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The
still on going concentrated and organized attacks
by the UDA on the nationalist communities raises a
number of important issues. Firstly though it needs
to be said that all those attacks on Catholic and
Protestant homes and communities needs both to be
challenged and condemned. My reasoning for referring
to the UDA though is that increasingly many people
see a concentrated escalation of their violence without
much actually being done about it.
It
is common knowledge that the UDA hold agents and informers
within their ranks who have and can influence direction
of that organization in whatever ways deemed appropriate
at the time. From the earliest years of the recent
conflict, from Ulsterisation through the hunger strikes
to the present day the UDA violence could seemingly
be turned on and off or directed in a particular direction,
which ran in tandem with the political and tactical
interest of their state masters as they constantly
changed and developed their strategies with the usage
of paramilitary organizations.
Looking
objectively with this development many did and have
drawn their own conclusions. Increasingly though some
within the Protestant tradition both within community
and workforce who previous focused on the authorities
reasonings are asking: 'why is the British Government
allowing this to continue? How is this terror, intimidation
and murder from a largely infiltrated organization
going on at times undetected or more importantly unchallenged,
and why?' These questions are increasingly being raised
against the backdrop of unrelenting attacks on interface
areas directed largely against the nationalist community
but affecting both traditions.
The
agenda behind the continual development of these attacks
is causing havoc on ordinary people's lives with such
organizations serving largely as pawns and puppets
directed by their state agencies who care nothing
about them (apart from their useage) or the communities
they come from. While they are used for a particular
interest, the communities in which they live continue
on a daily basis of merely existence. In doing so
their thoughts are developed toward sectarianism,
always focused on the other side, their actions 'directed'
at the other tradition, while through the division
and those actions their own community suffers. All
this while those who direct them watch on with the
inactions against the growing violence, as is historically
repetitive, so speaking volumes as to the present
agenda.
So
the continual violence goes on unchallenged, the tensions
continue the social-economic deprivation increases,
the mindsets harden, the sectarianism concretizes
all while many look on. As many of the unionist leaders
jet off on their holidays or drive back to the cocoon
of suburbia it is their traditions' children also
who are again - despite the differing leaderships
talk of peace - seeing yet another generation growing
up watching the hate on their friends and families
faces. It is they who now as before are becoming sucked
into the hateful vacuum of sectarianism with undoubtedly
many again joining such organizations
So
then the continuance of the conflict mindset will
continue for those kids, nurtured by the paramilitaries,
directed by their masters, with the rhetoric of condemnation
voiced by the main unionists leaders. As before the
agenda for some is fixed, may it be the rhetorical
condemnation without an active principled stand or
the continuance of 'direction' of organized hate and
sectarianism for a vastly unwanted political agenda.
It
is the same areas and peoples who have felt the force
of the troubles again feeling the brunt. It is becoming
increasingly obvious to various groups, organizations
and individuals from both traditions that this recent
onslaught is a manufactured and directed agenda with
ordinary people's homes and lives being destroyed.
While the unionists leaderships should acknowledge
the reality on the ground the British Government needs
to acknowledge and reel in their agencies including
their paramilitary playthings, who use division, destruction
and death for a rallying call of loyalty.
Many
other political and economic changes are also needed
to attempt to bring stability. Yet against the backdrop
of organized violence, the miserable socio economic
conditions and with the hands-off approach by the
British Government in tandem with the hands-on approach
of their state security agencies it is no wonder that
increasingly more people from both traditions are
seeing their lives and communities being played out
only as pawns on life's 'state chessboard' of destruction,
collusion, terror, intimidation, division and murder.
Many
questions can and are being asked about this developing
situation and the political reasoning behind it. It
does not take a detailed study of history to come
to an understanding, and so with the continual Unionists
rhetorical condemnation, the British government's
inactions against the ongoing organised and directed
violence of the UDA and the state agencies interests
within in, makes it all this time round for many more,
'an agenda less hidden'.
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