OPINION:An irrational creed fuels the dissidents' violence; sadly, there are many similar toxic beliefs, writes VINCENT BROWNE
THE DISSIDENT IRAs have achieved a significant success. They have proved their capacity to murder members of the security forces, so far with impunity. In doing so they have established their credentials as a paramilitary force, which may prove an enticement to (other?) disillusioned former members of the Provisional IRA. They have confronted the brittle assertion of Gerry Adams and Co that the peace process represents an important advance towards the achievement of a sovereign, independent united Ireland. And they have challenged the moral pretension of this society to be against killing.
The killing of two soldiers in Antrim on Saturday night by the Real IRA was a considerable undertaking, in paramilitary terms. This was no casual or impulsive skite on the part of a few psychopaths. It involved surveillance of the military base for some time; the identification of a soft target and a soft opportunity; the acquisition of weapons and their concealment; the journey to the army base; the execution of the murders and then the escape.
Then the murder of a police officer in Craigavon two nights later showed a confidence and a considerable operational capacity from another dissident IRA element, the Continuity IRA. Again careful planning, cool and brutal execution and escape. Perhaps the Real IRA is not the rag-bag outfit portrayed by Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and the media.
More ominously, perhaps, these dissident IRAs have acquired new recruits of late, disillusioned former members Provos, who have the experience, the guile, the technical capacity and the ruthlessness to conduct a long-term paramilitary campaign, as the Provos did for 25 years. That would not be surprising for many former Provos must wonder what it was that they risked their own lives for over decades, since the leadership has settled for a deal that looks eerily like the old Stormont, albeit with some cosmetic alterations. The British retain ultimate sovereign control over Northern Ireland and remnants of the British army remain on Irish soil. There is no united Ireland. The Provos are in office okay but to what effect?
And as for the Belfast Agreement? What was that other than a capitulation to unionism? An acceptance by the vast majority of Irish “nationalists” that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland would not change unless a majority of the people of Northern Ireland authorise a change by referendum. How is that any different in any essential way to what the constitutional position was previously?
The claims by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness that there is now a democratic way for republicans to achieve a united Ireland – the inference that there was no such democratic way previously – is bogus. Bogus at least in the sense that there is only precisely the same democratic way as there had been for 60 years: to persuade a majority of people in Northern Ireland to opt for unity.
Incidentally, it is not my contention that the Belfast Agreement changed nothing. It did, but not constitutionally. It gave respect and status to the minority that were previously denied and thereby sucked a poison from the system, a poison that was the impetus to violence, much more of an impetus than any denial of Irish unity.
As for the condemnations of the killings, aside altogether from the pointlessness of them, there is the hypocrisy.
Isn’t there something odious in the spectacle of the likes of Gordon Brown condemning the killings in Northern Ireland or any killings, given that he joined with Tony Blair and George Bush in the illegal and murderous assault on the people of Iraq in March 2003? And, come to think of it, Brian Cowen, Dermot Ahern et al had no difficulty in defending the use of Shannon to facilitate the killings in Iraq.
And how about the Euro fans, who to a Euro fan condemn the three killings but yet find no difficulty with incorporating, via the Liston Treaty, into the constitutional structure of the EU (thereby giving it a status and a permanence it now doesn’t have), an agency whose business is killing: the European Defence Agency (EDA). The EDA strives to bring coherence to the European armaments industry, to help them devise even more efficient and effective means of killing. And the same agency has tried to envisage the kinds of war Europeans will be engaged in over the coming decades and the kinds of weapons that might be best for killing in those wars.
But that’s different, of course.
These dissident IRAs think they have licence to kill because of a theological belief that there is a moral entitlement of a people to nationhood, where such people feel part of one nation. They believe they have a right to assert this right by killing, if necessary, and this right of assertion is independent of any democratic sanction even from those on whose behalf they are asserting the right. This is a nonsense that has infected the minds of people here and around the world for millennia and is confused with an entitlement to respect and equality. But then there is a lot more nonsense that infects minds and that justifies other and even more pervasive killings.