Checkmate, it seems

It was just the news that we needed from the North. A member of Sinn Feín had been arrested. Documents of a compromising nature had been seized in a series of raids, on the Sinn Feín offices at Stormont and on a number of other addresses.

The scenes were described in dramatic terms in media reports. The officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland arrived at Stormont in a convoy of jeeps. There were 30 of them and they marched into the offices, where they proceeded to search for material. They had only a warrant to search one desk, that of Sinn Feín’s senior administrator, Denis Donaldson. A TV crew was on hand to film the raid. There were angry scenes, with the Minister for Health Barbara de Brun and MP Gerry Kelly confronting the police. Photographers also recorded the scene as the PSNI officers took away material they had confiscated, including CD Roms and a CD Rom player.

So what the fuck was going on? In the days that followed spin and counter-spin were applied by the Northern Ireland Office, by Sinn Feín, by the Unionists parties and by the SDLP. One thing that no one was able to say, however, was that this was good for the peace process. On the contrary, the general mood seemed to be that the raid signalled the end of the power-sharing executive in the North.

For David Trimble, it was manna from heaven. He accused the IRA and Sinn Feín of stealing government documents, and using them to spy on people they are sitting in Government with. “How can we remain in Government when we no longer can trust them anymore?” he asked. Now, if the executive collapsed, he could point the finger of blame squarely at Sinn Feín and the IRA. Effectively, he was off the hook.

Sinn Feín’s response was uncompromising. They suggested that it would be impossible for anyone charged with an offence to receive a fair trial, given the extent and nature of media coverage of the raids. They also identified the timing of the raids as having been choreographed, to inflict maximum damage on the peace process, and to shift the onus for the near certain collapse of the power-sharing executive away from David Trimble.

In the immediate aftermath, it is hard to see how the executive can be rescued. There is talk of a major concession on the part of the IRA, but to hope for that is to misunderstand completely the Republican mindset. It may be that there is evidence that certain individuals have been involved in stealing documents and in accumulating intelligence on conversations between the Northern Ireland Minister and the Dublin government, among other things. But if that is so, and if they have been caught in the act and thereby cornered, Sinn Feín are more likely to retrench and to defend their own, rather than in effect coming out with their hands up.

The immediate instinct within the Republican movement, even if those charged are guilty, is that this is a stitch-up. They see it as further proof of the collusion between the PSNI and Unionists. And they also see it as an example of what is sauce for the goose not being sauce for the gander. British intelligence can happily bug a car in which Gerry Adams is travelling to a crucial meeting in the hope of finding out what Sinn Feín are thinking. Information on members of Sinn Feín and on their legal representatives finds its way into the hands of loyalist paramilitaries – and no one is charged.

They are dealing with an absence of trust on a daily basis – and they are getting on with it in the interests of peace. Why can’t the other parties to the agreement do likewise?

No doubt about it, they have a point. But does it matter? It looks as if this is a round they can’t win. The unionists are laughing up their sleeves. For all the good that will do them. What a grim impasse it has come to.

Meanwhile, George Bush is telling the US that war is inevitable in Iraq. On the face of it, the threat of war is supposed to be about attempts by the Iraqis to acquire weapons of mass destruction. It isn’t of course, it is about oil, as just about everyone seems to realise at this stage. But the pretext is enough, of course it is…

It is another case of what’s OK for me not being OK for him. The Observer recently detailed some astonishing statistics, which brought the point into sharp relief.

Dig this: the total number of nuclear warheads held by the US is 6,144. Iraq has none. 35,000 civilians died in the Gulf War, almost all of them Iraqi. Approximately 1.5 million Iraqis had died by October 1999 as a result of UN sanctions. Of those, more than 750,000 were children under 5 years of age.

One can only imagine what kind of weapons George Bush would be attempting to accumulate, if atrocities on that scale were visited on his people. But it is OK to wage war on Iraq in order to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring the kind of weapons that the US (and Russia) already have in their thousands?

And which country has actually used nuclear weapons in the past? You got it in one: the United States of America.

What a fucked up world it is too…