Decommissioning pace forced by IRA's Colombian links - When Sinn Féin's fraternal links with Colombian drug-dealing terrorists who applauded the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington were exposed, American donations to the party dried up and the US arm-twisted the IRA so much it had no option but to decommission
From The IRISH TIMES October 27th, 2001
by Jim Cusack
FARC denies it is involved in the drugs trade. However, UN aid agencies and US administrations have stated otherwise. The guerrilla army both controls drug production and supply and "taxes" other producers. It is believed that by the late 1990s this was providing FARC with around $ 500 million in income.
It was the money and the left-wing tendencies that attracted the chief of staff of the IRA, a Belfast man in his fifties, to encourage the relationship with FARC after introductions were made through a similarly minded republican figure from Dublin.
The relationship developed from fraternal exchanges on the political fringes of both organisations to the point where the IRA chief of staff agreed to send his top arms engineers to help FARC develop a version of the IRA's deadly "barrack buster" mortar.
Agents for FARC are involved in drugs-for-guns deals in a number of Central American countries, including Mexico. There are suspicions that FARC may have put up the money for a shipment of arms the IRA bought in Florida in 1999 before this operation was uncovered and stopped by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Evidence given to the FBI suggested that a large sum of money, possibly $200,000 was given to the gun smugglers by a Belfast IRA man who travelled to Florida from Mexico. The IRA arms buyers in Florida were certainly big spenders and acted in a remarkably amateurish fashion.
It appears they spent large sums of money on lavish lifestyles before rushing out and trying to bulk-buy handguns at arms bazaars to meet their shipment deadlines. Arms dealers in the US must report all multiple arms purchases to the federal authorities and a dealer who had sold the IRA figures 11 handguns blew the whistle.
The Sinn Féin leadership was able to pass off the Florida events as a fiasco and, with friends in Washington in the Clinton administration, they escaped retribution. The district attorney in Florida who prosecuted the IRA gang later said he had received a call from a senior White House figure interested to know if there was any way to quash the case.
However, the administration of President George Bush has adopted a less accommodating attitude to Sinn Féin.
Washington viewed the IRA's involvement with FARC with grave concern. Mr Bush's director of counter-terrorism, Francis Taylor, described FARC as the "most dangerous terrorist group" in the western hemisphere. He pointed out that not only had FARC welcomed the September 11th attacks on the US, but it had reiterated its calls for the murder and abduction of US citizens. Mr Taylor said the IRA had been training FARC in explosives to conduct urban terrorism and that this was a matter of grave concern. In his view, he told the US Congress on October 10th, the IRA posed a threat to Americans.
According to senior Garda sources, the pressure that came from the US - delivered in very clear terms to Sinn Féin in by Mr Bush's special envoy to Ireland, Richard Haass - led directly to the IRA's decision to decommission.
The exposure of the Colombian connection, followed by the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, threatened to cripple Sinn Féin financially. Over this period from August to September Sinn Féin lost its self-assurance. Its spokesmen were unable to field direct questions about the events in Colombia, saying none of those arrested were members of Sinn Féin - until this week when Gerry Adams admitted that one of the three was, in truth, the Sinn Féin representative in Cuba. |
