Irish Republican Army

IRA

12/12/2006

Founded in the late 19th century, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is arguably the longest-operating guerilla organization in Western Europe. Despite its longevity, the group remains committed to its founding goal, an Ireland fully independent of Great Britain. While the IRA is a Catholic organization, and not an Islamic one, the group is often cited to suggest that there are other significant contributors to terrorism other than Islam. With that in mind, let's examine the history and nature of the IRA

Ireland was ruthlessly ruled and oppressed by England, its southern neighbor, from the 18th century until 1921 so the Irish have a legitimate complaint. Between 1919 and 1921, Irish separatists engaged in a violent guerilla war on British forces within Ireland. (I use the term guerilla rather then terrorist because the preponderance of IRA attacks were on armed individuals serving the British government in police or army units.)

In 1921, the Irish separatists, led by the political party Sinn Fein, reached an agreement with the United Kingdom. With the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the UK agreed to grant full independence to the southern 26 counties of Ireland while retaining sovereignty over the remaining six northern counties which would soon be known as Northern Ireland. As a result, a civil war erupted in Ireland between pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions. While the acceptance of the treaty was ratified by referendum, there was a large minority that continued to find the creation of Northern Ireland an unacceptable compromise.

In 1922, the IRA was founded by members of the anti-treaty faction who had participated in the guerrilla war against the British. While they had lost the brief civil war, they continued to refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland.

In 1969, the IRA split into two rival factions, the Official and Provisional IRA. The Official IRA, with its Marxist-oriented ideology, was opposed to an armed campaign against the British and would later declare an indefinite ceasefire in 1972. Although there have been recent accusations of criminal involvement, the Official IRA is not active in a militant capacity.

It was then that Roman Catholic members of the IRA who espoused the traditional republican ideology and opposed the Official IRA's Communist leanings, formed the Provisional IRA in order to escalate the armed campaign against the British troop presence in Northern Ireland. The PIRA was therefore a pro-Catholic and anti-Communist enterprise.

After 1972 ceasefire declared by the Official IRA, the Provisional IRA became the de facto IRA, desiring the removal of British troops and the unification of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Operating as the IRA, they seek to unite all 32 counties into one Irish state, independent of Great Britain. Due to their opposition to the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, the IRA does not recognize the legitimacy of the governments of Ireland or Northern Ireland although these views have been moderated somewhat in recent years.

The Catholic IRA is known for their use of car, pipe, and mail bombs, assassinations, kidnappings, beatings, extortion, smuggling, and robberies, most of which have been conducted in Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Great Britain. Although its primary targets have been the British military and police in Northern Ireland, the IRA has also carried out operations against Protestant civilians and British government officials. Advanced warning for bombing attacks was often given in order to minimize civilian causalities. After several instances of successful U.K. police infiltrations, the IRA reorganized itself into small Active Service Units, under the leadership of the Army Council, to maintain operational security.

In the mid-1980s, the Catholic IRA received large quantities of modern weaponry, including heavy machine guns, thousands of assault rifles, hundreds of pistols, rocket propelled grenades, flamethrowers, surface to air missiles, and substantial amounts of plastic explosive semtix from the Muslim dictator Muammar Qadhafi. The Islamic OPECer provided enough weapons to arm the equivalent of three infantry battalions. As a result, most of the IRA's murders and mutilations were conducted in the late ‘80s using Libya's arsenal. This rapid escalation in violence was equated by the IRA's leadership to the Vietnamese Tet Offensive. The Muslim link to Catholic terror was further confirmed when the French intercepted one of the Libyan arms donations aboard the Eksund.

In August 1994, the Catholic IRA declared a cease-fire. While the cease-fire briefly broke down in 1996, negotiations resumed in the summer of 1997. The cease-fire culminated in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The IRA made a drastic shift in their policy and agreed to work towards a united Ireland exclusively using peaceful terms. After the signing of the Accords on April 12, 1998, the IRA stopped deploying guerilla tactics, however, its members continued to engage in criminal activities such as smuggling and robbery.

Violent splinter groups, such as the Real IRA and Continuity IRA, were formed in opposition to the organization's participation in the ceasefire and the peace process. Despite temporary setbacks, negotiations continued, and in 2001, the IRA announced that it would disarm and seek to quiet its splinter groups. In July 2002, the IRA issued a public apology to the civilian victims of its attacks. In July 2005, the IRA formally ordered an end to their armed campaign, pledging to use non-violent means to achieve their goals. In September of that year, an independent commission set up to oversee the disarmament process, the Independent Monitoring Commission, reported that the IRA had in fact scrapped their arsenal.

While the IRA was reprehensible and ruthless, and their behavior mostly inexcusable, their twenty-year reign of violence cannot be compared to Islam. Muslim terrorists have killed an average of 400 people per day over the past 50 years. So over the same period of time, Islam out-murdered the Catholics 1,725 to one.

The total number of casualties perpetrated by the PIRA during the twenty years following the Catholic-Communist split to the IRA's cease fire accords, were between 1,700 and 1,800. Of these, one third, or 621 were civilians - most of whom were Protestants. The largest number of casualties, 1,013, were British forces, mostly army but some police. Thirty-five of those killed by the IRA were British or Irish political figures, and 63 of the dead were suspected informers. The PIRA lost 276 members, 103 of whom died as a result of their own premature explosions.