Senior gardai were not surprised that the "Real IRA" called its ceasefire from midnight yesterday. The group had not developed a political support base and was not prepared for the fall-out from the atrocity it perpetrated on Omagh on August 15th.
The fact that it took 23 days to call its "permanent" ceasefire might be more to do with the fact that its members are having severe difficulty in contacting each other because of high level Garda surveillance. In addition to the Garda surveillance, there have been threats from Provisional IRA members. Last Thursday, a number people associated with the 32 County Sovereignty Committee, the political group linked to the "Real IRA", were visited in their homes by members of the Provisional IRA.
According to reports, the callers repeated the Provisional IRA appeal made to the "Real IRA" in an interview printed earlier that day in An Phoblacht/Republican News to disband. "Real IRA" sources claimed some of the visitors to homes in the Border area combined the appeal with death threats. It is understood some threats were issued to people suspected of involvement in "Real IRA" from Provisional IRA figures in Belfast loyal to the Adams/ McGuinness political leadership.
The combined effect of antiterrorist legislation and the Provisionals' threats, is believed to have led to the weekend decision by "Real IRA" to effectively close itself down.
However, just as the "Real IRA" statement about a "permanent cessation" was being issued on Monday night, the other splinter Republican paramilitary group, the Continuity IRA, issued a statement saying it was refusing to go on ceasefire. Gardai suspect the timing of the Continuity IRA statement was not a coincidence.
Almost nothing has been heard from the Continuity IRA since the "Real IRA" emerged last autumn. There are strong suspicions that there was, in fact, an initial overlap of members and operations in the Border area between Carlingford and Monaghan.
Garda sources point out that a car bomb attack in Markethill, Co Armagh, on September 16th last year is generally regarded as the first bombing operation by the group which more lately came to be known as the "Real IRA". However, that bombing was claimed, at the time, in the name of the Continuity IRA in a statement telephoned to the Irish News in Belfast.
However, it subsequently emerged the bombing was the work of disaffected Provisional IRA members in the south Armagh/north Louth area who were seeking to destabilise the IRA ceasefire and the political process in Northern Ireland. By September last year this group existed only as a nameless hardline dissident element in the Provisional IRA movement, according to gardai.
The "Real IRA" name did not emerge until around the time the group fired mortar bombs at the RUC barracks in Armagh city on March 19th. With the emergence of the new group the Continuity IRA slipped into the background. Its last known attack was the late-night bombing of the River Club, disco and leisure complex in Enniskillen on January 24th last. The premises was badly damaged by an explosion in the early hours of the morning after an adequate telephoned warning. This was the type of attack that had been previously associated with the Continuity IRA. In August 1997 another attempt had been made to bomb the Carrybridge Hotel in Lisbellaw, Co Fermanagh. This bomb failed to explode but it and the bomb at the River Club were identical.
The only other large bomb detonated by the Continuity IRA was at the Killyhevlin Hotel, also in Fermanagh on July 14th, 1996. Between 1996 and the summer of 1997 the gardai succeeded in capturing and charging a number of figures believed to hold senior positions in the Continuity IRA.
Gardai believe that with the emergence of the "Real IRA", dissident Provisionals who thought the Continuity IRA too amateurish and its political leadership second-rate, found a new home.
Important former bomb-makers and logistics people from the Provisional IRA moved into the "Real IRA". The absence of any Continuity IRA attacks in this time is believed to be due to the fact that its few experienced members had thrown in their lot with the "Real IRA". According to Garda sources, the Continuity IRA was virtually defunct by this summer.
Police on both sides of the Border have also observed that people previously associated with the Continuity IRA were associating and socialising with members of the "Real IRA" and with members of the other splinter republican group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) which also, last week, called a permanent ceasefire.
Gardai and RUC believe there was close collaboration between these people and that together they were beginning to build an alternative to the Provisional IRA's former Southern Command organisation and that it was only a matter of time before it usurped the Provisional IRA leadership.
There are now suspicions among security force members that the ceasefire call by the "Real IRA" and the simultaneous statement by the Continuity IRA is all part of a fabrication by extreme republican figures whose motivation remains the upstaging of the Sinn Fein leadership and destruction of the political process in Northern Ireland - under whatever nom de guerre comes to hand.