Ireland: Past and Present - Ireland 2014 - page 660

help Northern Ireland keep the peace and met resistance from the IRA, which saw them as
an occupying army supporting the Protestant pro-British majority.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, the North was a low-level battlefield, with the IRA using
terrorist tactics to achieve their political ends. The Troubles, which claimed some 3,000
lives, continued with bombings, marches, hunger strikes, rock-throwing, and riots (notably
Derry's Bloody Sunday in 1972—see sidebar on here ) . These were interrupted by periods
of cease-fires, broken cease-fires, and a string of failed peace agreements.
Then came the watershed 1998 settlement known as the Good Friday Peace Accord
(to pro-Irish Nationalists) or the Belfast Agreement (to pro-British Unionists).
Global Nations (2000 and Beyond)
After years of negotiation, in 2005 the IRA formally announced an end to its armed cam-
paign, promising to pursue peaceful, democratic means to achieve its goals. In 2006, I
was stunned to learn that the British Army surveillance towers in Derry—disturbing fix-
tures since my very first visit—had been torn down. In the spring of 2007, the unthinkable