20 Years

When I was a senior in high school I was, like many others, approached by an army recruiter. I had no intention of enlisting, I had, I think by that point already been accepted to Virginia, but thought it polite, to go and hear him out, to do my best to consider all options. While there we discussed the fact that I had been accepted to University, and that I felt called to the ministry--he told me he could get me a position as a chaplain's assistant where I could acquire some practical experience before later going to university and seminary on the army's dime. I politely turned him down, but army recruiters are a persistent bunch, and he passed my name up the line, so that later that week I received a call from a colonel who was, I believe, responsible for recruiting in the region including Virginia. This colonel had clearly been briefed on the substance of my discussion with the recruiting sergeant I had met with, and closed his pitch with the line "The army needs more Christian soldiers."

It's a line that has stuck with me, partly because at the time my thought was quite different. I felt then that the army needed more Muslim soldiers, more soldiers who better understood the complexities of Iraqi and Afghani society, soldiers who wouldn't be viewed as the beginning of another wave of crusader invasion. Now, I have even greater doubts about his statement. I want to be a peace maker. I do not doubt the necessity of military action in some circumstances, but I doubt the ability of the military to create peace. Peace is not an absence of fighting. Peace cannot be obtained just through the removal of a dictator, the destruction of an insurgency. These things are often necessary, I'm not so naive as to argue against that, I only doubt the ability of the military to create lasting peace on its own, it seems that military alone can at best cause the cessation of open hostility necessary for beginning the process. We don't need more Christian soldiers in the army; we need more Christians on the other fronts. We need more Christians doing the charitable work that heals and rebuilds communities. Peace is more than the absence of violence.

This point is especially apparent to me here with the combination of previously mentioned Remembrance Day and that this past month marked the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall (9, November, 1989). The poignancy of that moment is not one lost here in Belfast. This past weekend I saw someone wearing a shirt that read "Berlin: 1961-1989 Belfast: 1969-?" Much has been made of the success of the peace process in Northern Ireland. The paramilitaries have largely disarmed. There is a power sharing government in place that is at least mostly functional. The Good Friday Accords seem to be a success on those fronts, but those are not the only standards of peace. Berlin had one wall. Northern Ireland has 47 "peace lines," 36 of which are in Belfast, and there are at least 15 miles of wall just in North Belfast..

The walls vary greatly in nature, some are large and imposing, others are mostly wire fence, with plantings attempting to conceal them.

This wall to the left is a section of what is possibly the most famous wall in Belfast, the one that divides the Shankill (Unionist) from the Falls (Nationalist) neighborhoods.  This wall is something like 20-25 feet high, and has grown both taller and longer since originally built.  In fact, these walls, which began as temporary measures, not intended to last more than 6 months in the beginning of the Troubles in 1969 continued to multiply and grow even after the 1998 Good Friday Accords.

One of the great difficulties faced in Northern Ireland is the way in which the walls reinforce themselves. 50% of the population lives in an area where more that 90% share their religious and political background. In 2002, 68% of people between 18 and 25 reported having never had a meaningful conversation with someone from the other community.   Just 5% of children go to an integrated school.
Conventional wisdom holds that no one wants the walls to come down, this was supported by a 2008 survey administered by Millward Brown Ulster for the US-Ireland Alliance, which found "strong agreement that the walls serve to help residents feel safer by keeping the communities separated."  21% of respondents felt that the walls should come down now, but an additional 60% want the walls to come down eventually, but do not feel it is currently safe to do so.  A major obstacle to these feelings of safety is continued lack of confidence in the police--58% were fairly or very worried about the ability of police to keep the peace if the walls were to come down.

This is not entirely unjustified, people still throw projectiles over the walls, and Belfast is prone to what some call "recreational rioting," which is exactly what it sounds like, young people with nothing better to do decide to cause trouble, but in addition to the standard teen thrills, come together in the interface areas to riot.  Originally, there would be police officers stationed at the most common flash points, but then it was discovered that police presence really just provided a target, so they were replaced with CCTV cameras like the one to the right, which allows the police to respond promptly without risking instigating (or preventing) anything.

This presents two immediate concerns; first, if the police presence acted to instigate violence, do the walls do the same.  The walls themselves may not present a target, but they most certainly show exactly where the divides are in a country where around half the population lives in an area that is at least 90% of their own community.  The walls show exactly where the "others" live, and I cannot imagine that they do not contribute to the sense of the other community as "other."  In many places the walls (and some murals, more on those later) are among the most prominent features of a community, and it becomes impossible not to wonder how much the define not just the geography, but also the people, all too many of whom have grown up knowing little about the other community other than that they have to be kept apart.

Edit:
I tried to resist, because it seems at least a little cliché, but I just had to at least link to Robert Frost's "Mending Fences"