ABSTRACT
The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 brought to an end a religious sectarian conflict which had raged in Northern Ireland for nearly three decades and resulted in over 3,500 deaths. During that time the British government developed a sophisticated strategy that aimed to prevent a Protestant insurrection whilst at the same time convincing the Irish Republican Army (IRA), that ‘the ballot box and not the Armalite’ was the only viable solution to resolving this internal conflict. A vital component of this strategy was the deployment of a garrison force of between 11,000 and 14,000 soldiers whose job it was to support the civilian government, restore order and contain the threat posed by terrorism. Fundamental to the success of this campaign was the recognition that, in spite of a massive numerical superiority enjoyed by the security services (25,000 soldiers and police versus 300 active terrorists) there was no military solution in Northern Ireland. This campaign reinforced Galula's maxim that counterinsurgency is 80 per cent political and 20 per cent military (Galula 1964: 63). In essence, this conflict demonstrates that in this kind of war force works best when used in support of a wider political and economic strategy which attacks the root causes of the conflict.
