Make The Troubles worse, much worse

I've been thinking about The Troubles, the years between 1968 and 1998 in Northern Ireland, while ugly and blood in those 30 years only about 3,000 people died (to date in Iraq in 4,400 US have died in 7 years), some one posted an idea about Soviet aid to the IRA turning Northern Ireland into a Western Afghanistan slowly bleeding the UK dry, now I think USSR aid to the IRA is ASB, but what POD could make it into a Afghanistan or Vietnam, with daily fighting, no one safe at night or out side towns (or in this case non-unionist areas) all that jazz?
 
Maybe NORAID and the like become even more successful? People like Giuliani seemed quite comfortable cosying up to terrorists to get domestic backing, would there be a possibility that this could go even further? Perhaps if Britain makes more of an effort to hold onto the colonies(dont know how this could happen, even nasty right-wingers like Powell had accepted the Empire was done), the techniques used across ATL's Empire are imported into Ireland, leading to greater nationalist retribution, leading to a greater crackdown etc.
 
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