IRA Says Its Armed Fight Over

The Irish Republican Army announced Thursday that its decades of armed struggle against British rule in Northern Ireland were over, and that it would continue its fight using only peaceful and democratic means.

Leaders of Britain and Ireland welcomed the declaration, saying that if the IRA followed through, it could signal a historic shift. The IRA has been blamed for 1,800 deaths, about half the total in the more than 35 years since Northern Ireland’s “troubles” began.

“This may be the day when finally, after all the false dawns and dashed hope, peace replaced war; politics replaced terror on the island of Ireland,” said British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “This is a step of unparalleled magnitude in the recent history of Northern Ireland.”

But Protestant unionist leaders reacted skeptically, saying the IRA had made several “historic” statements that amounted to nothing. Immediate changes appeared unlikely.

The IRA announcement reflected a recognition that the global struggle with Islamic terrorism had left much of the world unsympathetic to the militia’s tactics, analysts said. The IRA and its political ally, Sinn Fein, also have found themselves on the defensive in recent months over a $50-million Belfast bank robbery and the killing of a Catholic man by IRA members.

At the same time, Sinn Fein has become a growing political force across Ireland.

The IRA had fought to reunite the six British-ruled northern counties with the Republic of Ireland, which gained independence in 1921. Most Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland want a unified Ireland, but Catholics make up only about 45% of the population. The Protestant majority wants the province to remain under British rule.

The statement came after years of stalemate over implementation of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, which called for power sharing in Northern Ireland and the disarmament of illegal groups. In contrast to previous IRA statements, which have been anonymous, this one was read in a video by a former IRA prisoner identified as Seana Walsh and distributed to news media.

The IRA called on all its units to “dump arms.”

“All volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programs through exclusively peaceful means,” the statement said. The IRA will not disband and its goal of a united Ireland will not be abandoned, the statement continued.

However, “there is now an alternative way to achieve this, and to end British rule in our country,” it said.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, in a prepared statement, said the IRA’s declaration could help revive the peace process. “It deals with genuine unionist concerns and removes from the leadership of unionism its excuse for non-engagement,” Adams said.

A retired Canadian general, John de Chastelain, will be invited to decommission hidden weapons bunkers soon, the IRA statement said. Even before the Good Friday pact was reached, De Chastelain had tried, with little success, to cajole paramilitaries to disarm. A Roman Catholic priest and a Protestant cleric will witness the decommissioning, the IRA said.

Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell said this week that Adams and chief Sinn Fein negotiator Martin McGuinness had recently resigned from the IRA’s military council. Adams and McGuinness deny that they served on the council. Adams, reputedly a former IRA commander, has never admitted belonging to the organization.

Sinn Fein’s growing political clout and the world’s distaste for political violence made the end of the IRA’s armed campaign inevitable, said Richard English, a professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast.

“From the republican perspective, this is a huge gesture,” he said. “But from the unionist perspective, everything looks much more cloudy, because what the IRA tend to do is think of what the unionists want, and offer slightly less.”

“It’s a big day, and might be the foundation for a whole new politics, but my sense is that while this undoubtedly would’ve done the trick in 1998, in 2005 I’m just not sure,” English said.

The announcement drew praise not only from Blair but also from the Irish government and officials in Washington.

“If the IRA’s words are borne out by verified actions, it will be a momentous and historic development,” Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said.

The White House called the IRA’s move “important and potentially historic.”

“We understand that many, especially victims and their families, will be skeptical,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said. “They will want to be certain that this terrorism and criminality are indeed things of the past.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) spoke optimistically to the Senate. “Hopefully, this statement means we are finally nearing the end of this very long process to take guns and criminality out of politics in Northern Ireland once and for all,” he said.

Adams unilaterally called for the IRA to embrace politics in April, after Sinn Fein’s international standing had been badly damaged by the bank robbery and the slaying, also in Belfast, of Robert McCartney, a 33-year-old Catholic, an attack outside a pub that the IRA acknowledged had been committed by its members.

