Technorati Tags: denis+donaldson, provisional+ira, northern+ireland, terrorism
Last week I had an argument with Umar Lee and Abu Sinan on Umar's blog following the assassination of the former Sinn Fein politician and British agent Denis Donaldson. Donaldson had retired, after publically admitting that he had become a British government agent after a compromising personal situation, to a remote farmhouse in Donegal, where he was murdered early last week by a person, or persons, as yet unknown. Umar alleged the BBC, while all apologetic about their colonial past, "revert to a colonial mindset and seem to not think those who have struggled fro freedom in Ireland are worthy of the same respect of the anti-colonial movements in the global south which they would never in a million years speak ill of". As regards Donaldson, "true to form, [they] covered the death as if a Christ-like figure had been slain and painted it entirely in a negative light".
As one who saw, heard, and read the British coverage of the killing, the suggestion that Donaldson was a "Christ-like figure" did not appear at all. As regards the event being entirely negative, that sums up attitudes (almost) all around on this issue. Donaldson had retired from politics and was at the time of his death last week nobody's agent. On top of this, every criminal action emerging out of northern Irish politics is a set-back for community relations in the province, and right now who was responsible is unknown. Not everyone believes that the IRA were not involved, much as not everyone believed that the IRA were not involved in the December 2004 Northern Bank cash heist. And people will not sit around the table with the IRA, or their political associate Sinn Fein, if it is suspected that they are involved in crime.
I, for one, object to the suggestion that the IRA were freedom fighters at all. While there may have been times in the history of northern Ireland where armed struggle was justified, their behaviour since the mid-1970s has consisted mostly of bombings of purely civilian targets both in Northern Ireland and on the mainland, "police" operations in which people in parts of northern Ireland they dominated were murdered or "kneecapped", criminal activity, and straightforward mass murder. The fact that the BBC seem ill-disposed towards the IRA may well be to do with their practice of leaving bombs in places where innocent people are likely to get killed or injured, both in Northern Ireland and on the mainland. I get most of my news from the BBC, and they report on the activities of pro-British "paramilitaries" (basically what the IRA are, without the bombings) as well, including their criminality (which probably exceeds that of the IRA) and murderous internal feuding.
The fact that people object to the IRA's bombings does not mean they are anti-Irish or support British policies in Ireland. I happen to be half-Irish myself and support a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, which is after all part of Ireland and belongs to the Irish; I'm sure many British people find the antics of the Protestant minority embarrassing, particularly when they besiege Catholic neighbourhoods in support of their "right" to impose themselves via an Orange Order march. Their style of patriotism is quite unlike anything found on the mainland, and one wonders what country they would call their own were England and Scotland to split. Still, the IRA's bombing campaign, in the words of their Green Book, was "aimed at causing as many casualties and deaths as possible so as to create a demand from their people at home for their withdrawal".
And recent history shows that killing civilians as a war tactic almost never works. ETA, for example, have not managed to win an independent state despite several decades of bombing; the people responsible for the 9/11 attacks, the Istanbul bank bombing and the London train and bus bombings, assuming they were those whom politicians assure us that they were, have failed in whatever they intended to accomplish. Hitler's bombers also failed to intimidate the British public with their bombings of people's homes in the 1940s. In the cases where it has appeared to work, other factors were at play as well. The ejection of the Spanish government following the bombings of 2003, for example, had much to do with government attempts to blame the bombings on ETA, and with the fact that the country's involvement in Iraq was highly unpopular. The surrender of Japan following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, conditional on the emperor being neither dethroned nor harmed, was similar to one which had been offered before the atom bombings.
The IRA further intended to "make the Six Counties as at present and for the past several years ungovernable except by colonial military rule"; in other words, to produce a situation so awful that the Irish Catholic population would find no alternative but to support the IRA. This rather suggests that they did not merely seek to liberate the Irish but to rule them. Keep in mind, the IRA regarded both Northern Ireland and the Irish state of the time as illegitimate. They did not seek merely a 32-county Eire, but a "distinctive new Irish Socialist State".
