NORTHERN IRELAND / In the Shadow of the Gunmen

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Along the grim, wind-whipped streets of wintry Belfast, there were also ironic, even humorous touches. On New Year's Eve, thanks to the terrorists, there were 30 fewer pubs than last year in which to celebrate the passing of 1971. To some, the prevalence of pub bombing made it seem as if the war were being fought by the Temperance League rather than the I.R.A.; it has secretly pleased some Presbyterian elders. Many customers, scared of the pub warfare, quit early. This has given rise to dour little jokes. The long-suffering wife of a drinking husband supposedly says: "That's the first time Paddy has been home before closing time in years." Another story—a true one—tells of fleeing bombers who had to return their stolen getaway car because they had unwittingly taken it from another I.R.A. man.

Black humor aside, there is no longer an easy or rational way to conclude the war in the foreseeable future. What began in 1968 as a nonviolent campaign for civil rights by Ulster's half-million Catholics—one-third of the North's population—has inexorably grown into an all-out campaign of terror by that most fabled and storied of guerrilla organizations, the Irish Republican Army. Best estimates are that the army in Northern Ireland numbers no more than 200 hard-core gunmen, and deaths and arrests have decimated its cadre of trained leaders. But the I.R.A. clearly has no shortage of potential recruits, and the recent history of Malaya, Cuba and Cyprus provides ample evidence that small guerrilla groups can survive for years against much larger military forces.

Terror, even when cloaked in idealism, is an ugly form of politics—the strategy of determined, desperate men. The I.R.A. is determined to survive and to win. Says Sean MacStiofáin, chief of staff of the army's militant Provisional wing: "This is not just another glorious phase in Irish history. We must win. We can't afford to lose. We will keep the campaign going regardless of the cost to ourselves, regardless of the cost to anyone else."

Even if they were somehow neutralized by British troops, it is already clear that the gunmen have come surprisingly close to winning their political goals. Since its establishment in 1916, the I.R.A. has had but one aim: the creation of a united Ireland wholly free of British control. The army's tactics of terror have succeeded in reopening the issue of "the border," and the reunification of North and South—Ulster and the Republic of Ireland. They have made all but untenable the Protestant-dominated government of Northern Ireland at Stormont. They have caused England's Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath and his Cabinet to wonder if it is worth keeping Ulster after all, notwithstanding official avowals to do so. To many observers, in short, the real issue is not so much whether an Ulster tied to Britain can survive as how long it will last.

Ulster's troubles seem weirdly outdated in a modern world that, however mistakenly, likes to think of itself as rational. To understand the feuds of faith and blood, it is necessary to go back to the Middle Ages.