Provisional Irish Republican Army

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The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA; more commonly referred to as the IRA, the Provos, or by some of its supporters as the army or the 'RA) is an Irish Republican paramilitary organisation dedicated to the end of British rule in Northern Ireland and to a United Ireland. The organisation has been outlawed and classified as a terrorist group in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States and many other countries. Since its emergence in 1969, its stated aim has been the reunification of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as a single sovereign state independent of the United Kingdom, which it believed could only be achieved by an armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland. On July 28, 2005, the Provisional IRA Army Council announced an end to its armed campaign, stating that it would work to achieve its aims using "purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means" and that "IRA Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever".

Like all other organisations calling themselves the IRA (see List of IRAs), the Provisionals refer to themselves in public announcements and internal discussions as Óglaigh na hÉireann (literally "Volunteers of Ireland"), the official Irish language title of the Irish Defence Forces (the Irish army). Image:Belfast mural 13 (cropped).jpg

Origins

The Provisional IRA has its ideological and organisational roots in the pre-1969 Irish Republican Army. This organisation was the descendant of the defeated faction in the Irish Civil War of 1922-23 when the original Irish Republican Army had split over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The subsequent IRA was dedicated to the armed overthrow of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland by force of arms and their replacement with an all-Ireland republic.

The IRA split into two groups at its Special Army Convention in December 1969, over the issue of abstentionism (whether to sit in, or "abstain" from the Dail or parliament of the Republic of Ireland) and over the question of how to respond to the escalating violence in Northern Ireland (see The Troubles). In 1969, serious rioting had broken out in Northern Ireland and hundreds of Catholic homes were destroyed in Belfast by loyalists. The IRA had not been armed or organised to defend the Catholic community, as it had done since the 1920s. The two groups that emerged from the split became known as the Official IRA (which espoused a Marxist analysis of Irish partition) and the Provisional IRA.

The Official IRA did not want to get involved in what it considered to be divisive sectarian violence, nor did it want to launch an armed campaign against Northern Ireland, citing the failure of the IRA's Border Campaign in the 1950s. They favoured building up a political base among the working class (Catholic and Protestant) north and south which would eventually undermine partition. This involved recognising and sitting in elected bodies and north and south of the border. The Provisionals, on the other hand, advocated a robust armed defence of Catholics in the north and an offensive campaign against Northern Ireland to end British rule there. They also denounced the "communist" tendencies of the "Official" faction in favour of traditional Irish republicanism and they refused to recognise the legitimacy of either Northern or southern Irish states.

There are allegations that the early Provisional IRA got off the ground due to arms and funding from the Fianna Fail led Irish government in 1969, however this was not found to be the case when investigated in the Arms trial.

The main figures in the early Provisional IRA were Seán Mac Stiofáin (who served as the organisation's first chief of staff), Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (the first president of Provisional Sinn Féin), Dáithí Ó Conaill, and Joe Cahill. All served on the first Provisional IRA Army Council. The Provisional appellation deliberately echoed the "Provisional Government" proclaimed during the 1916 Easter Rising.

The Provisionals maintained a number of the principles of the pre-1969 IRA. It considered British rule in Northern Ireland and the government of the Republic of Ireland to be illegitimate. Like the pre-1969 IRA, it believed that the IRA Army Council was the legitimate government of the all-island Irish Republic. This belief was based on a complicated series of perceived political inheritances which constructed a legal continuity from the Second Dáil. Most of these abstentionist principles were abandoned in 1986, although Sinn Féin still refuses to take its seats in the British parliament.

As the violence in Northern Ireland steadily escalated, both the Official IRA and Provisional IRA espoused military means to pursue their goals. Unlike the Officials, however, who characterised their violence as purely "defensive" the Provisionals called for a more aggressive campaign against the Northern Ireland state. While the Officials were initially, for a short period, the larger organisation and enjoyed more support from the republican constituency, the Provisionals came to dominate, especially after the Official IRA declared an indefinite ceasefire in 1972. The Provisionals inherited most of the existing IRA organisation in the north by 1971 and the more militant IRA members in the rest of Ireland. In addition they recruited many young nationalists from the north, who had not been involved in the IRA before. These people were known in republican parlance as "sixty niners" (having joined in 1969).