Ian Paisley, the fiery preacher and leader of the hard-line Democratic Unionists, was dismissive of the IRA statement.

“We will judge the IRA’s bona fides over the next months and years based on its behavior and activity,” he told the BBC, adding that the IRA had “failed to provide the transparency necessary to truly build confidence that the guns have gone in their entirety.”

Tensions in Northern Ireland have steadily worsened since December, when negotiations over a political settlement collapsed. The spectacular robbery days later at the Northern Bank headquarters in Belfast, the provincial capital, was blamed on the IRA, which was accused of planning the heist during the talks.

After McCartney’s death in January, his five sisters began a public campaign that encouraged other Catholics to demand that the IRA stop preying on its own people.

In May elections, angry Protestant voters deserted the moderate Ulster Unionist Party, which had led several failed power-sharing governments, flocking to Paisley’s hard-line party. Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with moderate Catholic leader John Hume in 1998, lost badly.

“We’ve finally arrived at a position we all thought we were heading into in 1998,” said Alan McFarland, the Ulster Unionists’ chief negotiator. “This was supposed to happen in the aftermath of the agreement. We went into government with Sinn Fein on assurances that the IRA would stand down, and we pushed and pushed, but they just didn’t.”

Ulster Unionist leader Reg Empey called the IRA statement an admission of defeat, and ex-IRA prisoner and Adams critic Anthony McIntyre agreed. “This supposedly says the war has ended, but many of us who fought the war know it’s over, and know we lost the war,” McIntyre said.

Relatives of IRA victims had mixed feelings. Colin Parry of Warrington, England, whose 12-year-old son Tim was killed by an IRA bomb in 1993, expressed hope.

“The IRA has had a history of tantalizing people, I think, with tales of the promised land, and we’ve yet to get there, but on balance I’m more optimistic than pessimistic,” he told Britain’s Channel 4 News.

Many Belfast residents were wary. “I’ll believe it when it really happens,” said retired shop-owner Albert Magrath as a light rain fell and clouds darkened the sky. “We’ve been waiting a long time now.”

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A farewell to arms

In a move welcomed by London and Dublin, the Irish Republican Army said its struggle against British rule in Northern Ireland, which had long been violent, would continue only through peaceful and democratic means.

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Facts

Founded: The modern IRA emerged in Belfast in December 1969 with the aim of forcing the British out of Northern Ireland.

Structure: Governed by a seven-member council and an 11-person executive. Membership in the militia is estimated at 500 to 1,000.

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History

1921: Ireland is partitioned amid civil war. Six northeastern counties with a Protestant majority become Northern Ireland and remain British. The rest of the island, predominantly Roman Catholic, wins independence.

1969: After Catholic-Protestant clashes in Northern Ireland, fueled by Catholic grievances over discrimination, Britain deploys troops there.

Aug. 12, 1970: IRA kills its first two Northern Ireland police officers, using a booby-trapped bomb hidden in an abandoned car in the district of Armagh.

Nov. 21, 1974: Two bombs devastate pubs in Birmingham, England, killing 21 and wounding 160 -- the IRA’s worst toll of bloodshed in a single attack.

Aug. 27, 1979: An IRA bomb kills Lord Louis Mountbatten, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, and three others on his private yacht off the northern coast of Ireland. On the same day, the IRA kills 19 members of the British army’s elite Parachute Regiment.

1981: Led by Bobby Sands, 10 IRA prisoners held by the British die in a hunger strike.

Oct. 12, 1984: IRA bombs hotel on the south English coast where Britain’s ruling Conservative Party is holding its annual conference, narrowly missing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher but killing five others.

1993: Moderate Catholic leader John Hume opens secret talks with Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party, in pursuit of an IRA cease-fire.

1998: Negotiators forge Good Friday accord, which proposes a Catholic-Protestant administration, disarmament of illegal groups, parole for convicted militants, British military cutbacks and police reform.

2001: After several power-sharing breakdowns, IRA begins disarming. The following year, power-sharing collapses after police accuse a Sinn Fein official of spying and gathering intelligence on potential IRA targets.

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Source: Associated Press