the police and the contribution of the reform process set in motion by the Patten Commission (the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland).

To many zealous police reformers, Chris Pattens recommendations (September 1999) should serve as an inspiration. While it will be preposterous to refer here to our own struggle to bring about changes in the Indian police force, despite a fiat from the Supreme Court, the contrast in attitudes to reform need mention. Even conceding that, geographically speaking, Northern Ireland is smaller than the smallest Indian State, we must remember that it remains an area with the utmost complexities, especially because of the deep religious divide between Catholics and Protestants. There was a feeling that Catholics received a raw deal at the hands of an overbearing Protestant majority aided and abetted by Westminster.

That the commission was able to produce a blueprint broadly acceptable to both segments is a tribute to Pattens credibility and objectivity. Armed with terms of reference that covered the whole gamut of policing, the commission came out with 175 recommendations, chief of which was the rechristening of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) as the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The questionable methods of the RUC in dealing with the IRA earned it notoriety, and the name had to be jettisoned if there was to be a break with the past.

Other recommendations included the creation of a policing board and district policing partnership boards to ensure accountability. The creation of a police ombudsman to look into public complaints was another positive move to enhance public confidence that misconduct would be punished swiftly. Perhaps recognising the bitterness between the Catholic and Protestant communities, the commission recommended that recruitment to the police was to be on a 50:50 basis. An emphasis on community policing and human rights in day-to-day working lent further refinement to an approach that promised more focussed policing and sensitive handling of field problems.

Comprehensive legislation followed the Patten recommendations. Sinn Fein, the IRAs political arm, was initially reluctant to endorse the reforms. Last year, however, it fell in line with the others, and a Sinn Fein representative now actually sits on the Northern Ireland Policing Board. From what I have heard, the system is working reasonably well. There is all-round confidence that the PSNI is professional and holds the balance evenly between Catholics and Protestants. This is of great importance because the two sects still nurse distrust even though Belfast itself has acquired a distinct cosmopolitan character.

I was privileged to visit the PSNI headquarters during my short stay in Belfast. Superintendent McDowell took time off from his busy schedule to tell me how the situation, though stable, required constant care and attention. His men and women on the force still had to move about carefully while going about their chores. In the past few weeks, at least five policemen had been attacked, two of them suffering injuries. According to one report, Catholic officers were a special target so as to deter members of that community from enlisting themselves in the police.

What is of concern to the police is the reappearance of the plastic explosive, Semtex, which the Provisional IRA used decades ago. It is now being used by the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, which sometimes work in tandem although they are rivals with known differences. There is a sneaking suspicion that a few former IRA men had passed on to the two splinter groups the Semtex and arms and ammunition that their organisation had presumably given up and that they had been holding on to.

McDowells main concern is over the collection of accurate intelligence on terrorist activities, an anxiety that is common to many police forces all over the world. But he is satisfied with the greater police integration with the community. Many police stations are now more open and have ceased to be the fortresses they were at the height of IRA militancy. He is proud of the fact that PSNI officers are often sought by police forces elsewhere in the world for anti-terrorism briefings.

Sir Hugh Orde is the Chief Constable of the PSNI. I met him briefly at Cambridge a few weeks ago, although during my visit to his headquarters he was otherwise preoccupied. By all accounts, he is a no-nonsense man who was chosen to lead the force on the basis of his excellent track record. He brings a pragmatic approach to policing, even if some of his utterances raise eyebrows. For instance, he told The Guardian sometime ago that if need be one had to talk to Al Qaeda. This would be heresy to many of us.

He added that he was willing to receive anybody who had something to offer towards improved policing. Can there be anything more eminently acceptable than a genuine interest in sharpening the performance of ones force?

I am amused that when I write to some police chiefs in India commending a practice I came across in some part of the world, I do not even get an acknowledgement.