Every evening two guards arrive in a van at Northumberland Street.
They are contracted by the Northern Ireland Department of Justice. On the stroke of nine-thirty, they fire again and bolt the gates, which are topped by pointed metal bars.
Northumberland Street is a border crossing in the peace wall that separates the working-class districts of Falls and Shankill in west Belfast. The barrier is a remnant of the armed conflict that lasted for 30 years and became known as The Troubles.
Quite simply, it was about Northern Ireland's Catholic minority, the so-called republicans to which the paramilitary organization IRA belonged, wanting to see a reunified Ireland. On the other side were violent Protestant groups – the Loyalists – who wanted to preserve the union with Britain.
Irish flags still fly in the Falls, IRA men are honored as martyrs and statues of the Virgin Mary stand in the worn facade niches.
In the Shankill, the streets are decorated with countless British Union Jack flags and murals of loyalists with automatic weapons in their hands.
Until seven thirty the next morning, no one, neither pedestrians nor motorists, can get from one block to the other.
- It is not a nuisance. What business could a Catholic have in the Shankill? wonders Dan McErlean.
He is a retired taxi driver in a puffy down jacket and chinos.
For a couple of years now, he has converted the cab into a private guide car. The tourism industry thrives around Belfast's peace walls. Elderly men with furrowed faces and functionally dressed Americans in tow can be seen everywhere along the painted walls. As youngsters, many of the guides were themselves active in The Troubles, on one side or the other.
- Several seem proud of it, some even call themselves terrorists. I've never even thrown a paving stone myself, but I've lived right behind the wall for 15 years, says Dan McErlean, nodding over the steering wheel at a stubby, short-haired man smoking a cigarette outside a gate.
- That's Gerry Adam's bodyguard.
For 35 years, Gerard "Gerry" Adams was chairman of the Irish-Republican party Sinn Féin. Northern Ireland authorities suspect that he was part of the leadership of the IRA. He has been subjected to several assassination attempts. Obviously there are those who still want to hurt him.
- The loyalists, of course, but also the dissident republicans who were against the Good Friday agreement, says Dan McErlean.
In Northern Ireland, the story is not over. The peace walls through Belfast are concrete proof of that.
Almost 30 years have passed since the peace agreement, which put an end to the violence between Northern Irish loyalists and republicans, was concluded on Good Friday 1998. But the walls with their border crossings are still very much operational. The country's Ministry of Justice is responsible for them and their purpose of curbing sectarian violence, or more explicitly: protecting people from each other.
Made of steel, iron, corrugated iron and barbed wire, they stretch 30 kilometers through the Northern Irish capital. They not only cut through buildings but also through industrial areas and parks.
- They have only become more and higher since the peace agreement. Anyone who can throw heavy things over them now should audition for the NFL, says Dan McErlean, turning onto Bombay Street where the wall reaches 14 meters above the ground.
The gardens facing it look like cages. Over the townhouses' small patches of grass, the municipality has had dense metal gratings installed.
- So that the residents don't get bricks or molotov cocktails in their heads when they take a breath of fresh air, explains our driver.
In 1969, the conflict between republicans and loyalists escalated in Northern Ireland. Armed mobs set fire to houses belonging to people living in the areas of the enemy side. The Northern Ireland government at the time stated that it had lost control of the violence and asked the British Army for help.
The first so-called peace line that the military established after arriving in Belfast was precisely the one between the Falls and Shankill quarters. At first it was a simpler barrier of posts and barbed wire. The idea was that it and the other barriers would be temporary.
- This will be a very temporary measure. We will not have a Berlin Wall or anything like that in this city, assured Lieutenant General Ian Freeland who led the British security operation in Northern Ireland.
But already a couple of years later, the military recommended in a classified report to the government of Northern Ireland to establish a "cordon sanitaire" – a buffer zone of a more robust kind between Catholic and Protestant communities in west Belfast. And the wall between the Falls and the Shankill has now, contrary to the Lieutenant General's promise, separated people for twice as long as the Berlin Wall separated the Germans.
In several places, the relationship between Catholics and Protestants remains tense. Recently, the Protestant Order of Orange was allowed to march through a predominantly Catholic area of the town of Portadown. It caused great anger. Barricades were set up to stop the march, Britain's Minister for Northern Ireland, Chris Bryant intervened and decided to ban it after police warned of violence.
Sectarian acts are indeed rare these days, but Belfast remains, like many other Northern Irish towns, a deeply segregated city.
- Our children go to different schools, of course we go to different churches, but also to different pubs and even to different swimming pools, says Dan McErlean.
He drives us north in Belfast, to the busy Crumlin road. Here ran the peace wall that was the first to be torn down in 2016. He points to a row of red two-story brick houses a few meters from the road.
- We lived in one of them. We had a lattice like that over the garden. It allowed my daughters to play outside. Now I've moved out into the country, but I loved living next to the wall. It gave my family security, he says.
At the G8 meeting held in Northern Ireland's County Fermanagh 13 years ago, the British and Americans had urged the local government to do what it could to create a good atmosphere. The Northern Ireland government then presented a plan to dismantle all of Belfast's peace walls within ten years. It was too optimistic. Building the walls turned out to be much easier than tearing them down.
Representatives of the local communities on both sides opposed the government's dismantling plan, citing the safety of the residents.
- We who are working class and live next to the walls want to keep them. The political elite, who live in completely different areas, want them gone, says Dan McErlean.
But why do you want to keep them, there has been peace for almost 30 years?
- I wouldn't say it's peace, we're still in a transition period. Catholics and Protestants do not trust each other. We Catholics don't trust the British either. All it takes is one incendiary bomb and we're back in The Troubles.
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