Although the Provisional IRA had a political wing (Provisional Sinn Féin, which split with Official Sinn Féin at the same time as the split in the IRA), the early Provisional IRA was extremely suspicious of political activity, arguing rather for the primacy of armed struggle.

Organisation

The IRA is organised hierarchically. It refers to its ordinary members as volunteers (or óglaigh in Irish). Up until the late 1970s, IRA volunteers were organised according to where they lived. Volunteers living in one area formed a company, which in turn was part of a battalion, which likewise made up brigades.

In the late 1970s, the geographical organisational principle was abandoned by the IRA in many areas in Northern Ireland owing to its inherent security vulnerability. In its place came smaller, tight-knit cells called Active Service Units, whose weapons were controlled by a quartermaster under the direct control of the IRA leadership. The old "company" structures were used for tasks such as "policing" nationalist areas, intelligence gathering and hiding weapons. The exception to this reorganisation was the Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade which retained its traditional hierarchy and brigade status and used relatively large numbers of volunteers in its actions.

All levels of the IRA are entitled to send delegates to IRA General Army Conventions (GACs). The GAC is the IRA's supreme decision-making authority. Before 1969, GACs met regularly. Since 1970 they have become less frequent, owing to the difficulty in organising such a large gathering of what is an illegal organisation.

The GAC in turn elects a 12-member IRA Executive, which in turn selects seven of its members to form the IRA Army Council. The seats vacated on the Executive are immediately refilled. For day-to-day purposes authority is vested in the Provisional Army Council (PAC) which, as well as directing policy and taking major tactical decisions, appoints a chief of staff from one of its number or, less commonly, from outside its ranks.

The chief of staff then appoints an adjutant general as well as a General Headquarters (GHQ), which consists of a number of individual departments. These departments are:

At a regional level, the IRA is divided into a Northern Command, which operates in the area of Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Republic, and a Southern Command, which operates in the rest of Ireland. There are also organisational units in Britain and the United States.

Strategy 1969-1998

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"Escalation, escalation and escalation"

In the early years of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA's strategy was to use as much force as possible to cause the collapse of the Northern Ireland administration and to inflict enough casualties on the British forces that the British government would be forced by public opinion to withdraw from Ireland. A policy described by Sean MacStiofain as, "escalation, escalation and escalation". This was modelled on the success of the Irish Republican Army in the Irish War of Independence 1919-1922 and was articulated in slogans such "Victory 1972". However, this policy failed to take into account the strong unionist commitment to remain within the United Kingdom. Previous IRA campaigns from the 1920s to the 1950s had avoided actions in urban centres of Northern Ireland to avoid provoking retaliatory attacks on the Catholic/Nationalist community there. The Provisional IRA determination to do this was one of the principle areas of disagreement between the Provisional and Official IRAs.

The British government held secret talks with the PIRA leadership in 1972 to try and secure a ceasefire based on a compromise settlement within Northern Ireland. The PIRA agreed to a temporary ceasefire from June 26 to the July 9. In July 1972, Provisional leaders Seán Mac Stíofáin, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Ivor Bell, Seamus Twomey, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness met a British delegation led by William Whitelaw. The IRA leaders refused to consider a peace settlement that did not include a commitment to British withdrawal, a retreat of the British Army to barracks and a release of republican prisoners. The British refused and the talks broke up <ref>(Taylor p139)</ref>.

Éire Nua

The Provisional's ultimate goal in this period was the abolition of both the Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland states and their replacement with a new all-Ireland federal Republic, with decentralised governments and parliaments for each of the four Irish historic provinces. This programme was known as Éire Nua - "New Ireland". The Éire Nua programme was discarded by the Provisionals in the early 1980s in favour of new unitary all-Ireland Republic.

By the mid 1970s, it was clear that the hopes of the PIRA leadership for a quick military victory were receding. Secret meetings between IRA leaders Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Billy McKee with British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Merlyn Rees secured an IRA ceasefire from February 1975 until January of the next year. The republicans believed that this was the start of a long term process of British withdrawal, however, it seems that Rees was trying to bring the Provisionals into peaceful politics without giving them any guarantees. Critics of the IRA leadership, most notably Gerry Adams, felt that the ceasefire was disastrous for the IRA, leading to infiltration by British informers, the arrest of many activists and a breakdown in IRA discipline - leading to sectarian killings (see here) and a feud with fellow republicans in the Official IRA. The ceasefire broke down in January 1976 <ref>(Taylor p156)</ref>.

