Provisional Irish Republican Army

The Provisional Irish Republican Army or Provisional IRA, commonly known as PIRA (from the English Provisional Irish Republican Army) or colloquially as the provos, was the best known and most active republican armed organization intervening in the conflict in Northern Ireland, from its birth in 1969 until its abandonment of the armed struggle in 2005. It had its origin in the division of the then only IRA at the end of the sixties of the XX century, which led to the birth of both the Provisional IRA as well as the Official IRA.

Like other modern branches of the IRA, it proclaimed itself the legitimate heir of the old IRA u Óglaigh na hÉireann (literally "Irish Volunteers" in Gaelic) born after the Rising of Easter 1916 and germ of the Republic of Ireland. As such, it intended to play the role of a national liberation army throughout the modern history of the Republic and Northern Ireland.

With its political arm (Sinn Féin) having signed the principles of the Good Friday Agreement to end the conflict, on 28 July 2005 it announced the cessation of armed struggle. Officially, the Provisional IRA was considered dismantled on September 3, 2008, when its Armed Council was no longer operational, as reported by the Independent Control Commission created for this purpose.

Background

The Republicans opposed to the treaty (1921-1923)

Originally, the IRA was the military arm of the Irish Republic, a government formed by Irish people opposed to British rule during the Anglo-Irish War (1919-1922). After the end of this, various organizations and forces used the name IRA or Óglaigh na hÉirrean (including the Irish Defense Forces), and confusion between them is very common.. The PIRA considers itself the heir of the faction opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 6, 1921, and the Irish Free State created the following year. Opponents of the treaty confronted that newly formed State in the civil war of 1922-1923. The division that was brought about in the country due to the treaty resulted in the split into six counties (Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Derry, and Tyrone) of the historical province of Ulster, being framed in Northern Ireland, province of United Kingdom with the same political status that the entire island had had until 1921. The conflict over the six counties is the basis of all Irish violence since 1922, in a conflict known as the Troubles.

Anti-Fascist Republicans (1930s)

After their defeat in the civil war, the opponents of the treaty maintained their organization clandestinely. Another important change in the IRA took place after 1926, when it decided to support (under the leadership of Maurice Twomey) progressive elements of the Free State, supporting for example the republican party in government (Fianna Fáil) against the fascist movement of the Blueshirts during the period 1932-1933. That alliance of convenience marked a truce in the fight for control of the six counties. Twomey saw the fascist movement in Ireland as a threat as dangerous as that of English imperialism and aligned himself with the government of the moderate republican Éamon de Valera. In the following years the IRA moved away from Valera's political orbit and began to dedicate itself to preparing for the imminent conflict in Ulster.

Campaigns during and after the War

The schism between the IRA republicans and their moderate allies occurred in 1935, when de Valera again banned the organization as a way to prevent violence between rightists and leftists. In 1938 Seán Russell succeeded Seán MacBride as IRA Chief of Staff. Considered a 'hardline' hawk, Russell and his colleagues declared Plan S (Sabotage) in January 1939, and carried out the Christmas Heist (actually on 23 December) of the same year, stealing most of the Irish Army's ammunition placed in Phoenix Park, Dublin. The Christmas Robbery became a Pyrrhic victory, because the incident provoked counterattacks on both sides of the border, while de Valera acted to reduce the strength of the rebel movement.

During the Second World War, members of the IRA collaborated with agents of the Abwehr (the military intelligence of Nazi Germany) seeking the uprising of Catholics against British rule in the north. Ultimately, efforts to obtain weapons from the Germans failed. Between 1942 and 1944 IRA militants mounted what was known as the Northern Campaign, which ended in another failure, followed years later by the Border Campaign (1956-1962).

The internal rupture of the IRA in the 1960s

The IRA's actions in the period after the 1950s were not successful. On the contrary, the group had managed to earn the enmity of the Irish state, reducing its support base to radical leftist elements such as members of the Connolly Association, a forum of Irish exiles in London linked to the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1962 Cathal Goulding became chief of staff of the IRA. A veteran militant with Marxist sympathies, Goulding warned that the Border Campaign had failed for lack of popular support, neither in the Republic nor in Ulster itself. He favored the infiltration of IRA elements into civil organizations such as labor and civil rights movements, especially in Northern Ireland. An example would be the inclusion of activist Billy McMillen on the NICRA steering committee.

