This is the paper I wrote for my Terrorism/Disaster Preparedness class at St. Edward's University. It, like my paper on public goods and national defense, was rushed into production at a late date. It was due last Wednesday, but I didn't begin research until the Sunday before it and didn't go beyond a rough outline until Wednesday morning, 16 hours before deadline. Consequently, it suffered a bit. I wanted to spend more time talking about the political response of the British government and examine both Sinn Féin's changes over the years and current PIRA/Sinn Féin rhetoric. Damn that 7-10 page limit; the paper would read better if the sections had an extra paragraph or two to them.

However, she thought it was good enough to warrant a score of 200 out of a possible 200, so I suppose her standards are lower than mine. I didn't expect a perfect score, especially considering her request that we use the APA writing standard, one I've never tried. I always get a few points taken off over that kind of thing.

Other collegiate material I've written: The Theoretical Impact of School Consolidation on the Role of Superintendents, The Pros and Cons of a Minimum Wage, For the Privatization of Education, and the rough draft of the latter, The Pros and Cons of Education Privatization.

All 11 double-spaced pages below:

A Threat Analysis of the Provisional Irish Republican Army
Charles Hueter
P-PSMG4341.80, Terrorism/Disaster Preparedness
St. Edwards University

Abstract

This paper presents a review of the Provisional Irish Republican Army's history, its acts of significant violence, and its strategy. A recounting of American involvement with the group and British government response to its terrorism follows. The current threat posed by the group will then be analyzed.

In today's political climate, if you mention "terrorism" chances are the subject has something to do with Muslim political violence. The September 11, 2001, attacks and the then-reinvigorated Israel-Palestinian conflict focused the world's attention on the Middle East, but also on other terrorist conflicts. One of these conflicts is between Irish nationalists and Irish-British unionists, also known as "The Troubles." Even though these troubles have not resulted in a major terrorist action in recent years, it is still instructive to examine the partisans in order to understand terrorist organizations to reduce the threat they pose to others. In this paper, I have chosen to examine the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA).

History

The PIRA is a paramilitary organization that splintered from the "official" Irish Republican Army in 1969 over a disagreement on how to pursue the goal of a united Irish republic that encompassed the entire island. The original IRA and its associated political wing, Sinn Féin, wished to deemphasize the importance of violence and instead toy with political solutions while the PIRA asserted a focus on military efforts would lead to victory (Page and Smith, 2000). Despite these republican differences of opinion, they have always been against the "systematic discrimination and political marginalization" at the hands of the Protestant-controlled Northern Ireland government created in 1922 (Stevenson, 2003, p. 160).

There is a religious element to the conflict in Northern Ireland. The nationalist republicans tend to be Roman Catholic and the unionist loyalists tend to be Protestant. There is an extreme element in the latter community who see their "ultimate authority not the British government, not even the monarchy, but the Bible itself, or rather its anti-Catholic interpretation of it" (Heskin, 1985, p. 490). Therefore, an additional PIRA goal was the protection of Catholics from Protestant civil violence and discrimination. The organization not only fought against the British military and the police force of Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), but also unionist paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force.

Strategies and Tactics

The Provisional Irish Republican Army is organized hierarchically and has traditionally not been under the political control of Sinn Féin, despite appearances to the contrary. This arrangement is due to the long history of IRA hardliners considering political methods as tantamount to surrender (Page and Smith, 2000). Explosives have been the PIRA's most notorious weapon of choice; however, it has not shied away from "exploiting democracy" via the "pluralism, transparency, and equity that can translate into vulnerability" (Stevenson, 2003, p. 159). It has also evolved from an organization with members who would refuse to recognize the British courts as legitimate into an organization that reversed course in the 1980's in order to use the courts as a venue to impose costs upon the British and garner public attention for their cause (McEvoy, 2000).

Yet violence remains the hallmark of the PIRA. There have been many PIRA/IRA attacks that resulted in serious loss of life and property. The "Bloody Friday" bombings in Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 21, 1972, killed seven civilians and two members of the British Army, injuring well over 100. Twin explosions in Birmingham, England on November 21, 1974, killed 20 civilians. A fire bomb attack killed 12 civilians in Northern Ireland's County Down on February 17, 1978. Eighteen British Army members were killed after two remote-controlled bombs detonated on August 27, 1979, in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland. A bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, that exploded on October 12, 1984, killed five people (including a Member of Parliament), wounded more than 30, and narrowly missed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Large bombs hit London's Stock Exchange (July 20, 1990) and Docklands (February 10, 1996). In one of PIRA's last major operations, a massive bomb was set off in Manchester, England on June 15, 1996, injuring more than 200 and creating extensive destruction. There are dozens of other incidents involving smaller numbers of victims (Violence - Chronology, 2005; Provisional Irish Republican Army, 2005).

Criminal activities have been a fundraising and terrorizing tactic of the PIRA for years and, like most paramilitary organizations, "have traditionally engaged in forms of extortion, racketeering and robberies" to fund themselves (Norman, 1998, p. 378). PIRA has also been the recipient of overseas donations.

International Connections

The Irish-American community has been a source of support for Irish nationalism for decades. Several organizations have sprung up to raise funds and awareness of the nationalists' cause and have called for political pressure to be placed on the British, Irish, and Northern Irish governments.