The "Long War"

Thereafter, the IRA, under the leadership of Adams and his supporters, evolved a new strategy termed the "Long War", which underpinned IRA strategy for the rest of the Troubles. It involved a re-organisation of the IRA into small cells, an acceptance that their campaign would last many years before being successful and an increased emphasis on political activity through the Sinn Féin party. A republican document of the early 1980s states, "Both Sinn Féin and the IRA play different but converging roles in the war of national liberation. The Irish Republican Army wages an armed campaign...Sinn Féin maintains the propaganda war and is the public and political voice of the movement" <ref>(O'Brien p128)</ref> The Green Book, The IRA's training manual, describes the methods of the "Long War" in these terms: Image:Gadams.jpg

(1) A war of attrition based on causing as many deaths as possible so as to create a demand from their [the British] people at home for their withdrawal.
(2)A bombing campaign aimed at making the enemy's financial interests in our country unprofitable while at the same time curbing long term investment in our country.
(3) To make the Six Counties ... ungovernable except by colonial military rule.
(4) To sustain the war and gain support for its ends by National and International propaganda and publicity campaigns.
(5) By defending the war of liberation by punishing criminals, collaborators and informers. "<ref>(cited in O'Brien p 23)</ref>.

PIRA prisoners had political status removed from them after 1977. In response, over 500 prisoners refused to wash or wear prison clothes (see Dirty protest and Blanket protest. This activity culminated in the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, when 7 IRA (and 3 INLA) members starved themselves to death in pursuit of political status. One hunger striker (Bobby Sands) and Anti H-Block activist Owen Carron were elected to the British Parliament and two other hunger strikers to the Irish Dáil. In addition, there were work stoppages and large demonstrations all over Ireland in sympathy with the hunger strikers. Over 100,000 people attended the funeral of Bobby Sands, the first hunger striker to die. Image:Mmcguinness.jpg After the success of IRA hunger strikers in mobilising support and winning elections on an Anti H-Block platform in 1981, republicans increasingly devoted time and resources to electoral politics, through the Sinn Féin party. Danny Morrison summed up this policy in a 1982 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis (annual meeting) as the "Ballot Box in one hand and the Armalite in the other". <ref>(O'Brien p127)</ref> (See Armalite and ballot box strategy)

"TUAS" - peace strategy

In the 1980s, the PIRA made an attempt to escalate the conflict with the so called "Tet Offensive" (see here). When this did not prove successful, republican leaders increasing looked for a political compromise to end the conflict. Gerry Adams entered talks with John Hume the SDLP (moderate nationalist) leader and secret talks were also conducted with British civil servants. Thereafter, Adams increasing tried to disassociate Sinn Féin from the IRA, claiming they were separate organisations and refusing to comment on IRA actions. Within the Republican movement (the IRA and Sinn Féin), the new strategy was described by the acronym TUAS (meaning either "Tactical Use of Armed Struggle" or "Totally Unarmed Strategy") <ref>(Moloney p432)</ref>.

The PIRA ultimately called an indefinite ceasefire in 1994 on the understanding that Sinn Féin would be included in political talks for a settlement. When this did not happen, the IRA called off its ceasefire from November 1996 until July 1997, carrying out several bombing and shooting attacks. After its ceasefire was reinstated, Sinn Féin was admitted into the "Peace Process", which produced the Belfast Agreement of 1998.

Weaponry and operations

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For main article on arms importation, see Provisional IRA arms importation
For Main Article on PIRA campaign, see Provisional IRA campaign 1969-1997
For Chronology see Chronology of Provisional IRA Actions

In the early days of the Troubles from around 1969-71, the Provisional IRA was very poorly armed, but starting in the early 1970s it procured large ammounts of modern weaponry from such sources as supporters in the USA, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi <ref>(Taylor p156)</ref>, arms dealers in Europe, America and elsewhere.

In the first years of the conflict, the Provisionals' main activity was providing firepower to support nationalist rioters, and, defend nationalist areas against attack. The PIRA gained much of its support from these activities, as they were widely perceived within the nationalist community as being defenders of Irish nationalist and Catholic people against aggression.

