The girls seen crying beside police barricades in front of their school this week don't understand it but they are only the most recent participants in a conflict started over 30 years ago.
The Holy Cross Girls Primary School was built on Ardoyne Road in 1969, the year the troubles began. At the time, the now loyalist Glenbryn area was mixed, but over three decades all but two Catholics have moved out. At first glance, the school is a run-of-the-mill example of late 1960s architecture, but about 10 minutes after the last child leaves, large metal shutters come down over the classroom windows, transforming it into a large bunker.
In the grounds there are no mobile classrooms, climbing frames or anything that could be burnt, stolen or wrecked.
No one knows exactly how the present trouble began, but for three days crowds have gathered on the interface between the two communities and the RUC has prevented parents from the nearby Catholic area bringing their children through loyalist territory to the school's front gates.
Nationalist women and children march up to police lines and demand to be allowed to travel their traditional route to school.
After a 10-minute walk down to and then up the Crumlin Road, and through the adjoining grounds of St Gabriel's secondary school, the parents collect their children. "I was on TV loads today, mummy," says one eight-year-old.
The chairman of the board of governors, Father Kenneth Brady, says the pupils were nervous until they got to the school. Some parents have a different story. "I had to stay the whole day with my two wee girls from nine o'clock in the morning till two in the afternoon," says Judy, herself a former pupil. The parents insist the issue is not one of territory and reject the idea they should avoid the scenes that have distressed their children and go directly through St Gabriel's.
The very act of being brought up the Crumlin Road, where Protestants in cars have also shouted abuse at them, makes the children nervous. The principal of Holy Cross, Mrs Anne Tanney, says a sports day scheduled for Monday has been postponed until next year. These are only the short-term worries, however. "I've a wee girl who has to sit her 11-plus next year, it's affecting her education," says Judy.