During August 13 to 17, 1969, violent riots shook the peace in Northern Ireland, where protesters from the Catholic and Protestant communities attacked each other. In Belfast and Derry, IRA militants asked the general staff and Goulding to distribute weapons to nationalist and republican Catholics in neighborhoods threatened by Protestants, maintaining that only in that community was there a solid base of support for republicanism. On the other side, they also maintained, Protestant unionists had the illicit support of officers in the Royal Ulster Gendarmerie (RUC), particularly members of the Special Constabulary (B Specials). Contacts between the RUC and Protestant paramilitary organizations such as the UDA and UVF were proven in the Stevens Report of 2003. In the Catholic Bogside neighborhood of Derry, young Catholics outmaneuvered the RUC and led to the deployment of troops to the street, in what marked the first entry of the British Army into Ulster since 1922.

Goulding refused to take sides in the sectarian conflict, a decision that would become the primary reason for the division of the IRA. In December 1969 Goulding broke all the formal and informal laws of Sinn Féin (the political party of radical republicanism) when he advocated renouncing the abstention policy of the Dáil (parliament) in Dublin. His opponents denounced his communist principles and his naive belief that Protestants could convert to the republican cause under a socialist format.

The formation of a «Provisional Council»

After the crisis of December 1969 Seán Mac Stíofáin, one of Goulding's opponents, declared that he had lost his faith in the IRA leadership and formed a "Provisional Army Council" (Provisional Army Council). Suddenly the movement had broken in two, with the most aggressive and nationalist republicans following behind the "Provisionals" (provos), and the leftists supporting Cathal Goulding (and the Official IRA; OIRA, the officials). Pre-breakup IRA properties remained in the hands of the OIRA, such as the Sinn Féin headquarters located in Gardner Square, Belfast. The Provisional IRA (PIRA) established its own institutions, with its headquarters located on Kevin Street. During the period 1969-73 there was still much confusion about the identity of the two IRAs: many recruits who wanted to enlist in the IRA did not know the difference between the two. Martin McGuinness, one of the current leaders of Sinn Féin-Provisional in Northern Ireland, initially joined the OIRA.

In the jargon of the Northern Irish conflict, the provos called the pro-government supporters the stickies, because they had attended the demonstrations commemorating the Easter Rising with adhesive badges from the water lily (the Easter Lilly), while the Provos used badges with pins for that date.

Development of the Armed Campaign

The Provisional IRA's strategy from 1969 to 1997 was to wage a war of attrition, hoping that the gigantic cost of maintaining security forces in Northern Ireland would force the government in London to give in in Ulster and eventually give up government over the Irish nation.

After the British authorities took extreme measures, such as the imprisonment of terrorist suspects without trial (internment, in 1971), or the tragic repression of civil rights protesters on 30 January 1972 in Derry (an event better known as Bloody Sunday), the armed organization not only increased its ranks, but also developed high-impact campaigns through different means, from propaganda to purely terrorist.

In 1972 the British government made its first attempt to negotiate with the leadership of the PIRA and Sinn Féin. Viscount William Whitelaw, Conservative and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in Edward Heath's cabinet, represented the government, and Seán Mac Stíofáin, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Ivor Bell, Seamus Twomey, Gerry Adams, Jr., and Martin McGuinness made up the republican delegation.

After three years of intense fighting, reaching the maximum peak of violence in 1972, at the beginning of 1975 the PIRA proclaimed its first ceasefire. Within a few months, this provisional agreement would collapse amid delays on the part of the British government to negotiate a political solution and constant attacks by Protestant paramilitaries against Catholic civilians. The armed struggle, although reduced compared to the previous period, would be constant from that moment on. Rural areas, such as eastern Tyrone and especially south of Armagh, witnessed the PIRA's most impactful actions until the end of the armed campaign.