However, from 1971-1994, the Provisionals launched a sustained offensive armed campaign that targeted the British Army, the RUC, UDR and economic targets in Northern Ireland. The first half of the 1970s was the most intense period of the PIRA campaign. Image:AR-18.jpg In addition, the IRA carried out many sectarian killings such as the Kingsmill massacre of 1976. Other instances of alleged sectarian attacks included killing RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment servicemen when they were off duty and the killing of people who worked in a civilian capacity with the RUC and British Army. Because these people were almost exclusively Protestant and unionist, these killings were also widely seen as a campaign of sectarian assassination. Image:Bloodysunday.jpg

The IRA was chiefly active in Northern Ireland, although it took its campaign to the Republic of Ireland and England, and also carried out several attacks in the Netherlands and West Germany. The IRA also targeted certain British government officials, politicians, judges, senior Military and police officers and civilians in Great Britain, and in other areas such as West Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia. A considerable number of British civlians were killed by IRA bombs during the conflict.

It has been argued that this bombing campaign helped convince the British government (who had hoped to contain the conflict to Northern Ireland with its Ulsterisation policy) to negotiate with Sinn Fein after the IRA ceasefires of August 1994 and July 1997.

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Ceasefires and decommissioning of arms

In August 1994, the Provisional IRA declared an indefinite ceasefire. Although this ceasefire temporarily broke down in 1995-96, it essentially marked the end of the full scale IRA campaign.

From December 1995 until July 1997, the Provisional IRA called off its 1994 ceasefire because of its dissatisfaction with the state of negotiations. They re-instated the ceasefire in July 1997, it has been in operation since then <ref>(Moloney p472)</ref>.

The Provisional IRA decommissioned its arms in July-September 2005. Among the weaponry destroyed were:
1,000 rifles
3 tonnes of Semtex
20-30 heavy machine guns
7 Surface-to-air missiles (unused)
7 flame throwers
1,200 detonators
20 rocket-propelled grenade launchers
100 hand guns
100+ grenades

<ref>Security estimates/Jane's Intelligence Review )| BBC, 26 September 2005</ref>
However according to recent reports, the British intelligence services believe that not all PIRA arms were destroyed. <ref>| Belfast Telegraph 6th February 2006</ref>

Other activities

Apart from its armed campaign, the Provisional IRA has also been involved in many other activities, including "policing", robberies and kidnapping for the purposes of raising funds.

The IRA looked on itself as the police force of nationalist areas of Northern Ireland during the Troubles instead of the RUC. They executed over 60 Catholic civilians for collaboration with the British security forces and also summarily executed or otherwise punished suspected drug dealers and other suspected criminals with beatings, known as "punishment beatings" and "kneecappings" (shootings in the knees) IRA members suspected of being British or Irish government informers were also executed.

The PIRA has also targeted other republican paramilitary groups such as the Official IRA in the 1970s and the Irish People's Liberation Organisation in the 1990s.

The IRA has carried out many robberies of bank and post offices North and South of the Irish border over the 30 or so years of its existence. The Provisionals have killed 6 Gardai and one Irish Army soldier, mostly during such robberies.

The PIRA was (and according to the Irish Minister of Justice, Michael McDowell, still is) involved in organised crime on both sides of the Irish border. These activities include smuggling, sale of contraband cigarettes, extortion and money laundering.

Casualties

For a detailed breakdown of casualties caused by and inflicted on the Provisional IRA see Provisional_IRA_campaign_1969-1997#Casualties

The Provisional IRA have killed more people than any other organisation since the Troubles began. In addition, they have killed more Roman Catholics, more Protestants, more civilians and more foreigners (those not from Northern Ireland) than any other organisation.

Two very detailed studies of deaths in the Troubles The CAIN project at the University of Ulster and Lost Lives <ref>Lost Lives (2004. Ed's David McKitrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton, David McVea)</ref> differ slightly on the numbers killed by the PIRA but a rough synthesis gives a figure of 1,800 deaths. Of these, roughly 1000 were members of the security forces - British Army, Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster Defence Regiment, between 600 and 650 were civilians and the remainder were either loyalist or republican paramilitaries (including over 100 PIRA members accidentally killed by their own bombs).

It has also been estimated that the IRA injured 6000 British Army, UDR and RUC and up to 14,000 civilians, during the Troubles <ref>(O'Brien p135)</ref>.

