DISSIDENT REPUBLICAN groups remain a potent threat but their violent activities do not represent an “unravelling” of the peace process, the Independent Monitoring Commission has said.
In its latest report, the commission also noted that loyalist paramilitaries like the UDA and UVF appeared to be making moves towards decommissioning.
However, the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA were attempting to destroy the peace process through their violent actions, which included the murders of British soldiers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey and PSNI Constable Stephen Carroll, the commission reported yesterday.
“Dissident republicans are attempting to deflect the PSNI from maintaining community policing and so disrupt the increasing community acceptance of normal policing,” it added.
“There is also hope that sufficient violence would provoke an over-reaction by the authorities which would play into their hands. This is a challenge and a testing of the peace process by people who have always been violently opposed to it. It does not represent an unravelling of the peace process,” said the commission.
The commission referred to the strong condemnation of the dissidents from Sinn Féin and the other political parties which it said helped reinforce community support for the PSNI and was a “striking indication of the robustness of the peace process”.
“It remains imperative to do everything possible to encourage widespread community support for the police, which is of course desirable in its own right and also so that information on dissident activity is available to them,” it said.
“Overall dissident activity since early summer 2008 has been consistently more serious than at any time since we started reporting in April 2004,” it added.
The commission said notwithstanding the recent murders groups like the RIRA and CIRA did not have the “capacity to mount a consistent and substantial campaign” of violence.
It also referred to the RIRA claim that it murdered Denis Donaldson near Glenties in Co Donegal in April 2006, but said it could not say if this was true.
The commission said both the RIRA and the CIRA were heavily involved in crime such as drug dealing, “tiger” kidnappings, robbery, extortion, smuggling, fuel laundering and specifically in the case of CIRA, running brothels.
The commission said it was aware some dissident explosives contained small amounts of Semtex, which was viewed as exclusively in the hands of the Provisional IRA. However, it said the Provisional IRA was maintaining its political path. “We are satisfied that any members who remained criminally active were acting for personal gain. While there was an interest in information, we believe that it was generally for the purpose of maintaining cohesion in the republican movement.”
The commission said the UVF was the most structured loyalist paramilitary group.
It believed the UVF and the more “uncentralised” UDA were beginning to address decommissioning.