The Troubles

The Troubles were a 30-year ethnic-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998. It is also known worldwide as the Northern Ireland conflict and has been characterized as an "irregular war" or "low-level war" at times. The conflict began in the late 1960s and is generally thought to have ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Although the Troubles mostly occurred in Northern Ireland, violence occasionally spread to sections of the Republic of Ireland, England, and continental Europe.

It was a violent sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland from about 1968 to 1998 between overwhelmingly Protestant unionists (loyalists) who wanted the province to remain part of the United Kingdom and overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nationalists (republicans) who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the Republic of Ireland. The British army, Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR; from 1992 called the Royal Irish Regiment) were the other major players in the conflict, and their avowed purpose was to play a peacekeeping role, most notably between the nationalist Irish Republican Army (IRA), which viewed the conflict as a guerrilla war for national independence, and the unionist paramilitary forces, which characterized the IRA's aggression as terrorism.

Despite its traditional classification as a "low-intensity conflict," the clash had the features of a civil war, with street combat, dramatic bombings, sniper strikes, barricades, and incarceration without trial. Before a peaceful solution involving the governments of both the United Kingdom and Ireland was effectively established in 1998, resulting in a power-sharing system in the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, 3,600 people were killed and more than 30,000 were injured.

Date: 1960s–1998
Location: Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe
Result: Military stalemate, Good Friday Agreement, St Andrews Agreement