Waiting on the Provos

According to republican sources the unprecedented consultation process being carried out by the IRA leadership with its grassroots membership is still on-going. The sources are confident however that the IRA will move to fully embrace politics.
Senior republicans have spent the past weeks touring the country in a bid to convince their rank-and-file that a compete cessation of IRA activities will politically embolden the republican movement and force unionists to share power with nationalists.
This ambitious project followed the appeal by Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in April when he called on the men and women of the IRA to fully embrace political and democratic methods.
Adams? speech came only months after the republican movement was forced to endure sustained opprobrium over the IRA’a alleged role in the Northern Bank heist and the killing of Robert McCartney by IRA members.
Facing into a British general election Adams was derided at the time with unionists claiming his public appeal to the IRA was little more than a sham — designed to deflect criticism from Sinn Fein and change the focus from claims of alleged criminality to the possibility of a final and decisive move by republicans.
Indeed, earlier this week, one senior Ulster Unionist claimed that the IRA was, despite the claims of republicans the length and breadth of the country, not engaging in a real debate about the way forward and that it would not offer to disband.
Language, as always seems to be the case in the North, is the key to what may happen next. Ian Paisley’s DUP is demanding nothing less than a statement from the IRA announcing that it is to disband.
According to republicans and Irish government sources, Paisley will be disappointed. Pointing to the comments of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last week, when he said he would be happy that the IRA could become a “commemorative organization?” they say that “disbandment” is not a word in their lexicon.
For republicans, the very use of the word “disbandment” is insulting and unhelpful. It comes with the implication that the IRA has somehow been forced to wind up — a de facto surrender.
The term favored by republicans has instead been “standing down”. This, they point out, is something that sits easily with republican tradition, enabling IRA members to fade into the background without fear of embarrassment or humiliation.
Adams and Ahern have held four private meetings since St Patrick’s Day. Billed in some media quarters as “secret,” both sides claim they have been nothing of the sort and merely part of the usual tic-tacking that precedes any fresh round of negotiations.
Government and Sinn Fein both remain tight lipped over what was said at the meetings. People in government buildings claim Ahern sought to outline the criteria of what was expected from the IRA, while Sinn Fein sources claim that it was Adams that initiated the meetings in order to demand movement on the implementation of the Good Friday agreement.
One republican source said last week that the British and Irish governments have never uttered the word “disbandment” in any of their talks with Sinn Fein. Instead, he said, the focus has always been on an “end to all activities.” Tony Blair’s landmark “acts of completion” speech, which he delivered at Belfast’s Waterfront center in 2002, is seen as the basis upon which both sides are still working.
The IRA is therefore most likely to deliver a statement signaling its intention to fade into obscurity while offering a final and substantial act of decommissioning. Adams’s April 6 call is being widely interpreted as a call for IRA members to instead engage their energies in political initiatives.
Where this leaves Paisley remains to be seen. His grandstanding at last week’s meeting with Ahern in London — when he told the taoiseach to “keep his dirty hands” off the North — would indicate that intends to be as resolute and uncompromising as ever.
The DUP criteria for political movement is as follows: complete IRA decommissioning in the presence of observers and accompanied by photographs of destroyed weaponry; “the disbandment and dismantling of the entire organization” and a lengthy interim period in which the International Monitoring Commission can confirm that all IRA activity has in fact ended.
The DUP blueprint is likely to fall down on several fronts.
Firstly, republican sources say that the notion of photographs has been utterly rejected by the republican movement and has not been factored into the current consultation process with rank-and-file IRA members.
Secondly, the IRA will stand down not disband.
Thirdly, the IRA will only move on the basis of assurances from both governments that movement towards the restoration of the political institutions and the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement will be speedy and unhindered following an IRA statement. One source said he expected the governments to “put it up to the DUP” in the immediate aftermath of an IRA move later this summer.
Republicans are selling the current initiative to their grassroots on the basis that it will force the DUP onto the back foot.
Senior DUP members have said in recent weeks that they do not imagine Paisley will be looking to even talk about a new deal with republicans until Autumn 2006 at the very earliest.
So what are republicans thinking? Observers claim that the IRA has long been the republican movement’s trump negotiating card. They say that so long as it remains largely intact, republicans can raise the prospect of standing down in a bid to extract movement from the British government and unionists.
Indeed, some republicans themselves point out that were the IRA to have disappeared after the signing of the agreement in 1998, the British government would have moved even more slowly on crucial reforms and would have not sought to steer unionists into power sharing.
If the IRA is now finally removed from the scene, what do republicans do next if they want to turn the pressure up on the British?
The only plausible answer would seem to be that republicans no longer regard the IRA as of benefit to their political project. Instead it has become an albatross around their neck. Bank heists and back-street stabbings do nothing to enhance the republican cause and instead give its opponents reason not to engage with Sinn Fein.
It might also suggest that Sinn Fein believes the North’s drawn out end game is now drawing to a close and that the DUP will have no option but to do a deal. Paisley is no longer pre-occupied with wiping out the Ulster Unionists and has little to fear, in the electoral sense, of going into government with Sinn Fein.
Whatever the reality might be, against the backdrop of yet another potentially explosive unionist marching season, don’t expect things to go smoothly.