Continuous ambushes against military vehicles forced British forces, starting in the mid-1970s, to rely exclusively on helicopters to supply their bases. This is how their troops were deployed in the south of Armagh, a strategic border area. The most effective of these armed actions against the British Army took place on August 27, 1979, when two high-explosive devices were detonated as a military convoy passed by near Warrenpoint. The area, at the southern tip of County Down, borders Armagh and the Republic of Ireland. A total of 18 paratroopers and infantrymen lost their lives, in what was the worst attack against the armed forces in the entire conflict.

The UK Ministry of Defense was eventually forced to build expensive electronic surveillance towers on the border with the Irish Republic when PIRA members began using mortars to attack military installations in the mid-1990s. 1980. Even so, the danger to foot patrols did not cease, largely due to the use of high-velocity rifles, operated by at least two PIRA sniper teams in south Armagh. One of these teams was captured by the SAS a few weeks before the second and final ceasefire decreed by the organization. Between both groups, they killed seven soldiers and two members of the RUC between 1992 and 1997.

Parallel to the development of armed actions in Northern Ireland, starting in 1972 the PIRA began a series of bomb attacks in different English cities, especially in the capital, London. These attacks ranged from the use of small incendiary devices to devastating bombs containing more than a ton of explosive. The bombs, several times with tragic personal effects and costly property damage, continued to explode until June 1996, when a truck bomb destroyed the Manchester shopping centre.

In the course of almost 30 years of conflict, some 1,100 members of various British security forces were executed by the PIRA and other republican armed groups. The PIRA lost 276 members, to which we must add about 100 more from different nationalist organizations. Some 700 civilians (many of them collaborators with the UDA and English colonialism) died in attacks attributed to pro-Catholic groups and another 800 in attacks by loyalist paramilitary groups.

1975 - Éire Nua and the first ceasefire

Provisional Sinn Féin and the PIRA agreed on a revolutionary program for radical change in Irish society called Éire Nua (Gaelic for New Ireland). According to both organisations, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland North had to dissolve to give birth to a new federal republic. Instead of concentrating all powers in a central government in Dublin (or Belfast), the program proposed devolving more power to regional governments in Ireland's four traditional provinces: Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, and Munster. Each province would have a popular assembly to administer the local affairs of its citizens. Éire Nua remained the official policy of the PIRA and Sinn Féin until 1982, when Gerry Adams scrapped it to return to the idea of a unitary state. Adams and the Republicans of Northern Ireland did not agree with Éire Nua, because they did not believe that this strategy could break Protestant hegemony over Ulster. Many Éire Nua supporters left Sinn Féin and the Provisional movement in 1986, forming the so-called Republican Sinn Féin (RSF) and the Continuity IRA (CIRA). The Éire Nua program still remains the official project of both organizations, which maintain that the federal system is the only way to ensure Protestants an acceptable influence in the affairs of the future republic.

By 1975 the Provisional IRA high command determined that its hopes of quick success were over. On the other side, government and military officials came to the conclusion that eliminating the rebels and terrorists from Ulster was a goal that was difficult to achieve. The new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Welsh Labor Merlyn Rees, secretly met with former IRA chief of staff Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and militant Billy McKee. While this period of negotiations lasted, the PIRA declared a halt of fire. Some time later, senior members of the PIRA considered that the talks had reached an impasse and had become a game of delaying maneuvers on the part of the British. McKee and Ó Brádaigh, although willing to negotiate, were members of the first generation of republicans, and as early as 1977 McKee had been relieved of the PIRA Army Council by younger elements. These opponents, especially Adams and McGuinness, believed that the ceasefire had been a mistake, which had given time for the armed forces and police to infiltrate the movement with informants, causing sectarian violence and discontent with the official sectors of the movement. In January 1976 talks between the PIRA and Rees ended without any result.

The «long war»

Adams led the PIRA from 1976 until the end of the conflict. Since then, the armed group adopted a strategy of attrition, reorganizing itself into small cells, while Sinn Féin began to make its presence known to public opinion. According to an internal Sinn Fein document in the 1980s:

Both Sinn Féin and IRA play different but convergent roles in the national liberation war. The Irish Republican Army carries out the armed campaign... Sinn Féin maintains the propaganda war and the public and political voice of the movement.

