Sir, - There are many obstacles to success to be overcome before and after the referendums next month. One of the most challenging will be to devise a replacement for the positions of power obtained by many men and women whose authority in the ghettos of the North has been based solely on the possession of arms.
This is totally different from decommissioning, which can be undertaken steadily by official action by the principal organisations. The problem is akin to the loss of status and function experienced by politicians whose parties have been in government for years, when their word was law and they could influence national events. With electoral defeat and the inevitable political vacuum, there is nothing. No one is interested in them. They have no power, no public function.
But what if you are a demobilised activist, with no role to play, no civil skill, no job, no future, no experience - except having been seen locally to have been powerful; and you happen to have the basis for that power, guns, still hidden and available? It becomes a case of a gun - a power base - in search of a cause.
The principal political forces supporting the referendums must now offer a social program to fill the vacuum left by decommissioning and demobilisation, to try to make sure that there are jobs and hope for those who otherwise may be marginalised again economically by the outbreak of peace. - Yours, etc.,
Fergal O'Sullivan
Artarmon, New South Wales, Australia.