IT is difficult to know just what is happening in Northern Ireland. The intentions of Sinn Fein/IRA, and the balance of forces which determine its actions, are probably not known with any degree of certainty to either government.
Indeed we cannot exclude the possibility that, because of tensions within the organisation, its future policy may actually be uncertain. And even if it has a plan of, action, this could be conditional on the course of events that are beyond its control.
As often as not, those who claim to know what the Sinn Fein/IRA strategy is are being led by their own prejudices, or in the case of some politicians are attributing to that organisation a strategy that suits their own political agenda.
An example of the first phenomenon - self delusion by prejudice - is the Conor Cruise O'Brien/Eoghan Harris/Sunday Independent school. Those involved have demonstrated their capacity for self delusion by the remarkable alacrity with which they accepted, and the total faith which they placed in, the recent diagnosis of the IRA's strategy by Sean O'Callaghan former IRA member and agent.
Now I am not impugning in any way O'Callaghan's own good faith. From what I have read of his story, his account of his activities over many years bears the stamp of truth - and to the limited extent of my personal knowledge of those activities, I can confirm what he has said. For, as Taoiseach, I was told of the plot to murder Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and of how a key participant in the plot who was also an agent of the Garda Siochana had managed to abort it without losing the trust of his IRA colleagues.
But the debt we all owe to Sean O'Callaghan's courage and commitment - a debt that, from the accounts I have heard, seems to have been unfairly ignored in a harsh interview on Vincent Browne's radio programme - does not require us to believe his analysis of the IRA's current strategy.
Indeed, given on the one hand his lack of contact with the IRA in recent years, and on the other hand the nature of his experiences with them, it would be surprising if he had refrained from expressing negative, but necessarily uninformed, views on their current stance.
To accept hook, line and sinker the opinion of someone in his position on the subject of what Sinn Fein/IRA is up to seems to me to show a disturbing capacity for naivety and self delusion - grasping at a straw to uphold a politically motivated thesis.
But that does not in any way validate the views of the sweetness and light brigade, the republican sympathisers and fellow travellers who see Sinn Fein/IRA in simplistic terms as peaceniks foiled in their good work by Machiavellian British politicians who want to keep the violence going because, despite the lessons of the past 25 years, they believe they can defeat the IRA.
What are we to make of the Sunday Times story last weekend to the effect that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have now joined a reconstituted Army Council which, following bombing of the British mainland in January, plans to call an "open ended tactical ceasefire" in February? The purpose of such a ceasefire would allegedly be to inveigle an unsuspecting SDLP into an electoral alliance with Sinn Fein that would enable that party to win several Westminster seats from unionists.
Now, this story, coming from "British intelligence and security sources", may be true, or it might be false - or even a little of both. We simply have no way of knowing. We have to reserve judgment on it, as on so much concerning this secret organisation. But one is forced to add that its veracity is in no way prejudiced by the denial it produced from Martin McGuinness, whose claim never to have been a member of the IRA has been received with hilarity rather than seriousness in Northern Ireland.
IN passing I should add that I have been concerned about the way such denials have regularly been received by the media, and particularly by interviewers on radio and TV, in the period since Sinn Fein spokesmen have been again allowed the freedom of the Anglo Irish airwaves. For such interviewers seem to me to have totally failed to make a vitally necessary distinction between democratic politicians and Sinn Fein spokesmen.
In reply to questions democratic politicians may evade or qualify, they may answer a different question to the one asked, or they may dodge the question altogether. But both the interviewer and the audience know that it is extremely unlikely that the politician will actually lie, because that could risk destroying his or her career.
But in the case of Sinn Fein spokesmen the opposite is true. If in fact they are or were members of the IRA, and if they failed to lie about that fact, their Sinn Fein political career would thereby be ended for some time to come, as they would go to jail.
One of the reasons why for many years I supported the use of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act was in fact that I doubted whether broadcasters would find it possible to make the distinction between Sinn Fein and other politicians that is required by this fundamental difference between their respective positions.
I have to add that, thus far at least, my scepticism has been justified: I have yet to hear an interviewer point out following such a question and response that the credibility of the disclaimer is necessarily open to doubt.
Here, as in the case of the Sean O'Callaghan diagnosis of the IRA's current strategy, I am simply asserting nescience: we do not, and for the present cannot, know with any certainty the truth of these matters and should not be misled by politicians or commentators who claim such sure knowledge.
The best we can do is to assess the probability of various theses about IRA/Sinn Fein intentions. One way of doing this is by applying the principle of cui bono: would any given strategy be likely, or at any rate be seen by the organisation as likely, to benefit it?
One of the reasons why, despite my bitter hostility to the IRA, I took seriously the peace moves of 1993, and gave them full support, was that, given the IRA's negative experience of past ceasefires, which had weakened and destabilised the organisation, it was highly unlikely that it would embark on another unless at least the majority of its leadership was operating on the basis of a serious hope of a peaceful outcome.
I dismissed the alternative malevolent interpretation, viz. an attempt to forge a pan nationalist front with a view to a securing a British withdrawal, because of the obvious danger to the organisation of such an approach, and the inherent improbability of the outcome envisaged.
I was also influenced to take the Sinn Fein/IRA peace initiative seriously because it seemed to me to be the logical outcome of the evident failure of the "Armalite and ballot box strategy". For persistence with, violence had led to the loss of one third of the electoral support Sinn Fein had built up in the early 1980s.
I am much less clear today about the direction Sinn Fein/IRA may take in the months ahead, because from its point of view the way ahead is less clear. The tendency to paranoia, which is strong in underground organisations, may well mislead some of its leaders into attributing the British mishandling of the cessation of violence to Machiavellianism rather than to muddle and temporary domestic political pressures. And pressure from activists for a return to violence may be quite strong, possibly accounting for some recent abortive, or at any rate aborted, attempts.
On the other hand a return to violence would obviously be futile, and could make it very difficult for Sinn Fein/IRA to take advantage of any opportunity for a further peace move that might emerge after the Westminster general election.
The views of anyone who claims to know with any certainty just how this situation will turn out should be taken with a pinch of salt.