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Car bombers again stalk Belfast

A new breed of anti-British republicans is acting to reignite tensions in Northern Ireland.

However there is little nationalist sympathy for their cause now compared to then, and the British and Irish governments and the security forces on both sides of the Irish border are cooperating closely.

On Aug. 8, for example, police south of the border arrested five men in County Louth on charges of possessing firearms and belonging to an “illegal organization,” the euphemism used for a dissident republican group, planning attacks in Northern Ireland.

McGuinness has accused the hold-outs of treachery, arguing that the new constitutional arrangements in Ireland were approved democratically in a referendum on both sides of the border and that therefore there is no justification for a new war.

But public manifestations of nationalist anger during contentious loyalist parades are being used by dissidents to claim a level of support, and the reality of Northern Ireland today is that everyone connected with the police will be looking anxiously under their cars each morning for booby-trap bombs before going to work.

Editor's note: This story was updated to correct the dateline of Belfast, Northern Ireland.