No place for 'mean-mindedness' as IRA moves on decommissioning
Relentless pressure at home and anger in America over Sinn Féin's links to Colombian terror finally forced the IRA to do what it said it never would
From The Irish Times - 24th October 2001
By Stephen King
Even the dogs in the street knew it. As recently as July of this year in the House of Commons, the DUP Leader, Ian Paisley, was emphatically stating it. In its "carefully considered" formal response to the Belfast Agreement in 1998, the IRA was just as dogmatic about it. All were agreed: there would be no decommissioning, not an ounce, not a bullet, never - or at least not this side of the causes of conflict being resolved, which most regarded as code for a timetable for Irish unity.
Well, almost all. Some so-called dissident republicans have long prophesied mournfully that "Decommissioning - No Mission" was about as much an act of faith for the current Provisional leadership than "No Return to Stormont", "No Unionist Veto" and "Hands Off 2 and 3". For them, what Ruair Bradaigh calls "the greatest sell-out in Irish history" can be traced back at least to the agreement, if not to the first ceasefire or even before that.
Others who have supported what has become known as the peace process calculated that decommissioning was a concept which would eventually find appeal with the republican leadership. In the early 1990s, the movement came to realise that their war of attrition was failing to bring about British disengagement and, while there was still some life left in it, decided to cash it in for some political advantage. In an analogous way, the movement has now decided that the political cost of retaining weapons was outweighing the leverage they brought. In that sense, Martin McGuinness was telling the truth when he said that decommissioning could not come soon enough for him.
Furthermore, the long-term security of the IRA arms dumps was always a concern for the leadership. But, for all Gerry Adams' insistence on Monday that "the IRA is not an organisation that bows to pressure", it was short-term factors that precipitated yesterday's welcome move.
The climate of world opinion - and US opinion, in particular - has been revolutionised in recent months. At the beginning of this year, Ben Gilman, chairman of the US House of Representatives' International Relations Committee, wrote in The Irish Times that, in the wake of George Bush jnr's election victory, the White House would be far less tolerant of a neutralist, non-aligned foreign policy position from the Republic. How much less tolerance, therefore, could Sinn Féin/IRA expect for its esoteric international alliances and anti-American activities?Previously, the discovery of three alleged republicans in Farclandia - the semi-autonomous area under the control of the Colombian narco-terrorist group - might have been smothered in much the same way as the Florida gun-running was in 1999. The Bush administration had no such option even if it was ideologically so disposed. FARC, as the major trafficker of cocaine into the US, presents a direct threat to American domestic security.
Mr Bush's envoy Richard Haas's meeting to confront in on its Colombian connections could not have come at a less propitious moment for republicans, coming as it did in the immediate wake of the World Trade Centre attacks, with all that atrocity's implications for the context in which terrorists now operate. To put it mildly, the republican movement had a direct personal interest in resolving its links with international terror and making that change manifest. There was no better way than with yesterday's statement by the IRA. |
