The latest IMC report shows how entrenched violence has become in Northern Ireland, writes Gerry Moriarty.Northern Editor
The fifth Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) report published on Tuesday was fairly predictable but no less disturbing for that. It created the concept of IRA Inc and institutionalised republican and loyalist paramilitarism.
If the preliminary sluggish moves to achieve a form of political closure in Northern Ireland are to be successful, they must involve the IRA fading into the mist and loyalist and other paramilitary groups following suit.
It is clear from the IMC's report just how daunting a challenge it is to create a Northern Ireland free of the paramilitary killer, the Kalashnikov, the bombmaker, the armed robber, the extortionist, the smuggler, the Mafia-style money launderer, the drug dealer and the kneecapper. They haven't gone away.
Northern Ireland is a better place but it's apparent from the 59 pages of the report just how entrenched violence and the threat of violence is. Gerry Adams has offered the possibility of a peaceful society courtesy of the IRA, perhaps forming its own old soldiers' equivalent of the Royal British Legion.
That indeed would be a monumental shift for the IRA because, as the IMC has it, this is a massive organisation that is "determined to maintain its effectiveness, both in terms of organised crime control in republican areas, and the potential for terrorism". Consider also the £26.5 million Northern Bank raid and the allegations of multimillion pound multinational money laundering and it's easy to see how the idea of IRA Inc can take hold.
Referring to the murder by members of the IRA - although not a leadership sanctioned killing - of Robert McCartney the chairman of the four-member IMC, Lord Alderdice, said: "It was quite clear that PIRA puts its members and its organisation ahead of justice." It was an organisation whose "views were skewed and corrupted by many, many years of disregarding what is criminal activity", he added.
This IMC report mainly covers the period from September last year to February this year and, therefore, doesn't focus in detail on Adams's call on the IRA to embrace peace and democracy. It states, however, that if Adams delivers, then he will have demonstrated "leadership of a high order".
The IMC acknowledges there is no evidence that the IRA is planning to resume a campaign of violence. But even here one remembers how a senior Irish civil servant once portrayed the IRA as a shark that must ever be on the move to survive. The scale of its operations - even allowing for a positive response from P O'Neill to Gerry Adams's appeal - raises the question, can this shark ever be netted?
Moreover, as Alderdice said on Tuesday, if the IRA is on the verge of quitting the stage, why is it still recruiting, training, gathering intelligence, exiling, shooting people in the legs and engaging in organised crime on a mind-boggling scale? It is obvious from the report that for the IRA to truly respond positively to Adams there will need to be an almighty hitting and squealing of paramilitary brakes.
This report is by no means a single paramilitary organisation document. It also goes into detail about the myriad paramilitary and criminal activities of the Continuity IRA, the Real IRA, the INLA, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, the UVF and Red Hand Commando, and the UDA. The IMC blames the UDA for two murders: for the killing of Downtown Radio producer Stephen Nelson who was viciously assaulted last September and died from his injuries in March, reportedly because he challenged UDA drug dealers; and for the killing of Darren Thompson who was shot in Derry as he walked to work on September 29th last, dying from his injuries two days later. The new Northern Secretary Peter Hain must now consider whether he should re-proscribe the UDA.
Sinn Féin dismissed the IMC as the "tool of the British securocrats" although the paramilitary scene it paints is obvious to all and is almost accepted as part of the normal fabric of society in Northern Ireland, a nightmarish notion.
The thrust of the report shows the paramilitaries providing society with a culture of corruption that most ordinary people, away from the working class communities where they hold sway, prefer to ignore or reluctantly tolerate. The report may not add to our knowledge of what the hundreds of motivated people signed up to republican and loyalist paramilitary groupings do, and the real and continuous threat they continue to pose.
But, notwithstanding the latest lumbering attempts to strike a political deal, it certainly reinforces just how difficult it will be to rid society of the contagious virus of paramilitarism and criminality that is endemic in Northern Ireland - and spreading.