HORRIFIC FUNERAL IMAGES MARK NEW WATERSHED
Horrific funeral images mark new watershed
by Brian Carroll Security Correspondent
THE horrific funeral images from Omagh and Buncrana have marked another watershed in Irish history. But then we said that about the murder of the three little Quinn brothers during the Drumcree standoff. People thought that act of savagery was the high-water mark of atrocity. Weeks later and the spiral continues.
Before the Quinns, it was the execution of two friends sharing a drink across the religious divide in a mixed town. Before that, Greysteel, the bookies' office on Shankill Road, Warrington, Enniskillen ... When they buried a grandmother, a pregnant mother and daughter this week, they buried three generations of women.
The coffins carried the old, the young, the dead and the unborn. In a way they symbolised the individual cost terrorism has made successive generations pay since the foundation of the State. Now we have new laws, draconian measures to clamp down on renegade Provos, extremists willing to kill at all costs. It wasn't so long ago we were describing the IRA in such terms and now they are Statesmen, joining the politics of condemnation they avoided like verbal gymnasts so disgracefully in the past. This week they could utterly condemn the killings, and that at least is to be welcomed.
But the IRA arsenal of weapons remains. For practical and political reasons, decommissioning is a non-runner. There is no political pressure being brought to bear on the IRA to decommission from the Government, because without their arms, where is their muscle in the new assembly? And you don't need a huge arsenal to cause mayhem, as the people of Omagh will readily testify. The British estimate the IRA received a massive arsenal from Libya in the mid-1980s. They estimate the IRA imported six tonnes of Semtex, 1,500 rifles, 1-5 million rounds of assorted ammunition, 20 SAM missiles, 50 rocket launchers, about 10 flamethrowers and a quantity of machine guns.
About one-third of this has been seized, and the IRA is believed to have less than three tonnes of Semtex left, but enough weapons and other explosives to carry on a full terrorist campaign for seven years.
The alarming question for the security forces, and for all of us, is who controls these weapons. The Dundalk based head of the Real IRA used to control them before he left the IRA in October. The Real IRA doesn't appear to have dipped into IRA arms dumps yet. This is clear from their reliance on homemade explosives, and their attempts to import arms from Libya.
There may be two reasons why they haven't touched the arms. Either the Real IRA leader no longer has access to the arms dumps, or they were mindful of the death sentence that would hang over them from their former IRA colleagues if they were to misappropriate weapons.
Let's hope the gardai act quickly to eradicate them and that there remains no residue of martyrdom for a new generation of terrorists.
Courtesy of Irish Examiner
by Brian Carroll Security Correspondent
THE horrific funeral images from Omagh and Buncrana have marked another watershed in Irish history. But then we said that about the murder of the three little Quinn brothers during the Drumcree standoff. People thought that act of savagery was the high-water mark of atrocity. Weeks later and the spiral continues.
Before the Quinns, it was the execution of two friends sharing a drink across the religious divide in a mixed town. Before that, Greysteel, the bookies' office on Shankill Road, Warrington, Enniskillen ... When they buried a grandmother, a pregnant mother and daughter this week, they buried three generations of women.
The coffins carried the old, the young, the dead and the unborn. In a way they symbolised the individual cost terrorism has made successive generations pay since the foundation of the State. Now we have new laws, draconian measures to clamp down on renegade Provos, extremists willing to kill at all costs. It wasn't so long ago we were describing the IRA in such terms and now they are Statesmen, joining the politics of condemnation they avoided like verbal gymnasts so disgracefully in the past. This week they could utterly condemn the killings, and that at least is to be welcomed.
But the IRA arsenal of weapons remains. For practical and political reasons, decommissioning is a non-runner. There is no political pressure being brought to bear on the IRA to decommission from the Government, because without their arms, where is their muscle in the new assembly? And you don't need a huge arsenal to cause mayhem, as the people of Omagh will readily testify. The British estimate the IRA received a massive arsenal from Libya in the mid-1980s. They estimate the IRA imported six tonnes of Semtex, 1,500 rifles, 1-5 million rounds of assorted ammunition, 20 SAM missiles, 50 rocket launchers, about 10 flamethrowers and a quantity of machine guns.
About one-third of this has been seized, and the IRA is believed to have less than three tonnes of Semtex left, but enough weapons and other explosives to carry on a full terrorist campaign for seven years.
The alarming question for the security forces, and for all of us, is who controls these weapons. The Dundalk based head of the Real IRA used to control them before he left the IRA in October. The Real IRA doesn't appear to have dipped into IRA arms dumps yet. This is clear from their reliance on homemade explosives, and their attempts to import arms from Libya.
There may be two reasons why they haven't touched the arms. Either the Real IRA leader no longer has access to the arms dumps, or they were mindful of the death sentence that would hang over them from their former IRA colleagues if they were to misappropriate weapons.
Let's hope the gardai act quickly to eradicate them and that there remains no residue of martyrdom for a new generation of terrorists.
Courtesy of Irish Examiner
Further Information
Publisher: THE EXAMINER
Ref: TEX/142
Published Date: 22-Aug-98
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