ANALYSIS:War is over in the North and the community has long moved on from internecine murders. People must denounce the killers in their midst, writes GERRY MORIARTY
IT HAPPENED in Omagh, of all places. How cruel, arrogant and contemptuous is that? The message seemed to be: we murdered 29 people including a woman pregnant with two unborn children and now almost 13 years later we can and will murder more.
Ronan Kerr was targeted because he was a Catholic, just as Constable Peadar Heffron, badly injured in a similar attack in January last year, was targeted because he was a Catholic, and just as a woman officer was targeted in Kilkeel, Co Down, last August because of her Catholic religion.
In that latter case, the officer survived because the device fell off her car. What police, Garda and the British and Irish intelligence services learned from the failed Kilkeel incident is that the dissidents are becoming more sophisticated in their bomb-making capability.
The modus operandi of the bombers indicates that Óglaigh na hÉireann/Real IRA was responsible, although at the time of writing there was no statement of admission.
The PSNI is now trying to determine whether the dissidents have moved another step forward, from their perspective, by developing an under-car bomb that is even more explosive and difficult to detect. Certainly, as PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott and Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan have accepted, the dissidents are improving their engineering capability.
Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams and several other church, community and political representatives described the murder of Constable Kerr as “futile”. It’s what people say at these times but that doesn’t undermine the truth of the statement.
Whoever planned the attack may have had some notion of strategy at the back of their mind. For instance, the bombing happened just as the 50:50 Catholic and Protestant recruitment policy ended. This was designed to boost the number of Catholics in the service. Perhaps the dissident message was that Catholics must stay away from the police service just as the Provisional IRA sent similar deadly messages in the past by targeting Catholic members of the RUC, Ulster Defence Regiment and Royal Irish Regiment.
But most people have moved on. Martin McGuinness acted quickly and properly by visiting the officer’s grieving mother Nuala on Saturday, and he was graciously welcomed. Constable Kerr’s late father is from Andersonstown and, according to McGuinness, was from a republican background.
Adams, in offering his sympathy to the Kerr family, said young Catholics should still be prepared to join the PSNI: they were a force serving all of the community.
Perhaps some Catholics will have second thoughts about a PSNI career but this murder appears unlikely to severely dent Catholic recruitment: it might even stiffen collegial cross-community police resolve.
Perhaps the murder was somehow linked to the forthcoming 30th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers. Perhaps the dissidents believed they would undermine the political process as politicians face into the Assembly election campaign.
But there is absolutely no sign of that happening. Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, other party leaders and Chief Constable Baggott are this morning due to again stand together in symbolic opposition to the murder at Stormont Castle – just as they did after the killings of British soldiers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey and PSNI constable Stephen Carroll two years ago. That was when the Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister denounced those killers as “traitors” to Ireland.
They will pick their own words today but the message will be the same: the dissidents won’t deflect the politicians and the people from the new political structures agreed so overwhelmingly by the people of Ireland. And that does seem to be the case.
So, the murder was a futile act.
In attempting to figure out what the dissidents are at, the bottom line, as often stated, is that it doesn’t really require much analysis: it’s simply Brits Out. But, again, Northern Ireland, virtually en bloc, is way beyond that way of thinking: the war is over; there is a solid political system that is working reasonably well; and, so far, the politicians are not being spooked by this nihilistic act. And there is no indication they will be spooked.
What would serve politics and the community well is if the PSNI, with the support of the Garda and the British and Irish intelligence services, could detect and convict the killers.
Over recent weeks, there was British and Irish security and intelligence concern that dissidents were planning another sharp upsurge in violence. Just last week one senior security source observed how, prior to the dissident murders in March 2009, there was a lull in dissident violence. The calm before the storm.
The source confided to The Irish Times that there was anxiety that a pattern was about to repeat itself, but the problem for the PSNI and the intelligence agencies operating both sides of the Border was that they did not have specific information about how, where and when that would be manifested.
The PSNI and MI5 are still on high alert against further attack. The threat level in Northern Ireland remains at “severe” meaning further attacks are “highly likely”, while in Britain it is “substantial” meaning an attack or attacks are a “strong possibility”.
Combating the dissidents requires “eternal vigilance”, said one southern security source yesterday. It will also require public co-operation and support for the PSNI.
While the war is over, there is still the fear factor that militates against nailing the killers, particularly in republican heartlands.
For some “whatever you say, say nothing” still defines how they deal with the police. Getting beyond that is now the challenge.
Adams said yesterday people must go “beyond the politics of condemnation . . . We have to make it very, very clear that those involved must stop . . . Anyone with any information should come forward.”
He also said that republicans were “seething with anger” at the murder, including what he called “hard-boiled” republicans.
There is indeed a genuine horror, revulsion and anger at the “futile” murder of such a young man.
What is needed now is to translate all that understandable emotional outrage into a tangible and coherent policing and community strategy that will further isolate the dissidents and bring them to book.