User:Mal McKee/Irish Republican Army
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Actually a broad term encompassing both historical and factional organizations, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) includes various insurgent groups beginning when the whole of Ireland was a part of the United Kingdom, and latterly in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. At various times and currently, different groups have claimed the title, resulting in various qualifiers such as Official IRA, Provisional IRA, Real IRA, Continuity IRA, etc.
IRA groups variously have considered themselves subordinate to overt political organizations, or been autonomous movements of their own.
Origins
Before any group called itself the IRA, there was the Irish Home Rule movement, opposed by the Protestant Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) that objected to Catholic-dominated, Irish nationalist Home Rule. Had there been no UVF and no opposition to Home Rule, the Irish Volunteers would not have had a motivation to conduct the Easter Rising of 1916.[1] While the Irish Volunteers were not the only nationalist force, which arose from the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), the original IRA can be traced most clearly to them. The IRB had been formed in 1858.[2]
Northern Ireland
Provisional IRA
Real IRA
The Real IRA (RIRA) group formed in Northern Ireland, from PIRA members who had rejected the 1998 peace process and continued fighting the British. Both the British and Irish governments consider it separate from the Provisional IRA.[3] According to the RAND Corporation, it was created by PIRA’s ex-quartermaster general, Michael McKevitt and his common-law wife Bernadette Sands-McKevitt.[4] The two were public members of a political organization called the Sovereignty Committee.[5] She was the sister of Bobby Sands, who was the first PIRA member to die as a result of a hunger strike, in 1981. They recruited a number of PIRA bomb-makers, and their operations have emphasized bombing rather than small unit combat.[4] The RIRA claimed responsibility for the Omagh bombing of August 1998,[6] which Sands-McKevitt condemned; she said she approved of the halt to violence of the RIRA and PIRA. [7]
The RIRA has been designated a "foreign terrorist organization" by the U.S. government, beginning in 2001.[8] "RIRA opposes compromise with the British government or with the Protestant unionist majority in Northern Ireland, which favors keeping Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. Many of the attacks have coincided with the implementation of the new steps of the Good Friday Accord."
References
- ↑ Peter De Rosa (1992), Rebels: The Irish Rising of 1916, Ballantine
- ↑ Tim Pat Coogan (1993), The IRA: A History, Roberts Rinehart, pp. 3-5
- ↑ James F. Clarity (August 19, 1998), "I.R.A. Splinter Group Says It Carried Out Bombing", New York Times
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Kim Cragin and Sara A. Daly (2004), The Dynamic Terrorist Threat: An Assessment of Group Motivations and Capabilities, RAND Corporation, p. 27
- ↑ Rosie Cowan (March 30, 2001), Guardian
- ↑ CBC News, November 13, 1998
- ↑ "Bobby Sands' sister condemns bombers", BBC, August 19, 1998
- ↑ Philip T. Reeker, Deputy Spokesman, U.S. Department of State (May 13, 2003), U.S. Redesignates Real IRA as Terrorist Organization