Provisional IRA Has ‘Largely Disbanded’ but Paramilitaries Have Not Gone Away: Expert

'Underbelly of harm' remains in many parts of Northern Ireland

A young boy plays near a loyalist paramilitary mural on the day that the new Loyalist Community Council was launched at the Park Avenue Hotel, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Oct. 13, 2015. Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

The Provisional IRA has been “largely disbanded” but Irish republican dissident groups and loyalist paramilitaries remain a sinister and criminal presence in many parts of Northern Ireland, according to an expert.

U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in Belfast on Tuesday night for a five-day tour of the island of Ireland timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement which brought The Troubles to an end.

Colm Walsh, an academic at Queen’s University who has researched paramilitaries and criminal exploitation, said Northern Ireland was very different from how it was in 1998, but groups like the New IRA, the UVF, and the UDA still exerted a malevolent influence on young people in their communities.

On Monday groups of young people threw petrol bombs and other missiles at police vehicles on the Creggan estate in Londonderry, a republican stronghold where blogger Lyra McKee was shot dead by the New IRA during disturbances in April 2019.

Walsh told The Epoch Times: “When we see what happened on the Creggan, and what happened in Newtownards a few weeks ago and what happened two years ago across Northern Ireland, in terms of the spreading riots then, is that young people are very clearly being groomed and coerced or manipulated into engaging in this type of violence by paramilitaries.”

A police car and a British Army truck at Derry City Cemetery, which was temporarily closed as a check was carried out for bombs, following a dissident republican parade in the Creggan area of Londonderry on April 11, 2023. PA

More than 3,000 people died in The Troubles as the Provisional IRA—which broke away from the Official IRA in the early 1970s and became the most dominant republican group—waged a terrorist war first against the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary in the six counties of Northern Ireland, and later against a variety of civilian and military targets on the British mainland and even as far away as Gibraltar.

Two loyalist groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA)—both of which were opposed to a united Ireland—also attacked republican targets as well as innocent Catholic civilians, and by the end of the conflict were actually claiming more lives than the Provisional IRA, often known as the Provos.

Under the Good Friday Agreement, the Provisional IRA, the UVF, and the UDA all agreed to disband and decommission their weapons.

But one group of republican dissidents formed the Real IRA and on Aug. 15, 1998 detonated a massive bomb in the centre of Omagh, which killed 29 people, including unborn twins.

A week later the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)—a smaller republican grouping—declared a ceasefire.

Another paramilitary group, the blatantly sectarian Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF)—whose leader Billy “King Rat” Wright had been murdered in the Maze prison by three INLA prisoners—also put down its weapons.

Prisoners from all the paramilitary groups, many of whom—like Wright’s killers—had been given life sentences, were released from jail and encouraged to reintegrate into society.

But there was more bloodletting to come.

In 2000 a feud broke out between the UVF and the UDA’s C Company, led by Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair, which led to four deaths. Adair was eventually expelled from the UDA and moved to England.

Now, in 2023, while the bombs, the shootings, and the army patrols have gone from Northern Ireland, the acronyms remain, and not just in the form of graffiti and murals.

Paramilitaries Involved in ‘Drugs’ and ’Extortion’

Walsh said all of the former paramilitary groups were now involved in criminality.

He said: “They’re involved in drugs. They’re involved in extortion. They’re involved in the coercion of members of their own community. They’re still engaged quite heavily in the act of violence, mostly against their own community. All of this as part of the control and the coercion over their own community.”

People taking part in a rally against paramilitary violence—following the shooting of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell—outside the courthouse in Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. PA

Dissident Irish republicans were also drawn into the underworld feud in Dublin between Gerry “The Monk” Hutch and Daniel Kinahan, according to Hutch’s recent trial.

Walsh said: “By and large, Northern Ireland is in a much better place than we were pre-Good Friday Agreement. There’s no doubt about that. But the other reality is that there’s an underbelly of harm, of contextual harm that exists, that has endured in some communities.”

The recent disturbances in Newtownards were linked to a feud between different factions of the UDA, and in February the New IRA was implicated in the shooting of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell.

In 2021 the Loyalist Communities Council, an umbrella group which includes the UVF, the UDA, and the Red Hand Commando, wrote an open letter to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Irish leader Micheál Martin, warning of “permanent destruction” of the Good Friday Agreement if the Northern Ireland Protocol—which set up a de facto border in the Irish Sea—was not amended.

Walsh said in 2021 there were riots in many loyalist parts of Northern Ireland, which was fed by paramilitaries “creating the illusion” that their identity was at risk.

He said: “That message fed through to people within the communities and what we saw was that mostly young people, predominantly young men, were encouraged to take up weapons including bricks and bats and petrol bombs and attack members of the police.”

Walsh said: “I grew up in west Belfast in the early 1990s. When I was growing up you would run the risk of being ambushed and your car being taken off you by groups who were creating roadblocks and burning cars. I remember seeing snipers, on the roofs of buildings, taking shots at the police or the army.”

Young People ‘Living in a Very Different Time’

“Young people post-Good Friday Agreement are generally not exposed to any of that, by and large, and so they’re living in a very different time,” he added.

A fire burns in front of the police on the Springfield Road as protests continue in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on April 8, 2021. Jason Cairnduff/Reuters

In April 2021 the Northern Ireland government’s Department of Justice set up a programme aimed at tackling paramilitaries and organised crime in the six counties.

Launching it, the then-Justice Minister Naomi Long said, “People have had to live with paramilitary control, violence, threats, and exploitation for far too long.”

“Life is hard enough without this. Families, communities, and businesses are all desperate to return to normal after COVID-19 and the last thing they need is the negative influence of paramilitary gangs seeking to exert control, often for financial gain,” she added.

Walsh said the programme was doing good work and he said it was needed now more than ever.

“Whenever we look at who is most actively involved in this type of violence, it’s mostly young men and ... it can create a bit of an adrenaline rush and there is a bit of a buzz around it. But actually, whenever I speak to any of the young people who have been involved in this type of violence, most would say actually if they had an option, they wouldn’t want to be there,” he said.

“So I don’t think that the majority of young people are politically-minded, politically-motivated, certainly not sharing the same cause as the people who are exploiting them,” added Walsh.