Civil War in the Free Republic of Ireland

The Civil War in the Free Republic of Ireland was a bloody conflict that took place in the island of Ireland after it got independence from the Second British Empireball, being just a continuation of the Second British Empire Internal Conflicts.

The IRA had commanded the Irish struggle for independence against the British Empire, organizing the strikes and protests that together with leftist movements in England and Scotland escalated the conflicts and forced the British to grant Ireland its independence.

The IRA however hated this process as they were a revolutionary socialist group and what the British did was the same of the last centuries, letting an oligarchical puppet government in Ireland with no actual sovereignty. Just two days after the declaration of independence, the IRA said the war would continue and that a period of radicalization in Ireland was coming.

The British together with Germany and the Eurozone invested in Ireland in order to make it a stable country with a good economy so the masses wouldn't fall for the IRA's discourse. However everything went wrong with the collapse of the Eurozone in the 2290s, with the fascists taking the place of the main alternative to communism. In Ireland fascism didn't have much strength, which made things even better to the IRA and it was close of winning the war in 2291, managing to control 65% of the island.

The Free Republic government begged New NATOball for assistance in the middle of the crisis as the IRA continued expanding militarily and conquering more and more influence in the popular cycles. NAUball however sunk itself into its own civil war together with the old members of the Eurozone, the Irish government then looked after the British with no options as the IRA was planning to take Ireland and siege the British together with their leftists allies in England and Scotland in a main anti-monarchist revolution.

A joint coalition of British, Canadians, Australians, Italians and French of more than 20.000 troops were sent to Ireland in order to crush the IRA insurgency. The IRA however put the coalition moral down and after 10 years continued with high popularity, still controlling around 50% of Ireland in 2315 planning a new siege of Dublin. The casualties on the coalition accounted around 3.000, they left Ireland defeated at the end, but still claimed their main objective of "not allowing the IRA to destroy the Free Republic at the time of crisis" was achieved.

With the withdrawal of the coallition, the Free Republic armed forces took control of the situation and were at least able to face the IRA from equal. The following years of war however made the popularity of the IRA go down as they refused any peace agreement, plus a rising anti-communist sentiment started to appear in Ireland. This made the war even more bloodier as the IRA started to get engaged in fighting protesting mobs. By 2320 more than one million had left Ireland that became known as "the Iraq of the West" because of the war, making the Irish population smaller than ever around 2 million.

The IRA continued to lost popular support with the escalation of violence in its relation with the civilian population and in 2325 their territorial control of the island decreased to 40%. The IRA was forced to sign an armistice in the 2330 that put end to the main phase of the war after they suffered a main defeat as the Free Republic forces got stronger. The armistice ended after 11 years and the war was resumed again at an insurgency level that however had no achievements accomplished and the IRA was widely defeated in 2390.

As the war in Ireland entered a new phase, the Free Republic government was hungry for foreign investments in order to prevent the IRA from get again popular support among the workers, so they started to call for Irish-Americans to return to Ireland and start a new life there as the wars in North America got worse. Ironically, they copied this policy from the IRA, that used to call Irish from the diaspora to fight with them in the island. However, with the government incentive, many Irish-Americans that returned were anti-communists, and different from the Irish government they had money, so they helped recovering the economy and formed many vigilantist groups to combat the IRA.

The IRA condemned the return of these "reactionary" Irish-Americans as an opportunist move of the Free Republic government to get some support as most Irish had either fled the country because of the war or were against it. The IRA continued active and never disarmed itself, in 2400 they still controlled around 10% of Irish territories and occasionally tried to start new insurgencies.