The provisional Irish Republican Army [IRA] is an outgrowth of a group that fought for and won independence from Britain during the years 1916-1921, when Ireland was partitioned and the six northern counties reconstituted as the British province of Ulster or Northern Ireland. The provisional IRA emerged during the late 1960s styling itself as the defenders of the Roman Catholic minority in the North whose efforts to win civil rights peacefully were met by force by the Protestant "unionist" majority. Well into the 1990s, the organization employed sniper attacks, bombings and assassination in a quest to end British rule in Northern Ireland and unify the province with the neighboring Republic of Ireland. Sinn Fein, which means "Ourselves Alone" in the Gaelic language, is the IRA's political wing.
Not anymore, according to the State Department, which considered the IRA to be a terrorist organization as late as 2000. In July 2002, on the 30th anniversary of the 1972 “Bloody Friday” bombings, the IRA startled its sympathizers and enemies alike by offering “sincere apologies and condolences” to the families of its civilian victims. The IRA does still consider itself an armed force opposing an illegal foreign occupation of its country; jailed members called themselves “political prisoners.” And two IRA splinter groups, the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, still practice terrorism.
Following a 1916 uprising and years of guerrilla war led by the legendary Irish nationalist Michael Collins, the British government decided in 1920 to split up Ireland, which it had ruled as a colony for centuries. An independent state was created in the island’s predominantly Catholic south; a smaller, northern district called Ulster, with a Protestant majority, remained part of the United Kingdom.
Since then, many Catholic “republicans” (also known as “nationalists”) have complained of feeling like second-class citizens in Ulster and have backed the IRA’s quest for a united Ireland free of British rule. On the other side, Protestant “unionists” (also known as “loyalists”) want to stay loyal to the British crown; backed by their own paramilitaries, the unionists have opposed the IRA’s attempts to expel the British. More than 3,200 people on both sides have died since what the Irish call “the Troubles” began in 1969.
The IRA rose to prominence after rioting and clashes between Catholics and Protestants in Ulster in the summer of 1969. British troops were eventually deployed to restore order, but many Catholics resented the British presence and felt that the security forces did not do enough to come to their aid. The group (then known as the Provisional IRA) began conducting guerrilla operations against the British Army and police. During riots in Londonderry on January 30, 1972—now remembered as “Bloody Sunday” —British paratroopers killed thirteen unarmed Catholics, accelerating a cycle of IRA violence, loyalist reprisals, and security crackdowns that has continued, with some fits and starts, for more than three decades. One milestone in the conflict was the 1981 deaths of ten IRA prisoners led by Bobby Sands, all of whom died during hunger strikes.
Since the late 1960s, the IRA has killed about 1,800 people, including about 650 civilians. The IRA’s primary targets were British troops, police officers, prison guards, and judges—many of them unarmed or off-duty—as well as rival paramilitary militants, drug dealers, and informers in Ulster. Major IRA terrorist attacks include:
- the July 1972 bombing spree known as Bloody Friday, in which downtown Belfast was rocked by twenty-two bombs in seventy-five minutes, leaving nine dead and 130 injured;
- the 1979 assassination of Lord Mountbatten, Queen Elizabeth II’s uncle;
- the 1984 bombing of aBrighton hotel where then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet were meeting, which wounded several British officials and killed four other Britons;
- a 1993 car bombing inLondon’s financial district that killed one person and caused $1 billion of damage;
- mortar attacks on the British prime minister’s 10 Downing Street residence and London’s Heathrow Airport in the early 1990s;
- and high-profile bombings of civilian targets, including pubs and subway stations, inNorthern Irelandand mainland Britain throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Yes, although its unionist foes question its sincerity. In April 1998, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell helped broker the Good Friday accord, a landmark agreement among most of the main political parties in Northern Ireland, including Sinn Fein, and the British and Irish governments. Its signatories renounced violence, established a new Northern Ireland legislative body, increased cross-border ties, and freed prisoners. In October 2001, the IRA began “decommissioning” its arsenal—in effect disarming, an action the unionists have long demanded as proof of the IRA’s commitment to peace and to pursuing a purely political strategy.
The 1998 accord was jeopardized in October 2002 as Unionists accused several members of Sinn Fein of involvement in an IRA spy ring. The British government then suspended Northern Ireland's power-sharing government after Unionists announced they would not remain in government with Sinn Fein until the IRA “put its weapons beyond use” and renounced violence. Reacting to accusations by the British and Irish governments that it was involved in a December 2004 Belfast bank robbery, the IRA withdrew its disarmament offer in February 2005, but reinstated it in July 2005. Two months later, an independent arms decommissioning body verified that the IRA had, in its view, put all its weapons beyond use.
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