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Friday, January 8th 2010, 4:00 AM
So peaceful has Northern Ireland been that the news passed quietly as a reminder of another age: The last arsenal of the armed sectarian strife that took 3,600 lives there over 40 years is gone.
The Ulster Defense Association, the biggest Protestant paramilitary group, announced that it had destroyed its weaponry, and the declaration was duly confirmed by independent monitors. The Provisional IRA, the Catholic paramilitary force, did away with the last of its arsenal in 2005, and the Ulster Volunteer Force, another Protestant gang, gave up its guns last year.
Die-hards and dead-enders still lurk in the Ulster shadows, but their violence is more likely to bring the two sides together than drive a wedge between them. Or disrupt their power-sharing governance. Thousands joined peace vigils in March, after the cowardly murders of a police officer and two British soldiers committed by IRA splinter groups.
The decommissioning news serves as a happy reminder that terrorism can be defeated when there is a will to pursue peace.
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