Analysis: For IRA, the war has been over for years

By Jack Holland

When an Irish government official close to the peace process heard about Saturday’s IRA statement offering to seal its arms dumps under international supervision, he commented: "It’s writing it in the sky: the war is over."

Unionists were not so sure, with David Trimble the UUP leader, giving it a guarded welcome but asking for clarification, and the anti-Good Friday agreement factions rejecting the statement as insufficient. But one thing is sure: The IRA’s move will close down the option of armed struggle. Eventually, it will bring about the dissolution of the IRA itself.

The IRA’s offer to "initiate a process that will completely and verifiably put IRA arms beyond use" in reality made explicit what has been known for a long time. It is that this generation of IRA leaders has decided that the armed struggle is an anomaly and has exhausted its potential. There were, however, political difficulties for the Sinn Fein leadership of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Co. about making that position public.

Beginning in 1995, the Unionists’ insistence on arms decommissioning as a precondition first for letting Sinn Fein into the talks process and then — three years later — into the government, made it difficult for the IRA to deal with the arms issue. But the republican movement’s involvement in the peace process had its own internal dynamic which was driving it further and further down the road of constitutional politics.

There were military reasons for this as well as political. The longer the IRA was on cease-fire, the more difficult it was for the movement to seriously contemplate a return to armed conflict, even if the will was there to do it — which it wasn’t. The IRA, like all guerrilla armies, does not have the option of going on maneuvers to keep its forces from going rusty. The only way of maintaining discipline is for it to carry out operations. After a while, if it does not, the organization degenerates and becomes ineffective. Inactivity also allows the intelligence services opportunities to build up their files.

This was clearly illustrated when the IRA ended its first cease-fire in February 1996. The result was a disaster for the republican movement. Many its major units were broken up within a year of the resumption of the armed campaign, including in South Armagh, which until then had been the area least affected by the penetration of police and army intelligence operations. The setbacks only confirmed the core leadership’s analysis that guerrilla days in Northern Ireland were finished and that the future lay down the political road.

That analysis has been shaken a few times since the IRA declared its second cease-fire in July 1997. The Unionists’ failure to meet the deadline for setting up the "shadow" executive in October 1998 over the decommissioning dispute seemed to confirm republican fears that their traditional enemies were intent only on some form of surrender from the IRA. Then the failure of the British government to convince Unionists to enter the power-sharing government in July 1999 — once more over decommissioning — forced the "parking" of the agreement for the summer and brought forth dire predictions from the likes of McGuinness that it may not be there when the fall came. However, it was, and with the help of George Mitchell’s review, hopes were once more revived.

Then came Northern Ireland Secretary of State Peter Mandelson’s decision to suspend the power-sharing executive less than three months after it was set up in order to preserve Trimble’s position within the Unionist Party. To many republicans, this indicated that the Unionist veto would still trump any hand republicans’ held. To some republicans it proved the folly of attempting to do a deal with Unionists within the existing framework of the Northern Ireland state. But no one in the Provisional IRA leadership was seriously suggesting, even then, that there should be a return to armed struggle.

The Easter commemoration ceremonies passed with a fair share of denunciations of Britain but with reiterations also of the IRA’s continuing support of the peace process.

"Realistically," said a veteran Special Branch officer, "where else did they have to go?"

There were many, commentators, some government officials, politicians, and a handful of members of the intelligence services who did not believe that the republican movement was fully committed to ending the armed struggle. Yet a veteran republican who was close to the IRA leadership since the early 1990s never once changed his reading of what the Provisional army council (the IRA ruling body) intended. In April 1993, he told this reporter that the armed struggle was coming to an end. In late September 1994, when there were the first grumbles of discontent about the slowness of the British government’s response to the IRA cease-fire, he was emphatic: "The armed campaign has run its course." Even when that cease-fire broke down, he stressed there would not be a return to all-out "war."

There are other republicans, of course, who are prepared to maintain the physical-force tradition if they can. On the day the IRA issued its statement, two leading members of the so-called Real IRA, Peter Campbell and his brother Liam, were arrested in County Louth by the gardai in connection with the Omagh bombing of August 1998, which killed 29 people. It was a reminder from the security forces that now that the Provisional IRA has opted out of the business of political violence, the full resources of the state will be concentrated, North and South, on the minority who still choose to pursue that path. Under such circumstances, the chances that the Real IRA or the Continuity IRA can succeed where the Provisionals failed is remote in the extreme.

Those guerrilla days are coming to a close.