El Libro Verde (Green Book, guía militar para reclutas del IRA) de 1977 explica la estrategia de la «guerra larga»:

• A war of wear against the enemy (British troops) based on causing as many deaths as possible to create such pressure in public opinion that forces the London government to rethink the presence of its armed forces in Ireland.
• A campaign of attacks aimed at ending the profitability of the enemy ' s financial interests while halting long-term investment in the country.
• Make the six counties ungovernable for the British administration.
• Defend the war of liberation by punishing criminals, collaborators, and informants.

Sinn Féin and the hunger strikes

In March 1976 the British authorities eliminated the "special category" of certain prisoners of paramilitary groups, among whom were members of the PIRA. On September 14, 1976 Kieran Nugent, a prisoner of the organization, led the "Blanket Protest" for which he rejected the use of prisoner uniforms, to highlight his difference with respect to "common" prisoners. The "Blanket Protest" was followed by the "Dirty Protest" in April 1978.

However, the protest of greatest importance and impact was the hunger strike of 1981, in which seven members of the PIRA and three of the INLA allowed themselves to die of starvation while demanding the status of political prisoners. Protest leader Bobby Sands and his out-of-prison aide Owen Carron won election to the UK parliament for jurisdiction during the strike, and two others were elected to Dáil Éireann in Dublin. Strikes and demonstrations took place in support of the protest. The funeral of Sands, the first detainee to die, was attended by 100,000 people.

In reality, instead of changing the positions of both sides, the strikes only radicalized the positions of both sides.

Peace process

With the vote and the rifle

The protest in the prisons marked the PIRA's transition from a purely military entity to one marked by the growth of its political branch, Sinn Féin.

Another result of this period of crisis was the breaking of electoral abstention by party members, although they continued to refuse to hold positions that implied acceptance of British sovereignty in Northern Ireland. The motto adopted by Sinn Fein in relation to the strategy to be followed from that moment on was: a ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in the other, which translates "A ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in the other. vote in one hand and a rifle in the other'. The phrase was coined by Danny Morrison during the Ard Fheis or party congress in 1981.

TUAS

In the late 1980s, in the opinion of Ed Moloney, the PIRA attempted, with the help of the Libyan government, to take the conflict to a new level with a series of attacks under the common name of "Offensive. Tet" (by analogy to the offensive of the same name in the Vietnam War). When the operation could not be carried out, Sinn Féin leaders sought to find means to reach a non-violent solution. Adams maintained contacts with John Hume, the moderate nationalist leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party. The Republicans dubbed this change in strategy TUAS (Tactical Use of Armed Struggle; according to other sources Totally unarmed strategy or «Totally unarmed strategy »).

Ceasefire and compromise

Despite the change in attitude of the Republicans, there would not be another ceasefire until September 1994. The fighting intensified during the late 1980s and early 1990s, fueled by the intransigence of the conservative government British and massive arms smuggling by Republicans from Libya.

The truce was possible due to the commitment of the British authorities to accept Sinn Féin in multi-party negotiations. After the breakdown of the ceasefire in February 1996, due to new delays by John Major's government, a definitive truce was achieved in July 1997, already under the administration of Tony Blair. The following year (1998), the Good Friday Agreement was signed, by which all parties agreed to accept a collegiate executive, with strong political influence from the Republic of Ireland in the affairs of the autonomous province, in addition to a hypothetical future unity with that Republic as long as the majority of the inhabitants so decided. That same year there was the Omagh Bombing, which caused 29 deaths and more than 200 injuries, carried out by a splinter group, the Real IRA.

After an extensive and problematic transition period, in 2005 the Provisional IRA announced its disarmament to facilitate the political process agreed in 1998.

Officially, the Provisional IRA was considered dismantled on 3 September 2008, when its Armed Council was declared non-operational by the Independent Monitoring Commission, adding that there was no leadership structure capable of organize the armed struggle again.