SINCE the Provisional IRA embarked on its latest murder campaign, under cover of concern about drugs, no one has managed to wring a note of condemnation from Sinn Fein.
Senior members of the Northern parties and some reporters have tried. David
Ervine of the Unionists showed the way: he made no bones about condemning the loyalist paramilitaries, for whom he usually speaks, when they, too, threatened drug dealers.
The Irish and British governments condemned the murders, the threats and the Sinn Fein/IRA pretence. They are clearly unconvinced by the cover name Direct Action Against Drugs (DAAD) that a separate organisation is involved.
Yesterday the RUC, which had previously approached the subject with diplomatic caution, firmly pinned responsibility on the IRA, announced the formation of a special unit to deal with the murders and set about rounding up suspects.
For those still persisting in the pretence that the IRA is not involved, there is a simple answer: Sinn Fein is usually at the top of the queue to condemn murders, especially those committed by outside forces invading what it considers to be its territory.
The only murders Sinn Fein does not condemn are those admitted sooner or later by the IRA. In the present case, a series of murders is admitted by an organisation no one has heard of before and committed in communities generally regarded as falling within the IRA's sphere of influence.
The IRA has neither retaliated nor issued a warning of retribution. When questioned publicly, leaders of Sinn Fein say they don't condone murder and can't speak for the IRA but repeat an old line about the futility of condemnation.
THERE is no doubt, then, about responsibility for the murders though the British authorities and local politicians stretch a point to argue that, as the security forces are not involved, neither is the peace process.
What is in doubt, though, is something more mysterious, a question seriously troubling Irish and British politicians and officials and, it may be, some senior members of Sinn Fein.
It has to do, not only with those behind the murders in Belfast and Lurgan, but with the reasons for their actions.
What messages do they send to anyone trying to find a way, through the maze which leads towards a permanent solution?
Here the best that can be done is to join the officials' now searching uneasily for clues as they sift through the statements of Mitchell McLaughlin and Pat Doherty or follow history's hunches for a lead.
To begin at the beginning: while one man took his own life in November after a punishment beating received months earlier, five of the six victims of the latest campaign were shot since John Bruton and John Major set off on their twin-track initiative with the encouragement of Bill Clinton.
This means that five men were murdered since the former leader of the United States Senate, George Mitchell, and his colleagues, John de Chastelain of Canada and Harri Horkeri of Finland, began to investigate decommissioning and what might be done about it.
Both Sinn Fein/IRA and the British government had a problem here: SF/IRA because, in its vocabulary, decommissioning and surrender are synonymous; and it does not accept the implication of defeat. A reasonable point: while the IRA may not have succeeded in forcing British withdrawal, it was not defeated.
The British government, for its part, insisted on decommissioning before all party discussions could begin; and matters were not improved by the equation of decommissioning with surrender in some unionist statements.
Could the murders be interpreted as a message from the" IRA to Mr Mitchell - a reminder of its undoubted capacity and its determination not to be seen to surrender?
Much depends, of course, on whether the political and paramilitary wings of the republican movement are still acting in concert, as in the campaign - halted by the ceasefire - for which Sinn Fein was both spokesman and interpreter.
JOINT actions by the political and paramilitary wings were most effective when Gerry Adams was trying to demonstrate to the Irish-American group led by a former US congressman, Bruce Morrison, that the organisation was capable of controlling violence - turning it on and off at will as some observers noted.
Could it be that a similar point is being made now - for the benefit of the British government as for the mediators? Are the murders meant to illustrate how, after a cease-fire lasting 16 months,
SF/IRA is still a coherent force, with both wings intact, united and responsive to clear commands?
The risks are enormous. Indeed, merely to suggest them may seem harsh and cynical. But whoever decided on the murders - and the brazen Sinn Fein response - has already demonstrated a readiness to step beyond the borders of cynicism, a willingness to court disaster.
SF/IRA has suffered over many years from lack of debate - a refusal of others to discuss ideas and policies, either for fear of reprisal or from distaste at the lengths to which the IRA was prepared to go to have its way.
It was not until John Hume took courage and stifled his obvious distaste for walled minds and violent methods that SF/IRA began to be drawn towards the political mainstream. They seemed, at last, to recognise that the gap which separated their ambitions from those of the unionists could only be bridged by consent.
As they discussed the cease-fire and the development of a political strategy, their greatest fear was of a split in the movement. Given the importance they attach to the past and to the history of Irish nationalism in particular, that's surprising.
The most ominous interpretation of the murders in Belfast and Lurgan would set them in the context of another split over the SF/IRA's latest strategy, indicating a challenge to Mr Adams's claim to lead his supporters towards politics and peace.
What is tragically beyond doubt is that with every beating and shooting now, and with every po-faced refusal to condemn the indefensible, the Provos are making it more and more difficult for unionists and loyalists to trust them.
The least likely interpretation of what paramilitaries of either hue are about is that they are engaged in an attempt to clear the streets of drug-peddlers and petty crime.
You may as well expect, people to believe that the Whiteboys, Peep o' Day Boys and Faugh a' Bhallagh factions of old were trying to keep the peace and regulate the cattle market. Or that the gangs roaming the streets on Krisiallnacht were hoping to keep Berlin tidy.
And it should not be forgotten, in the light of IRA activity in Kerry of late, that the discontent which led eventually to the republican split in the 1960s began in the south-west when Sean Mac Stiofain refused to sell the United Irishman because of a real or imagined slight to religion.