IRA courts upcoming govt with bombings

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): "I have never been at an IRA meeting when Loyalist violence was seriously discussed as a problem. The IRA actually like it. They believe that any shot fired by a Loyalist destabilizes society, and erodes the fabric of authority. And if innocent Catholics get killed, the Provos aren't bothered."

What was predicted in October by Sean O'Callaghan, a former senior officer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA or 'Provos') now serving a life sentence in prison, has now come to pass. He believed that the IRA, having abandoned its own ceasefire, would go to any lengths to provoke the 'Loyalists', the Protestant para-militaries of Northern Ireland, to return to terrorist violence as well. And now they have succeeded.

The IRA, the oldest and perhaps the most calculating guerrilla organization on the planet, has been setting off bombs in England ever since it broke its 17-month ceasefire last February, but the 'Loyalist' paramilitaries, its Protestant counterparts, had refused to take the bait. So in October the IRA started bombing again in Northern Ireland itself, exploding a pair of huge car bombs at the British army headquarters at Lisburn.

One British soldier was killed, but Loyalist self-discipline held, so the IRA planted another massive car-bomb outside the police headquarters in Londonderry on Nov. 21. That one was found and defused, and still the Loyalist ceasefire remained intact. It was beginning to pose a serious public relations problem for the IRA: if the Protestants did not murder people too, the IRA would start to look unreasonable.

Which is why, on Dec. 20, IRA gunmen attacked a Protestant politician, Nigel Dodds, as he and his wife were visiting their son in the intensive care ward of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Belfast. The IRA later claimed that the real target of the attack had been Dodds's police guards, but that hardly changed the fact that it deliberately chose a children's hospital to maximize the sense of outrage among Protestants.

This time, the provocation worked. On Sunday, Dec. 22, one of the Protestant paramilitaries (whether the Ulster Volunteer Force or the Ulster Freedom Fighters is not yet clear) planted a small bomb under the car of Eddie Copeland, a leading IRA supporter in Belfast.

It was the smallest counter-attack they could organize: tightly focussed on a 'legitimate target', and using such a small amount of explosive that Copeland survived (though with serious leg injuries). Nevertheless, the 24-month Loyalist ceasefire has now been broken as well, and Northern Ireland is drifting back into the kind of chronic sectarian killing that blighted its existence from 1969 until late 1994.

Or is it? That depends on whether the IRA is really as clever as it thinks it is.

The traditional IRA strategy was to wear down the British by terrorism until they reneged on their promise to respect the wish of the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland to stay in the United Kingdom. Then, after the British pulled out, the IRA would have to win the civil war that ensued in Northern Ireland ('Armageddon', in local parlance) -- which in practice required dragging the millions of Catholics in the Irish Republic into the fighting to make up for Catholics' minority status in the North.

This traditional end-game certainly continues to be one of the IRA's strategic options: it has been in business for over 80 years now, and it has developed the habit of thinking long-term. But in the past couple of years it has also been exploring another possible strategy, in which British war-weariness leads to a deal in which Britain itself forces Northern Irish Protestants to accept a new all-Ireland political framework -- and then leaves.

The IRA's organization was sorely in need of a rest anyway, so they decided to give it a try: in September, 1994 the IRA declared a unilateral ceasefire. However, the British government under Prime Minister John Major showed no sign of willingness to force Northern Ireland's Protestant majority into a deal, so last February the IRA went back to bombing. But bombing with a difference.

The purpose of the bombing was still to wear the British down, but more urgently to get the Loyalists back to violence. For the IRA itself is very tired, and it is now betting quite a lot on the forthcoming election in Britain.

Within the next six months, Britain is likely to elect a Labour government under Tony Blair. Labour governments are always queasy about violence, and unlike the Conservatives Labour has no close links with Ulster Protestant political leaders. So the IRA will bomb to maximum effect right up to the election date -- and then offer a ceasefire that it thinks will prove irresistible to a new Labour government.

Unless the Loyalists are alert and very fast, they will suddenly find themselves the guilty party in the first days of a new Labour government, the only ones still committed to violence when the IRA has once again promised to stop the bombing and murder. And if the IRA can isolate them that way, it might get a good deal of what it wants.

That is the strategy, and it positively requires some more bombing and killing at the moment. Will it achieve its desired results? Probably not, since it also requires purblind stupidity on the part of both London and the Ulster Loyalists in order to succeed. But with a British election coming up, the IRA clearly thinks it's worth a try.