Given the way some Americans discuss the subject, you would get a far worse impression of Anglo-Irish issues than the reality, particularly today's reality. Relations between the UK and Ireland are such that the Irish Republic is as easy to enter and leave as the Isle of Wight (I did not need my passport to travel there in 1992 either, when the Troubles were still going on; these days, one does need ID - not necessarily a passport - because of other terrorist threats we all know of). Being half-Irish and brought up in a mixed household, perhaps this mix is more normal for me than it is for others in the UK, but mixed English-Irish marriages are not uncommon (particularly now - in earlier times, some couples had to deal with hostility from others of both communities). There is no hostility between the English and the Irish anymore. What hostility remains is between communities in Northern Ireland - or rather, parts of them - and certain enclaves in Scotland and on Merseyside.
As for who killed Donaldson, there is a strong likelihood, if it was not the IRA itself (and the IRA gave coded warnings and claimed responsibility for its actions), that it was someone who resented having to do more jail time because of him. This would not have been a Bobby Sands type, a volunteer jailed for firearms offences or mere membership, as the IRA ceased to be a mass membership organisation in the mid-1970s. It may well have been a racketeer, a mass murderer, or a bomber, or all three. Denis Donaldson, quite likely, had been involved in these activities as well, but unlike whoever killed him, he had got out of it all.
their behaviour since the mid-1970s has consisted mostly of bombings of purely civilian targets
rather like hamas then, of late?
No, actually. Hamas are more than their military wing and are involved in welfare and education, which is why Interpal are continually accused of funding them:
http://www.blogistan.co.uk/blog/mt.php/2004/12/21/interpal_cleared_twice_smeared
PIRA/SF are and were rather more than their military wing too.
Actually, killing civilians is a very effective way of waging war. You just have to be willing to kill enough of them. As well as PIRA's inability to gain any kind of military victory the loyalist death squads' habit of killing any roman catholics they came across in retaliation for PIRA actions probably made PIREA's techniques less popular in the host community.
Yusuf,
You will find that if you try to slam the IRA and support Hamas you will get no support from either side.
You state-"aimed at causing as many casualties and deaths as possible so as to create a demand from their people at home for their withdrawal".
Um, but isnt this the goal of any war? To create a situation in which the other side are forced to give in? You know, isnt war just politics by other means, as the saying goes?
Killing civilians does work, history bears this out. The US stopped the Japanese portion of WW2 by nuking two mainly civilian cities. The UK firebombed Dresden, Hamburg, and a host of other cities specifically targeting civilians and wounded soldiers.
Are things the way they used to be? No, of course not. But I honestly feel that the Catholic people of the north of Ireland will not get a completely equal situation until the British pull out of Ireland.
Ireland, and its occuptation, is one of the last vestiges of British colonialism. The sooner it goes the better.
As to the nature of the IRA, any such movement is be definition going to have to be run with procedes from both crime and local and international dontations. The IRA controlled a large pool of support in the nationalist community in the north of Ireland, they would not have been able to operate without it.
Now that the IRA has pretty much disbanded, you are going to have people who have spent their whole lives running illegal operations who do not know how to live a legal, above the board life.
I think a general amnesty needs to be declared, a truth commission like they had in South Africa set up. Programs need to be set up to help paramilitaries from all sides cope with the move towards normality.
I think you'll find, and I know this having spent loads of time in the north of Ireland, that the biggest problem in the area is from the Protestant paramilitaries, not the Republican ones. They are much larger, first of all, and are much more entrenched in illegal operations, especially the drugs trade.
Oh, by the way, your article had nothing to do with the title. It was more of an anti-IRA article than anything to do with Muslim opinion in the UK about Ireland.
My impression, being a Muslim who lived in England, that they didnt care either way and gave almost no thought to the issue. Unless, of course, you are talking about support for Palestine, in which Irish Republicans and Muslims have a lot in common.
The IRA trained with Muslim groups in the Middle East, secular and religious, and republicans in Belfast and elsewhere have invited Palestinians and representitives from Arab groups for decades to be involved in their meetings and otherwise. It is well known.
Hamas are more than their military wing and are involved in welfare and education
And so what? The Indian Hindu fanatics like the VHP and Shiv Sena also have very strong medical and people support wings, that even go out for relief work during natural disasters.
