Shadow of the past

Mar 12th 2009 BELFAST From The Economist print edition A reminder of the Troubles brings unionists, policemen and republicans together Pacemaker Press THREE deaths in two days have left Northern Ireland reeling. On March 7th two young British soldiers—Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar—were caught in a hail of automatic-rifle fire when they stepped outside the Massereene army base to take delivery of a pizza. Forty-eight hours later Stephen Carroll, a police constable with less than two years to go until retirement, was shot in the head when he answered a call for help in Craigavon. Dissident republican terrorists claimed both killings. Is this the dying embers of a waning conflict or a new one flaring up? The first murders of members of the security forces since 1998 brought thousands out in silent protest rallies across the province. Politicians of all persuasions joined forces to demonstrate their commitment to peace, and to continuing down the path to power-sharing that began with the Good Friday agreement in 1998. Peter Robinson, leader of the once hardline Democratic Unionist Party and first minister of the province, asserted that this was “a battle of wills between the political class and the evil gunmen” which the political class would win. Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, a former IRA leader and now deputy first minister, called the dissidents “traitors to the island of Ireland”. At Stormont, they flanked Sir Hugh Orde, the English boss of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), as he pledged to leave no stone unturned in bringing his constable’s killers to justice. The importance of such gestures is hard to overestimate. Mr Robinson essentially admitted publicly that former terrorists were now his political allies. Urging unionists angered by the killings to support the “due process of law” was an appeal for restraint to loyalist paramilitaries, who remain armed. When Mr McGuinness, for his part, said that he would give the police information about the killers if he had it, he made himself an even bigger target for dissident republicans who already reviled the mainstream IRA for treating with the enemy. Neither man’s remarks might seem exceptional to outsiders, but they are a big advance for a power-sharing administration hobbled by long mistrust. After two postponements the leaders finally flew on March 11th to America, where they were to meet its president, Barack Obama, and rev up enthusiasm for Northern Ireland at the White House’s annual St Patrick’s Day shindig. But they left questions in their wake that will not soon be answered. The first is just who these dissident republicans are. The second is how big a threat they pose. Responsibility for the attacks was claimed by different groups. A phone call to a Dublin newspaper said the soldiers had been killed by the Real IRA, notorious for the Omagh bombing in 1998. Another bid for recognition came hours later in the name of “Oglaigh na hEireann” (ONH), which had also claimed ownership of a 300-pound bomb abandoned in January near army barracks in County Down. The Continuity IRA said it had murdered Mr Carroll: intermittently active for 15 years, the group is known for having organised the odd riot in Craigavon. What intelligence exists suggests that although four dissident republican groups stand out, their overlapping and often feuding memberships may total no more than a few hundred. The older groups split from the IRA at different times but all accuse Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, of selling out by winding down its mainstream armed activities and collaborating with the unionists in government. Out but not down Republican dissidents have made many attempts to kill police, particularly Catholic officers who now make up almost a quarter of the force. Around 100 are in jail in Northern Ireland and the Republic, convicted of dissident offences or awaiting trial suspected of them. In November the Independent Monitoring Commission, set up by the British and Irish governments to report on political violence in the province, said the Real and Continuity IRAs, ONH and the INLA (Irish National Liberation Army)—the last now more engrossed in straight criminality—all remained threats. And even in these jihad-obsessed days MI5, in charge of Britain’s domestic intelligence, spent 15% of its budget in 2007-08 on tracking republican dissidents. As to what motivates them, a dissident spokesman provided a clue last month in a rare interview with a Belfast paper, the Irish News. Politics had failed republicans: “politics and military cannot operate side by side.” To avert another Omagh they would not leave bombs in town centres but would target the security forces. Police and mainstream republicans say, and a number of arrests bear them out, that most dissidents are not disaffected ex-IRA but younger men, drawn in by a mixture of diehard belief that violence is essential if Northern Ireland is to be freed from the United Kingdom and a hankering for the excitement of disorder and the community status that paramilitaries once enjoyed. Are Northern Ireland’s police on top of all this? Sir Hugh clearly has his doubts. He repeated recently that the dissidents had become more dangerous than at any time in his seven years in office. The PSNI is smaller and less battle-hardened than the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) it replaced. When Sir Hugh asked for military backup to get better intelligence on the dissidents, the subsequent, undiscussed arrival of undercover surveillance experts from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment provoked a spat with Sinn Fein days before the soldiers in Antrim were killed. Inviting in the soldiers, said Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein’s president, had been a dreadful mistake. It undercut the argument for turning from violence to politics that had been sold to militant republicans: that the army would be reduced (as it has been, from a peak of about 30,000 soldiers to no more than 5,000) and a police service accountable to local politicians would replace the heavily Protestant RUC. Sir Hugh had begun to mollify Sinn Fein by promising to use only a small number of surveillance experts to help keep “dissident republicans under the cosh” when the gunmen found, tragically, the softest of army targets.