I haven't been there recently, but I've talked to some people, including at least one whom I have known for years and whose judgment I have reason to trust. A group that included members of Congress and the British Parliament finished the trip a few weeks ago and offered some preliminary if anonymous assessments. Shops are open, living standards higher. There is less barbed wire and fewer machine guns. The peace agreements that seem to be holding together and falling apart simultaneously are very complex.
Peace is clothed in prolixity.
The so-called moderate parties are joined by Ian Paisley's Protestant Democratic Union Party and Jerry Adams's Catholic Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish republican Army. They say Hitler loved children. These could be the groups that end up killing the agreement that keeps some fragile semblance of peace right now. Of the three observers I talked to, one believes that both Adams and Paisley would prefer to torpedo the agreement but give it lip service for the time being. Behind each of them, too, is a body of near-fanatics with a hard core of practiced murderers.