WITH the hopes of an end to one nightmare in Northern Ireland comes the dread of another. For senior police fear that the men to whom terrorism has become a way of life will switch to crime, turning Belfast into a latter-day Chicago with rival gangs battling, Capone-like, for the rich pickings of peace.
Their fear is based on the fact that the young men of the paramilitary groups have grown up in a terrorist culture in which crime is used to finance political struggle.
In their world it is seen as moral to hold up banks, to run protection rackets and to turn out thousands of pirated cassettes and compact discs.
And the workers in these crimes-for-ideals industries are otherwise unemployed. Until now, they have received their dole from the British taxpayer and, in the case of IRA men, a top-up of about GBP60 (HK$714) a week. With the coming of peace, they will be forced back on to their basic unemployment pay.
Few of them have any real qualifications. They were born into terrorism, some of them in families in which three generations have been unemployed. Through terrorism they were taken care of by whichever organisation they belonged to and achieved the same sort of ''respect'' accorded members of the mafia.
All that will be taken away if the cease-fire becomes permanent. Without qualifications there will be no place for them in the modern industries which are expected to be founded with American and EC aid. They will be like demobbed servicemen in the old days, thrown on the scrapheap.