It doesn't take away from the fact they target non-Hindus does it? Though at least no member of the VHP/RSS has blown themselves up with innocent civilians - which Hamas has.
So I stand corrected.
Brother Yusuf I have to agree with Abu Sinan in that I do not know if you speak for most British Muslims, and I suspect you don't either or at least you haven't been ordained as a spokesman, and that the opinions you state are your own. I do know, from past experience, that there are quite a few British Muslims with a different opinion then that of your own.
Abu Sinan also makes good points about those who lived their whole lives in the IRA struggle ( and the same applies to those still in the struggle) and the fact that it is hard to transition from that to a normal life.
Life is messy and dirty and so is an armed struggle. If we all just sit around in coffee shops in comfy urban neighborhoods and critique those who are actually doing something we can do that; but some live in the real world and dont need the blessings of Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity, Harvard or Yale to progress and do what must be done.
Interesting to note that the IRA, in it's Easter message, condemned those former members of the IRA who lead lives dedicated to crime.
The Shiv Sena is largely a gang of hindu fanatics and terrorists, they dont do any relief work, infact they go out of their in enforcing caste politics. They were stopping aid from reaching "low caste" hindus.
To compare them to Hamas is misleading and shows that you dont know or understand the situation in occupied Palestine.
Given that British Muslims were as much a target of the murderous IRA as were British non-Muslims, I imagine most think along the same lines as Abu Yusuf (I certainly do). At least, Muslims who actually lived through the IRA's terror campaign against British civilians would share his view. Of course, it's understandable that some Muslims might be deceived from afar by the romantacism of Irish Republicanism and the apparent commonalities between their 'struggle' and the Palestinians, but the fact remains that it was the methods and not the ostensible cause of the IRA that made them evil. We can agree with the Irish 'right' to self-determination but I can never agree with the campaign of indiscriminate terror they waged against people such as myself, my family and friends.
I've never heard such bollocks in all my life. The quote from the IRA GREEN BOOK is simply fictitious, while the analysis of the anti-colonial campaign is school boy fantasy, totally void of reason. Wise up son.
So now the world has seen three warmongering Egomaniacs, Hitler, George W Bush and Tony Blair, the latter has his head that far up George W Bush’s backside that it is hard to see his knees.
The British public deserve better that this idiot, who is responsible for half the troubles in the world today.
I am hard pressed to know why the Media of this country is not demanding answers as to why this country is allowing it to be used for the transportation of arms to Israel.
Also why as shown on television yesterday, they (the media) are not creating hell about the scenes of Israeli forces unloading hundreds of land mines, in their occupation of Lebanon.
This World has a United Nations that is impotent; it cannot work without approval of the United States. But remember that the future peace keepers in Lebanon will be walking in the paths of landmines set by the Israelis.
I used to be very sympathetic towards the Jews, with the treatment they were handed out by the Nazi’s, even though they were responsible for the murder of one of my Mothers friends sons, who served in the Palestine Police in the 1940’s, the murder of the Jews in the second world war, must have become contagious to them, as it seem that has become their strategy.
I now hate the Jews for their actions, I hope that their Master God brings them nothing but suffering, for the murder they have meted out to innocent women and children of Lebanon.
How anyone in the Labour Party can stand behind and support this maniac I do not know. But they will reap the results of his actions.
When this belligerent action in the Middle East comes to the Streets of Golders Green and Stoke Newington, and other such neighbourhoods all over the world, there will be nobody else to blame that the Labour Party. Along with the Conservative Jews that have kept their mouths shut over this issue. D Andrews, 18 Drovers Rise. Stanton. Suffolk. IP31 2BW. 01359 251123.
This is a very one sided piece. If you had a REAL understanding of Irish history and not just what you picket up from Maggie Thatcher's and the BBC then you would realise that the IRA was and still is a DIRECT RESPONSE to British Imperialism that continues to this day. I have nothing against English people, some of my best friends are born and bred Protestant Englishmen, but i will never be able to look a Unionist or an Orangeman in the eye. They are in my opinion far far worse than the IRA.
PS: The majority of Irish Nationalists are neutral on Palestine and 100% support the war on terror.
If Britain leaned in the direction of supporting Irish unification, wouldn't the Ulster Protestants probably declare UDI a la Rhodesia?