The Provisional IRA lost a little under 300 members killed in the Troubles <ref>(Lost Lives p1531)</ref>. In addition, roughly 50-60 members of Sinn Fein were killed. <ref>(cited in O'Brien, Long War p26)</ref>.

Far more common than the killing of IRA Volunteers however, was their imprisonment. Journalists Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop estimate in The Provisional IRA, that between 8-10,000 PIRA members were imprisoned during the course of the conflict, a number they also give as the total number of IRA members during the Troubles <ref>(Mallie, Bishop p12)</ref>.

Categorisation

Due to its frequent use of bombs; its killing of hundreds of policemen, soldiers, UDA/UVF leaders and civilians, predominantly though not exclusively in Northern Ireland; its status as an illegal organisation; its role in racketeering, bank robberies, 'street justice' and the fact that the unionist majority in Northern Ireland wanted to continue living under British rule, it is internationally considered a terrorist group Template:Fn, although its supporters preferred the labels freedom fighter, guerrilla and volunteer.

IRA attacks on the British security forces (i.e. the British Army and the RUC) and loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland could be described as guerrilla warfare, so "guerrilla" is a technically accurate term. This definition was criticised by unionists and constitutional republicans as suggesting that the IRA's actions had at least some legitimacy. In addition, aside from excessive collateral damage, IRA attacks have repeatedly specifically focussed on non-military, non-police targets, which supports the use of the term "terrorist."

Membership of the IRA remains illegal in both the UK and the Republic of Ireland, but IRA prisoners convicted of offences committed before 1998 have been granted conditional early release as part of the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement. In the United Kingdom a person convicted of membership of a "proscribed organisation", such as the IRA, still nominally faces imprisonment for up to 10 years.

Strength and support

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Numerical strength

In the early to mid 1970s, the numbers recruited by the Provisional IRA, may have reached several thousand, but these were reduced when the IRA re-organised its structures from 1977 onwards. An RUC report of 1986 estimated that the PIRA had 300 or so members in Active Service Units and up to 750 active members in total in Northern Ireland <ref>(O'Brien p161)</ref>. This does not take into consideration the IRA units in the Republic of Ireland or those in Britain and continental Europe. In 2005, Irish Minister for Justice Michael McDowell told the Dáil that the organisation had "between 1,000 and 1,500" active members <ref>[1]</ref>. According to The Provisional IRA (Eamon Mallie and Patrick Bishop), roughly 8000 people passed through the ranks of the IRA during the 30 year Troubles, many of them leaving after arrest, "retirement" or disillusionment <ref>(Mallie, Bishop p12)</ref>. In recent times the IRA's strength has been somewhat weakened by members leaving the organisation to join hardline splinter groups such as the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA. According to Irish Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, these organisations have little more than 150 members each <ref>[2]</ref>. Despite some successes by the British security services, military and police at infiltrating the IRA, as of the year 2001, the British, Irish and American governments believed that the IRA remained an extremely potent and capable terrorist organisation.

Electoral and popular support

The popular support for the IRA's campaign in the Troubles is hard to gauge, given that Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, did not stand in election until the early 1980s. Even after this, most nationalists in Northern Ireland voted for the moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) until the early 2000s. After the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, Sinn Fein mobilised large electoral support and won 105,000 votes or 43% of the nationalist vote in Northern Ireland, in the United Kingdom general election, 1983, only 34,000 votes behind the SDLP <ref>(O'Brien p115)</ref>. However, by the 1992 UK General Election, the SDLP won 184,445 votes and four seats to Sinn Fein's 78,291 votes and no seats <ref>(O'Brien p198)</ref>. In the 1993 Local District Council Elections in Northern Ireland, the SDLP won roughly 150,000 votes to Sinn Fein's 80,000 votes <ref>(O'Brien p196)</ref>. During the Troubles, therefore, nationalists in Northern Ireland tended to vote for non-violent nationalism rather than for Sinn Fein, who endorsed the IRA campaign. Sinn Fein did not overtake the SDLP as the main nationalist party in Northern Ireland until after the Belfast Agreement, by which time they no longer advocated violence. Very few Protestant voters voted for Sinn Fein. In 1992, many of them voted for SDLP West Belfast candidate Joe Hendron rather than a unionist candidate in order to make sure Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein lost his seat in the constituency <ref>(Coogan p284)</ref>.

