Republican dissidents join forces to form a new IRA

[Zaune]

The Guardian

Three of the four main dissident republican terror groups in Northern Ireland are to merge and reclaim the banner of the IRA, in a major escalation of attempts to destabilise power sharing.

The Real IRA has been joined by Republican Action Against Drugs, which has been running a violent vigilante campaign in Derry, and a loose coalition of independent armed republican groups – leaving only the Continuity IRA outside the group.

In a statement released to the Guardian, the new organisation claimed it had formed a "unified structure, under a single leadership". It said the organisation would be "subservient to the constitution of the Irish Republican Army".

This is the first time since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that a majority of the forces of dissident republicanism has coalesced.

Republican sources have told the Guardian that the new paramilitary force includes several hundred armed dissidents, including some former members of the now disbanded Provisional IRA who have been conducting a campaign of shooting and forcible exiling of men in Derry City, whom they accuse of drug dealing.

It also includes what the statement described as "non-conformist republicans" – smaller independent groups from Belfast and rural parts of Northern Ireland.

Republican Action Against Drugs and the Real IRA will now cease to exist, one source close to the dissidents said.

The new organisation is planning to intensify terror attacks on the security forces and other targets related to what it regards as symbols of the British presence, according to the source.

Such targets could include police stations, the regional headquarters of Ulster Bank and the UK City of Culture 2013 celebration in Derry – which the dissidents have described as "normalising British rule".

In its statement, the new group said: "In recent years the establishment of a free and independent Ireland has suffered setbacks due to the failure among the leadership of Irish nationalism and fractures within republicanism" – a reference to the divisions between hardline republicans opposed to the peace settlement and Sinn Féin which has followed a political strategy. Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, was a leading figure in the Provisional IRA.

In a clear dig at Sinn Féin's participation in the power-sharing executive with unionists, the dissidents' statement said: "The Irish people have been sold a phoney peace, rubber-stamped by a token legislature in Stormont."

It said that the "necessity of armed struggle in pursuit of Irish freedom" against what it described as "the forces of the British crown" would only be avoided by the removal of the British military presence in Northern Ireland. It demanded "an internationally observed timescale that details the dismantling of British political interference in our country".

It also attacked the Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Paterson, over the arrest of several key republican figures, referring to him as an "overlord". "Non-conformist republicans are being subjected to harassment, arrest and violence by the forces of the British crown; others have been interned on the direction of an English overlord. It is Britain, not the IRA, which has chosen provocation and conflict."

It is understood that among the republicans who have joined the new organisation are those responsible for the murder in April 2011 of Constable Ronan Kerr, a Catholic recruit to the police service of Northern Ireland, and the terrorists who targeted Peadar Heffron, another Catholic police officer, who was seriously injured in January 2010 when a bomb exploded inside his car as he was driving to his police station.

The recruitment of Republican Action Against Drugs activists in Derry marks a major step up in the terror campaign in the city. Dozens of former Provisional IRA members have been involved in shooting and intimidating mainly young Catholic men whom they accuse of drug dealing in Derry.

Republican Action Against Drugs' campaign has become notorious around the world since an investigation by the Guardian earlier this year into the wave of shootings and forced expulsions in Northern Ireland's second city.

Republican factions

Until this week there were four separate violent groups opposed to Sinn Féin's peace strategy. As a result of this merger three republican terror groups have become one, reclaiming the banner of the IRA:

The Real IRA was formed out of a split within the Provisional IRA (PIRA) in 1997 and was responsible for the Omagh atrocity a year later.

Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) – a group comprising ex-PIRA members whose purpose was to run an armed vigilante campaign against drug dealers. It has agreed to coalesce with other anti-ceasefire republicans.

Independent republican factions – until now an amalgam of terror groups operating in Northern Ireland. They are sometimes referred to collectively as Óglaigh na hÉireann.

Continuity IRA, the fourth republican faction, remains wholly independent.

The adoption of the name IRA is an attempt by the dissident republicans to reclaim from history the title of the movement that dominated republican politics in the 20th century. Since the Irish war of independence there have been several mutations of the IRA from a mass movement of armed fighters in the 1918-1921 Anglo-Irish war to a small band of diehards who conducted the 1958-62 border campaign. Its use has withered since the peace agreement in 1998.

Well, crap.

[Teebs]

That sucks, but hopefully they will simply lack the support of the general population which will make it much harder for them to do anything.

[Sidewinder]

I STRONGLY doubt a terror campaign- with bombings, assassinations, drive-by shootings, etc.- will help North Ireland when its economy and the job market is sinking like a lead weight. What, are the North Irish supposed to buy groceries with bullets, and pay the rent with blocks of plastic explosives?

[Zaune]

I STRONGLY doubt a terror campaign- with bombings, assassinations, drive-by shootings, etc.- will help North Ireland when its economy and the job market is sinking like a lead weight. What, are the North Irish supposed to buy groceries with bullets, and pay the rent with blocks of plastic explosives?

Do you think the kids who'll be planting the bombs and doing the shooting care, even if they realise? Most of them are probably just lashing out at the first available target, 'cause they've been shat on from a great height for so long by so many forces largely beyond their control that they don't give a shit who gets hurt as long as it's someone other than themselves for a change. If they didn't get themselves recruited for a Cause they'd be out getting into barfights every Friday night, or worse.

[Sea Skimmer]

Do you think the kids who'll be planting the bombs and doing the shooting care, even if they realise?

Indeed, and a fair number of those who care probably have some really delusional ideas about some kind of anarchist war economy nonsense, or something, meeting all needs. But I kind of doubt this is going to go all that far. They don't even have Qaddafi left to send explosives and piles of AK-47s to bury in secret pits.

