The IRA No Longer Has An A
The IRA has effectively disbanded as an underground army and no longer meets for any terrorist purposes, the group charged with overseeing paramilitary ceasefires in Northern Ireland said today.
The International Monitoring Commission (IMC) said the Provisionals’ ruling body, the army council, had fallen into “disuse” but there would be no formal announcement of it being disbanded.
The Northern Ireland secretary, Shaun Woodward, said the findings meant there was now “no rational reason” for the parties not to continue negotiations, including on the devolution of policing and justice powers – a key Sinn Fein demand.
In its 19th report (PDF), the IMC says: “The mechanism which they (the IRA) have chosen to bring the armed conflict to a complete end has been the standing down of the structures which engaged in the armed campaign and the conscious decision to fall into disuse.”
The first minister and Democratic Unionist leader, Peter Robinson, has called on the army council to disband to enable unionists to have full confidence in the political process.
However, the IMC report says: “We do not see that there will be formal announcements about the disbandment of all or parts of the structure.”
This absence of a formal process will pose problems for Robinson and the DUP.
The report’s authors exonerate the IRA over non-terrorist crimes, although they accept that some of its individual members or ex-members could be engaged in “ordinary” criminal activity.
Overall, the ceasefire monitoring commission says the IRA poses no threat to the peaceful or democratic process, adding that it sees “no grounds” for evidence that the IRA and its membership could return to “war”.
The report is critically important given the current pressures on the Northern Ireland power-sharing government.
Sinn Fein has sent out thinly veiled warnings that unless policing and justice powers are transferred from London to Belfast, it might pull out of the devolved government.
Woodward pointed to the importance of the IMC conclusion that all the military departments, including the IRA army council, have fallen into disuse.
“I would go further and say this: is there an army for the army council to direct? It now seems, according to this report, there is not,” he said.
“We have arrived. The time has come to move on. It’s not a statement that is important - after all, the loyalists have made plenty of statements about decommissioning but they haven’t decommissioned.
“By their actions, rather than any statement, the IRA is at a situation where it no longer poses any threat.”
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