One in particular was Irish Northern Aid (NORAID), "the most militantly republican of all Irish-American organizations" (Guelke, 1996, p. 524). From its founding in 1970 by a member of an IRA brigade to 1986, it sent an estimated $3 million to Irish nationalists. It was also accused of unreported cash transfers to active terrorist cells and smuggling weapons (Guelke, 1996).

Connections to other countries and movements have surfaced over time. Libya was caught shipping 150 tons of arms to PIRA (Guelke, 1996). Three IRA members were arrested after "for training the anti-American Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) in August, 2001" (Stevenson, 2003, p. 163). Masters (2004) noted that strikingly similar kinds of support for armed struggled exists in interviewed PIRA and Palestinian terror group members.

Government Response to PIRA

The United Kingdom did not take this threat sitting down. Cuthbertson (2001) provides an overview of the changes in British legal strategy to make it harder for Irish terrorists to act. Laws reducing individual freedom and casting aside traditional protections against government abuse were enacted and absorbed into the legal code. For example, police forces were granted powers "to arrest, detain, and conduct search-and-seizure raids against suspected terrorists" and conduct "body search[es]" without need of a warrant (Cuthbertson, 2001, p. 29). In the "second wave" of anti-terrorism legislation, police could "stop and conduct body searches on any passerby, even in the absence of any clear suspicion of involvement with terrorist activity" once a "special zone" was declared (Cuthbertson, 2001, p. 30).

The establishment of the British Terrorist Financing Unit in 1989 came as more and more in the law enforcement community recognized that a great deal "of the illegal financial activities of paramilitaries fall outside the competence of the RUC" (Norman, 1998, p. 379). The agency was embodied with broader powers and specialized expertise to combat terrorist funding by "act[ing] proactively to tackle paramilitary fundraising" (Norman, 1998, p. 380).

Change hasn't been limited to the investigative and legislative realm. After Irish bombs were set off in London in the 1990's, the city government began a process of protecting high-value targets, attempting "to control and regulate space within the U.K.'s financial heart" (Coaffee, 2003, p. 65). Vehicle traffic management, closed-circuit television cameras, and a "ring of steel" approach were used in progressively higher degrees as terrorist attacks continued.

The Current Threat

Despite its militant, uncompromising past, the PIRA has settled down in recent years and progress has been made since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The PIRA declared an end to hostilities on July 28, 2005. On September 26, 2005, international weapons monitors declared the PIRA had disarmed as the agreement specified (Independent Monitoring Commission, 2005).

This is a promising direction for the PIRA to take after nearly 30 years of warfare. Though the tragedy of the London transportation system attacks in July can't be overstated, they did put even greater pressure on more people in the nationalist community to seek a peaceful resolution for their claims. Even though other splinter groups such as the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA have not decommissioned as the PIRA has and have not accepted the 1998 or previous agreements, they are much smaller entities than the PIRA.

As long as PIRA keeps its word regarding weapons decommissioning and adherence to political processes over violence, unionists refrain from initiating hostilities, and the success of community-based restorative justice programs continue (Mika and McEvoy, 2001), I see the Provisional Irish Republican Army threat diminishing steadily into the future.

References

CAIN Web Service. (2005). Violence - Chronology of major violent incidents, 1969-1998. Retrieved December 6, 2005, from http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/chronmaj.htm.

Coaffee, J. (2003). Morphing the counter-terrorist response: beating the bombers in London's financial heart. Knowledge, Technology & Policy, 16(2). 63-83.

Cuthbertson, I. (2001/2002). Whittling liberties - Britain's not-so-temporary antiterrorism laws. World Policy Journal, 18(4). 27-33.

Guelke, A. (1996). The United States, Irish Americans, and the Northern Ireland peace process. International Affairs, 72(3). 521-536.

Heskin, K. (1985). Political violence in Northern Ireland. Journal of Psychology, 119(5). 481-494.

Independent Monitoring Commission. (2005). Seventh report of the independent monitoring commission. London: The Stationary Office.

Masters, D. (2004). Support and Nonsupport for Nationalist Rebellion: A Prospect Theory Approach. Political Psychology, 25(5). 703-726.

McEvoy, K. (2000). Law, Struggle, and Political Transformation in Northern Ireland. Journal of Law & Society, 27(4).

Mika, H. & McEvoy, K. (2001). Restorative Justice in Conflict: Paramilitarism, Community, and the Construction of Legitimacy in Northern Ireland. Contemporary Justice Review, 4(3). 291-319.

Norman, P. (1998). The Terrorist Finance Unit and the Joint Action Group on Organised Crime: New Organisational Models and Investigative Strategies to Counter 'Organised Crime' in the UK. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 37(4). 375-392.

Page, M. & Smith, M. L. R. (2000). War by Other Means: The Problem of Political Control in Irish Republican Strategy. Armed Forces & Society, 27(1). 79-104.

Stevenson, J. (2003). Exploiting Democracy: The IRA's Tactical Cease-Fire. Review of International Affairs, 2(3). 159-170.

Wikipedia. (2005). Provisional Irish Republican Army. Retrieved December 6, 2005, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army.