[Mr Bean]

Indeed, and a fair number of those who care probably have some really delusional ideas about some kind of anarchist war economy nonsense, or something, meeting all needs. But I kind of doubt this is going to go all that far. They don't even have Qaddafi left to send explosives and piles of AK-47s to bury in secret pits.

Or Americans willing to put up the bank required to support them. One of the dirty little secrets of the IRA was exactly how much civilian support from the US and elsewhere it was receiving and how much of a blind eye was turned on the subject. Hell we have at least two US Representatives that bankrolled the "Irish Freedom fighters" and I don't think those kind of semi-public efforts would succeed these days.

[Zaune]

But I kind of doubt this is going to go all that far. They don't even have Qaddafi left to send explosives and piles of AK-47s to bury in secret pits.

Who needs the patronage of some tinpot dictator when you can just enter the phrase "US Army field manual TM 31-210" into a search engine? Not that we've necessarily found all those secret pits anyway, even the Provos themselves can't remember where they've buried all of it.

[Lord Pounder]

Every country has it's thugs, it's mafia. The only difference is over here they say they are doing it for Ireland or Ulster. The force of public opinion is against them and they won't get far.

The fact of the matter is the Irish Government simply cannot afford to support Northern Ireland in it's current segregated state. IIRC the figure stands in the billions of pounds a year, money the British nor Irish can afford any longer.

Deloitte report on the costs of maintaining a segregated society

[Captain Seafort]

One of the dirty little secrets of the IRA was exactly how much civilian support from the US

Secret? Since when was US support to the Provos a secret?

[Mr Bean]

One of the dirty little secrets of the IRA was exactly how much civilian support from the US

Secret? Since when was US support to the Provos a secret?

Not the support but the amount of the support. US support was very large in raw dollars contributed and staggering in the number of US elected officials involved.

[Captain Seafort]

Not the support but the amount of the support. US support was very large in raw dollars contributed and staggering in the number of US elected officials involved.

Considering that backing the IRA wasn't far short of official US government policy (can you imagine the uproar if bin Laden had been a regular guest at Buckingham Palace?), and it was well known to anyone who bothered to look where they got their money from, I don't see that as a secret in any way, shape or form.

[NecronLord]

I STRONGLY doubt a terror campaign- with bombings, assassinations, drive-by shootings, etc.- will help North Ireland when its economy and the job market is sinking like a lead weight. What, are the North Irish supposed to buy groceries with bullets, and pay the rent with blocks of plastic explosives?

For the record, the original provisional IRA had destroying the North's economy as its actual policy. The more investment and jobs could be kept out of the North (particularly Unionist areas) the more of a money sink it'd be to the English, and the more likely they'd be to abandon it. That, at least, is the thinking.

[Sidewinder]

For the record, the original provisional IRA had destroying the North's economy as its actual policy. The more investment and jobs could be kept out of the North (particularly Unionist areas) the more of a money sink it'd be to the English, and the more likely they'd be to abandon it. That, at least, is the thinking.

Which means the North Irish- the people whose interests the IRA claims to support- will be the ones with no jobs, no food in their bellies, and no roofs over their heads. Why don't the terrorists just advocate mass suicide? That would accomplish their goals with far less expense, effort, or resistance.

[Lord Pounder]

I STRONGLY doubt a terror campaign- with bombings, assassinations, drive-by shootings, etc.- will help North Ireland when its economy and the job market is sinking like a lead weight. What, are the North Irish supposed to buy groceries with bullets, and pay the rent with blocks of plastic explosives?

For the record, the original provisional IRA had destroying the North's economy as its actual policy. The more investment and jobs could be kept out of the North (particularly Unionist areas) the more of a money sink it'd be to the English, and the more likely they'd be to abandon it. That, at least, is the thinking.

It worked. Because of the troubles Belfast lost it's all it's Navy contracts and quite a few other contracts as it was a risk to have a ship built there. As it stands not the North is totally reliant on the British Civil Service to keep the economy going.

[Zaune]

For the record, the original provisional IRA had destroying the North's economy as its actual policy. The more investment and jobs could be kept out of the North (particularly Unionist areas) the more of a money sink it'd be to the English, and the more likely they'd be to abandon it. That, at least, is the thinking.

D'you think they actually planned as far ahead as the task of persuading the South that the Six Counties were actually worth having after all this, or was this after the Dial disowned them?

[Captain Seafort]

D'you think they actually planned as far ahead as the task of persuading the South that the Six Counties were actually worth having after all this, or was this after the Dial disowned them?

For a long time thinking wasn't the Republic's strong suit - they drew up a plan to invade an occupy Newry when things were going downhill in the late 60s, and might have been stupid enough to launch it if the British Army hadn't been sent in to try and sort the mess out.

[K. A. Pital]

Any paramilitary resistance movement should strive to disrupt economic activity. That's a basic task (in addition to liquidation of government officials, et cetera).

[Zaune]

Any paramilitary resistance movement should strive to disrupt economic activity. That's a basic task (in addition to liquidation of government officials, et cetera).

Depends what kind of economic activity. Depriving the ordinary workers of their livelihoods without seriously inconveniencing the ruling classes in the process benefits nobody, least of all the resistance movement.

[Sidewinder]

Any paramilitary resistance movement should strive to disrupt economic activity. That's a basic task (in addition to liquidation of government officials, et cetera).

Depends what kind of economic activity. Depriving the ordinary workers of their livelihoods without seriously inconveniencing the ruling classes in the process benefits nobody, least of all the resistance movement.

I second that. With tactics that directly (if unintentionally) target the working class, the "resistance" becomes nothing better than a terrorist organization. At that point, mass suicide becomes a more valid tactic- certainly no less effective, considering the ultimate goal is to "free [insert ethnic group] from the tyranny of [insert another ethnic group]"- than whatever the hell this resistance is trying to do.