However, it is widely recognised that the IRA possessed substantial support in parts of Northern Ireland since the early 1970s. Areas of IRA support included working class Catholic/nationalist areas of Belfast, Derry and other towns and cities. The most notable of these include parts of the north and west Belfast and the Bogside and Creggan areas of Derry City. In addition, the PIRA has been strongly supported in rural areas with a strong republican tradition, These include South Armagh, East Tyrone, South county Derry and several other localities. Such support would be indicated by the recruitment of IRA volunteers from an area and the populace hiding weapons, providing safe houses to IRA members and providing information on the movements of the Security Forces.

In the Republic of Ireland, there was some sympathy for the Provisional movement in the early 1970s. However, the movement's appeal was hurt badly by more notorious bombings widely perceived as atrocities, such as the killing of civilians attending a Remembrance Day ceremony at the cenotaph in Enniskillen in 1987 and the murder of two children when a bomb went off in Warrington, which led to tens of thousands of people demonstrating on O'Connell Street in Dublin to call for an end to the IRA's campaign. Sinn Fein did very badly in elections in the Republic of Ireland during the IRA's campaign. For example, in the 1981 Irish General Election, Sinn Fein won just 5% of the popular vote <ref>(Mallie, Bishop p444)</ref> by the 1987 Irish General Election, Sinn Fein won only 1.7% of the votes cast <ref>(O'Brien p199)</ref>.They did not make significant electoral gains in the Republic until after the IRA ceasefires and the Belfast Agreement of 1998.

Sinn Féin now has 24 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly (out of 108), five Westminster MPs (out of 18 from Northern Ireland) and five Republic of Ireland TDs (out of 166). This increase is widely perceived as support for the IRA ceasefire and some commentators maintain this support would decrease if the IRA returned to violence (although this did not happen during the brief resumption that occurred between the 1994 and 1997 ceasefires).

Support from other countries and organisations

The Provisionals have had extensive contacts with foreign governments and other illegal armed organisations.

Libya has been the biggest single supplier of arms and funds to the PIRA, donating large amounts of both in the early 1970s and mid 1980s. Main article here

The IRA has also received weapons and logistical support from Irish Americans, in the USA especially the NORAID group. Main article here Apart from the Libyan aid, this has been the main source of overseas IRA support. U.S. support has been weakened by the War against Terrorism, and the fallout from the events of the 11 September 2001. US Political backing for Sinn Fein was badly damaged by the Robert McCartney killing in late 2004. McCartney, a Catholic, was killed by IRA members in a pub brawl. Other IRA members destroyed all the forensic evidence on the scene and intimidated the witnesses. The McCartney family have publicly denounced the IRA.

In the United States in November 1982, five men were acquitted of smuggling arms to the IRA after they revealed the CIA had approved the shipment (although the CIA officially denied this). There are allegations of contact with the East German Stasi, based on the testimony of a Soviet defector to British intelligence Vasili Mitrokhin. Mitrokhin revealed that although the Soviet KGB gave some weapons to the Marxist Official IRA, it had little sympathy with the Provisionals. Another more recent allegation is that the Provisional movement has been aided by the Cuban DGI. It has received some training and support from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and has had some contact with Hezbollah. According to the Provsional IRA, the organisiation has also had fraternal contacts with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Basque group ETA and various Soth African groups. Since the late 1970's it is believed by many intelligence agencies that the IRA has shared bomb making and urban warfare tactics with a list of terror groups including: The Basque Separatist Movement (ETA), South African ANC and the PLO. In 2001 IRA bomb experts were caught allegedly training Colombian guerrillas, (the FARC), in bomb making and urban warfare techniques Template:Fn.

The Belfast Agreement

The IRA ceasefire in 1997 formed part of a process that led to the 1998 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. The Agreement has among its aims that all paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland cease their activities and disarm by May 2000. This is one of many Agreement aims that have yet to be realised.

Calls from Sinn Féin have led the IRA to commence disarming in a process that has been overviewed by Canadian General John de Chastelain's decommissioning body in October 2001. However, following the collapse of the Stormont power-sharing government in 2002, which was partly triggered by allegations that republican spies were operating within Parliament Buildings and the Civil Service (although no convictions came from the widely-publicised police operation, and it has since emerged that it was actually MI5 who had a spy in Stormont's Sinn Féin offices), the IRA temporarily broke contact with General de Chastelain. Increasing numbers of people, from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) under Ian Paisley and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) under Mark Durkan to the Irish government under Bertie Ahern and the mainstream Irish media, have begun demanding not merely decommissioning but the wholesale disbandment of the IRA.

