Will this jigsaw ever be finished?
A few years ago there was a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble. At one stage the star of the piece is shown travelling to Stormont to be sworn in as first Minister for the first of what turned out to be several occasions. "An historic day" offers the interviewer from the front seat of the car. "Yes", says Davie, not even looking up from the file he is reading, "one of many", he replies wearily. Even back in 1999 one of the peace process' key protagonists had developed "historic day fatigue".
This is hardly surprising. Over the past eleven - yes, ELEVEN - years of our peace process, I've lost count of the number of historic days, deadlocks, breakdowns, crises, impasses and fudges. This process just goes on interminably year after year after year. I can remember going to meetings when the peace process was just geting started, way back in 1993, where John Hume would produce the secret agreement he had reached with Gerry Adams from his pocket. He'd then tease us by saying something like "the answer's right here" before putting the envelope back in his jacket. That was almost half a lifetime ago for yours truly.
As observer and sometime participant in Northern Ireland's (NI) politics, I long ago learned not too get too excited by "breakthroughs" or too down-hearted by "breakdowns". For the sake of one's sanity, it's best not be seduced either by hope or despair.
When I was young, as the Troubles entered their third decade with no end in sight, people began to wonder if the violence would ever end. Now as an adult, I wonder if our peace process will ever be brought to a conclusion. Perhaps my grandchildren will live to see a day when there are no more crisis talks at Stormont. One can only hope.
Maybe on some subconscious level, the North's politicians enjoy this endless summiting. It's perfectly feasible that they like being surrounded by the microphones of news organisations fom across the world.
Take the story of this week's historic breakthrough, followed swiftly of course by this week's historic breakdown. Basicallly the parties and the two governments have agreed a new deal to resusitate the power-sharing government. The only sticking point is, and I'm honestly not making this up: a phoytopgraph. That's right, a Polaroid.
The IRA has agreed to destroy all of its weaponry in front of international observers and a member of the clergy from both of the island's religious traditions, in order that their political wing can get their ministerial cars back. But the Provos adamantly refuse to allow this process to be photographed, as the DUP has demanded. Having travelled a mile (remember "not a bullet, not an ounce"?), the IRA balks at the last inch. The republican movement clings desperately to its last vestige of dignity by refusing to allow the funeral of its long war to be recorded for posterity.
But the DUP are beiung equally pig-headed. Instead of welcoming the mile the IRA has travelled, Paisley's party demands the last inch. This in spite of the fact that no one seriously doubts the bona fides of those who will be on hand to witness the destruction of the IRA's weaponry. The DUP's insistence on photographic evidence of decommissioning is political rather than practical.
And so the peace process goes on, unresolved, into the new year and the next round of elections, when no doubt the polarisation of NI's communities will be continued. All the while the protagonists get older and fatter (or in Paisley's case, thinner.) Gerry Adams struggles, ever more desperately to disguise the fact that he is going grey. And of course, all the time, NI's politicians will continue to be feted by the media both at home and abroad.
But why? Why is this peace process considered to be so important? Way out here in chillly Korea, BBC World carried the Blair/Ahern press conference live. The Polaroid deal was the third story during bulletins on Wednesday. Third!? The story of yet another political impasse in an obscure part of Europe was considered by the BBC's editors to be the third most important thing happening on the planet that day. Nothing happen in Iraq on Wednesday? Nobody get killed in Palestine? Isn't there something major going on in Darfur these days?
There is nothing new in NI receiving media coverage which it plainly does not deserve. The North has long been the spoilt brat of ethnic conflicts, showered with media, literary and academic attention far out of propportion with its importance. Don't get me wrong, 3 800 deaths is 3 800 too many, but next to the loss of life in conflicts elsewhere, the number is piffling.
I was reading this week about the war currently raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Do you know how many lives have been lost as a result of this conflict since 1998? Go on guess. Was your guess anywhere near four million? No, me neither. Four million lives lost, but when is the DRC in the news?
Here's the kicker: 98% of the casualties are not from the combat itself but from easily preventable diseases associated with the fighting. In other words, even without a political solution to the conflict in central Africa, it is possible that, with a little money and a modicum of political will, millions of lives could have been saved.
I follow ethnic conflcits in Ireland, Palestine and the Balkans closely but I'm largely uninformed about the situation in less media-saturated conflicts. How will the ignorance about wars in places like the DRC ever be addressed if media organisations insist on giving so much air-time to the goings on in NI?
It doesn't take a genius to conclude that the gross diaparity between the coverage of NI and the DRC is due to skin colour. It is sad but true that white people care more when white people kill each other than they do when black people kill each other. I can think of no other reason for the international media's neglect of the war in central Africa.
I say all this as someone who was born and bred in NI, as someone who has been a political anorak form around the time of my first word. Yet even I am fed up with the conflict in my country recieving media attention which it simply does not merit.