| Members of the loyalist community protesting the trade border between Northern Ireland and Britain. Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times |
| More than two decades after Northern Ireland’s bloody 30-year guerrilla war, Brexit has inflamed sectarian passions to a degree unseen in years, posing a threat to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of sectarian strife. |
| Two months ago, a loyalist stronghold in Belfast exploded in flames as masked demonstrators hurled stones and gasoline bombs at the police to protest what they called the “Brexit betrayal.” With the loyalist marching season kicking off next month, there are fears that the eruption of violence was only a warm-up act. |
| Those passions could flare still further next year if, as polls currently suggest, the main Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, becomes the biggest party in a field of divided, demoralized unionists. |
| Context: The post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol has left the North awkwardly straddling the trading systems of Britain and the European Union. “It has hit the community here like a ton of bricks that this is a separation of Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom said David Campbell, chairman of the Loyalist Communities Council. |
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