When historian Tim Pat Coogan starts criticizing the IRA/Sinn Fein as below, it is obvious there are serious problems. This article speaks of a crisis in Northern Ireland leadership:
Friends of IRA no more
SANDRO CONTENTA
EUROPEAN BUREAU, BELFAST
Few symbols of Northern Ireland's sectarian divide are as concrete as the high walls and fences that surround the Short Strand neighbourhood.
Designed to keep Catholics in and Protestants out, the barriers are a reminder of some of the worst clashes of the 30-year-old conflict known as "the Troubles."
The more Protestant paramilitary groups attacked, the more the Catholic enclave became a bastion of support for the outlawed Provisional IRA.
Today, with 3,000 Catholics surrounded by 60,000 Protestants, the East Belfast neighbourhood retains its air of a community under siege.
But one change is dramatic — the enclave's residents have turned against the group they long considered their defenders.
"They say they're here to protect the community, but it's the community that needs protecting from them," says Claire McCartney, 26, referring to the local branch of the Irish Republican Army.
Adds her sister, Paula: "Comparing them to the Mafia is an insult to the Mafia. The Mafia has a code it lives by; these people have nothing. They're psychopaths."
The McCartney sisters — all five of them — have led the community campaign against local members of the IRA, whom they accuse of murdering their brother in a barroom brawl.
Robert McCartney, 33, was a respected and popular resident of Short Strand, where his family's roots go back 100 years. A father of two young children, the forklift operator was stabbed to death over nothing more than an alleged insult about a woman.
The community revolt — including a protest vigil and, incredibly, graffiti calling on the IRA "scum" to leave — has rattled the guerrilla group and its political wing, Sinn Fein.
Accusations of savage thuggery voiced by some of their staunchest supporters have further put Sinn Fein and the IRA on the defensive, as police intensified their investigation of the groups' role in a $61 million December bank heist — the largest cash grab in British history.Suffering in the fallout is the deadlocked Northern Ireland peace process, which analysts now fear may lie dormant indefinitely.
"This is a serious crisis," says Belfast political scientist Paul Bew. "It may be that we're moving into an entirely unpredictable and nasty period."
More than 3,600 people died in the conflict before the separatist IRA declared a ceasefire in the mid-1990s.
The 1998 "Good Friday" agreement for Catholic and Protestant power-sharing in the British territory has virtually collapsed, and talks to revive it broke down in December.
Some analysts see the latest criminal allegations as evidence the IRA has become a millstone around the neck of Sinn Fein, the largest Catholic-based party in Northern Ireland and a growing political force in the Irish Republic to the south.
It's time for the party to choose between democratic politics and the continuing threat of armed struggle, says Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan, a leading authority on the IRA.
"Sinn Fein is at a crossroads and it can't take both paths. Whatever the Good Friday agreement was about, it wasn't about making the world safe for bank robbers."
The IRA and Sinn Fein have both firmly denied any involvement in the Northern Bank heist.
On Thursday night, police seized almost $6 million in pound notes and arrested seven men — including suspected members of the IRA and a Sinn Fein party member — in raids in southern Ireland.
The raids were part of an investigation into an IRA money-laundering scheme, said Irish police chief Noel Conroy.
Attempts are being made to trace the money seized to the Belfast bank robbery, he told reporters.
The arrests come after both the British and Irish governments — co-sponsors of the Northern Ireland peace process — blamed the IRA for the Belfast bank robbery.
The Independent Monitoring Commission on the ceasefire then added this charge: "Some Sinn Fein senior members, who are also senior members of PIRA (the Provisional IRA), were involved in sanctioning the robbery."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair now describes the "criminal activity of the IRA" as the main obstacle to peace.
The IRA replied by withdrawing its offer — made during peace talks in December — to put its weapons beyond use. Its patience, the group warned, has been "tried to the limit."
It didn't overtly threaten to return to full-scale violence, but the statement referred to the last time the IRA broke its truce, in February 1996, when it bombed the Canary Wharf financial district in London.