In December 2004, attempts to persuade the IRA to disarm entirely collapsed when the Democratic Unionist Party, under Ian Paisley, insisted on photographic evidence. The IRA stated that this was an attempt at humiliation. The Irish government (generally in private), and Justice Minister Michael McDowell (in public, and often) also insisted that there would need to be a complete end to IRA activity. This is felt by many to have been a major reason for the collapse of this deal. Politicians who called loudest for IRA decommissioning were often reticent on the corresponding obligation of loyalist groups to do the same.

At the beginning of February 2005, the IRA declared that it was withdrawing from the disarmament process, but in July 2005 it declared that its campaign of violence was over, and that transparent mechanisms would be used, under the de Chastelain process, to satisfy the Northern Ireland communities that it was disarming totally.

End of the armed campaign

Template:Wikinews On July 28 2005, the Provisional IRA Army Council announced an end to its armed campaign. In a statement read by Séanna Breathnach, the organisation stated that it has instructed its members to dump all weapons and not to engage in "any other activities whatsoever" apart from assisting “the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means". Furthermore, the organisation authorised its representatives to engage immediately with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) to verifiably put its arms beyond use "in a way which will further enhance public confidence and to conclude this as quickly as possible".

This is not the first time that organisations styling themselves IRA have issued orders to dump arms. After its defeat in the Irish Civil War in 1924 and at the end of its unsuccessful Border Campaign in 1962, the IRA Army Council issued similar orders. However, this is the first time in Irish republicanism that any organisation has voluntarily decided to destroy its arms.

Template:Wikinews

On 25 September 2005, international weapons inspectors supervised the full disarmament of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, a long-sought goal of Northern Ireland's peace process. The office of IICD Chairman John de Chastelain, a retired Canadian general who oversaw the weapons destruction at secret locations, released details regarding the scrapping of many tons of IRA weaponry at a news conference in Belfast on 26 September. He said the arms had been "put beyond use" and that they were "satisfied that the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA's arsenal."

The IRA permitted two independent witnesses, including a Methodist minister and a Roman Catholic priest close to Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, to view the secret disarmament work. However, Ian Paisley, the leader of the DUP, has complained that since the witnesses were appointed by the IRA themselves, rather than being appointed by the British or Irish governments, they therefore cannot be said to be unbiased witnesses to the decommissioning. These claims came as expected by Nationalists and Catholics, who view Ian Paisley’s consistent refusal to support devolution in northern Ireland with Catholics in power as a simple unwillingness to accept an end to Unionist rule and Catholic equality. [3]

P. O'Neill

The PIRA traditionally uses a well-known signature in its public statements, which are all issued under the pseudonymous name of "P. O'Neill" of the "Irish Republican Publicity Bureau, Dublin".

According to Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, it was Seán Mac Stiofáin, as chief of staff of the Provisionals, who invented the name. However, under his usage, the name was written and pronounced according to Irish orthography and pronunciation as "P. Ó Néill". Ó Brádaigh also maintains that there is no particular significance to the name, thus discounting claims that it is a reference to Sir Phelim O'Neill, the executed leader of the Irish Rebellion of 1641.

Some Unionists have sarcastically commented that the "P" actually stands for Pinocchio, given the claimed factual unreliability of some of P. O'Neill's statements over the years.

Infiltration

The IRA has often been infiltrated by British Intelligence agents, and in the past some IRA members have been informers. IRA members suspected of being informants were usually executed after an IRA 'court-martial'. The PIRA executed 63 people as informers in the Troubles.

The first large infiltrations of PIRA structures occurred in the mid 1970s, around the time of the IRA ceasefire of 1975. Many PIRA volunteers were arrested when this ceasefire broke down in 1976. In the 1980s, many more PIRA members were imprisoned on the testimony of former PIRA members known as "supergrasses". Sean O'Callaghan one of the PIRA commanders in the Republic of Ireland, was an informer for the Garda Siochana throughout the 1980s until he was discovered and was put in protective custody in Britain.

In recent years, there have been some high profile allegations of senior Provisional IRA figures having been British informers. In May 2003 a number of newspapers named Freddie Scappaticci as the alleged identity of the British Force Research Unit's most senior informer within the Provisional IRA, code-named Stakeknife, who is thought to have been head of the Provisional IRA's internal security force, charged with rooting out and executing informers. Scappaticci denies that this is the case and is taking legal action to challenge this claim. In 2005, a senior Sinn Fein member Denis Donaldson was also "outed" as a British informer and expelled from the party. Donaldson was found shot dead in Donegal in April 2006.

Allegations such as these have raised suspicions in Republican circles that the IRA peace strategy has been orchestrated by the presence of British informers at the highest levels of their movement. Journalist and author Ed Moloney hints at this in his book, "The Secret History of the IRA".

See also

Footnotes

Template:Fnb The PIRA is described as a terrorist organisation by the governments of the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Germany and Italy, the latter three of which have alleged the existence of IRA links with terrorist organisations within their own jurisdictions including ETA and the Red Brigades. It is described as a terrorist organisation by An Garda Síochána, the police force of the Republic of Ireland, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, (PSNI). It is generally called a terrorist organisation by the following media outlets: The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Irish Examiner, the Sunday Independent, the Evening Herald, the Sunday Tribune, Ireland on Sunday, the Sunday Times. On the island of Ireland among political parties Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats who together form a coalition government in the Republic of Ireland refer to it as a terrorist organisation, as do the main opposition parties Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the Green Party, and the Workers Party, while in Northern Ireland it is described as a terrorist movement by the mainly nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, the cross community Alliance Party, and from the unionist community the Ulster Unionist Party, the Democratic Unionist Party and the Progressive Unionist Party. Members of the IRA are tried in the Republic in the Special Criminal Court, a court set up by emergency legislation and which is described in its functioning as dealing with terrorism. On the island of Ireland the largest political party to suggest that the IRA is not a terrorist organisation is Sinn Féin, currently the largest pro-Belfast Agreement political party in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin is widely regarded as the political wing of the IRA, but the party insists that the two organisations are separate. The United States Department of State and the European Union have taken the Provisional IRA off their lists of terrorist organisations due to the fact that there is a cease-fire. The RIRA and CIRA are still listed. Peter Mandelson, a former Northern Ireland Secretary (a member of the British cabinet with responsibility for Northern Ireland) contrasted the activities of the IRA and those of Al-Qaeda, describing the latter as "terrorists" and the former as "freedom fighters".

Template:Fnb These men were originally acquitted of aiding FARC and convicted solely on the lesser charge of possessing false passports; however the acquittal was overturned on appeal. The three men disappeared while on bail and have returned to Ireland, having departed from Colombia before the appeal was concluded. The Colombian government has said that it will seek their extradition, a position which has been supported by U.S. officials and by members of the Democratic Unionist Party in Ireland, while the British government has said that it will extradite them if they ever come within its jurisdiction. The case was controversial for several reasons, including accusations of heavy reliance on the testimony of a former FARC member (who was subsequently found to have perjured himself) and of dubious forensic evidence. The 3 Irishmen at one point accused the U.S. and British governments, who provided details about their background activities and gave technical support to Colombian forensic investigators, of setting them up (through the activities of their embassies in Bogotá). There was also political pressure from the government of Alvaro Uribe, supporters and members of which had previously called for a guilty verdict.

References

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Sources

Martin Dillon, 25 Years of Terror - the IRA's War against the British,
Richard English, Armed Struggle - the IRA and Sinn Fein
Peter Taylor, Provos - the IRA and Sinn Fein
Ed Moloney, The Secret History of the IRA
Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop, The Provisional IRA
Toby Harnden, Bandit Country -The IRA and South Armagh
Brendan O'Brien, The Long War - The IRA and Sinn Fein.
Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles
Tony Geraghty, The Irish War
David McKitrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton, David McVea, Lost Lives.

External links

Template:IRAs ar:جيش جمهوري إيرلندي de:Irish Republican Army es:Ejército Republicano Irlandés Provisional id:Tentara Republik Irlandia Sementara ja:IRA暫定派 nl:Provisional Irish Republican Army no:Det provisoriske IRA sv:Provisoriska IRA

tr:İrlanda Cumhuriyet Ordusu

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army"

Categories: Proscribed paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland | 1969 establishments | Irish Republican Army | Terrorism

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