`Whatever the Good Friday agreement was about, it wasn't about making the world safe for bank robbers'
Tim Pat Coogan, historian and expert on the Irish Republican Army
Ian Paisley Jr., a top member of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), charges that the IRA's criminal activities "fully vindicates the hard-line position" his party took in December's negotiations.
The DUP's demand for pictures of "decommissioned" weapons was rejected by the paramilitary group after Rev. Ian Paisley, the firebrand DUP leader, insisted the IRA "wear sackcloth and ashes publicly."
Suggestions that Sinn Fein is financing electoral campaigns through laundered IRA money and bank robberies is likely to damage its growing support in the republic, Bew says.
But in Northern Ireland, where local elections will be held May 5 and a U.K.-wide general election is expected the same day, Sinn Fein is far more concerned about the impact of Robert McCartney's murder.
"Ninety-nine per cent of the people wouldn't care if 500 million was stolen from the Northern Bank — let's be honest," says Danny Lavery, a Sinn Fein councillor in Belfast.
"But when it comes down to the death of a person, people feel it, especially in Short Strand, which is a very close-knit community."
McCartney was drinking with a friend in a Belfast pub on Jan. 30 when he got into an argument with IRA members from his neighbourhood.
McCartney's sisters say they got their version of events from Brendan Devine, their late brother's friend, who is recovering in hospital after having his throat slashed in the fight.
They claim the order to stab the men was given by the IRA's regional commander, who lives in Short Strand. The killers then warned witnesses to keep their mouths shut, the sisters say, and "forensically cleaned" the bar of evidence.
Nine people, including the Short Strand's IRA commander, were arrested and later released.
Police inspector Kevin Dunwoody says he's looking into the removal of a videotape from the pub's security camera equipment at the time of the attack.
"People are saying they don't want to come forward for fear of reprisals," says Dunwoody, the senior investigating officer on the case.
"What I need are people prepared to give me a signed, written statement and who are prepared to stand up in court."
The IRA tends to run Catholic neighbourhoods more through respect than fear, says former member Anthony McIntyre.
But the Short Strand unit is notorious for its "jackboot mentality," he adds.
Three weeks ago, its members dished out a "punishment beating" to a 17-year-old youth by firing bullets through the palms of his hands.
"No doubt the IRA and Sinn Fein need some thugs — green shirts, we call them — but not those who act on their own initiative," McIntyre says.
As soon as news of the McCartney murder spread, Short Strand residents were convinced the IRA members acted on their own. But they feared a cover-up when the IRA and Sinn Fein were slow to back their call for justice.
More than 1,000 people turned up at McCartney's funeral. In his homily, Father Sean Gilmore called the crime "the greatest evil," said it had "devastated and demoralized" the community, and called for the killers to be brought to justice.
When word spread that intimidation was preventing dozens of witnesses from going to police, 1,000 residents held a protest vigil.
The Northern Ireland security forces' reputation for heavy-handed tactics, "colluding" with Protestant paramilitary groups and allegedly fabricating evidence has made turning to the police anathema to many Catholics. But residents made clear that Sinn Fein's call for witnesses to go to priests or solicitors wasn't good enough.
Posters distributed by the McCartney family, asking witnesses to contact police, were pasted on shop windows throughout the Short Strand.
One day, the unthinkable happened: someone covered a neighbourhood wall with graffiti against the Provisional IRA — "PIRA scum out."
Last Wednesday, after the British media publicized the McCartney family's campaign, a rattled senior Sinn Fein official gave the family his party's full backing and the IRA issued a statement denying involvement in the murder.
"Those who were involved must take responsibility for their own actions, which run contrary to Republican ideals," the statement said.
"It has been reported that people are being intimidated or prevented from assisting the McCartney family in their search for truth and justice.
"We wish to make it absolutely clear that no one should hinder or impede the McCartney family in their search for truth and justice. Anyone who can help the family in this should do so."
Never has the IRA come so close to urging witnesses to testify to police against its members. But rarely has the paramilitary group, and Sinn Fein, seemed so isolated.
Additional articles by Sandro Contenta
thestar.com |
