IRA now holds enough guns for 1,500 terrorists
THE Provisional IRA may officially be on ceasefire but it still has enough weapons to equip around 1,500 men, the Sunday Independent can reveal.
The IRA is also actively involved in punishment beatings, protection rackets, training and spying, according to security sources.
The IRA Army Council is using the notorious hardline South Armagh "brigade" to punish members in the republic who are failing to pass on millions of euro from various rackets, dummy security companies and involvement in the drugs trade.
One IRA member from Co Louth was shot in both ankles after being interviewed in south Armagh, while IRA members in Dublin, Limerick and Cork have been interviewed by leading Provos about their fund-raising activities. A Clondalkin IRA gang involved in the drug business admitted there was a sum of money owed to the IRA and undertook to pay it over.
The moves come after a huge slowdown in overseas revenue for the IRA since the arrest of the Colombia Three.
IRA discipline among its own members appears to be breaking down with the Provisionals investigating the disappearance of six Kalashnikov rifles from an arms dump in the Dublin mountains stolen by individual members to be used in robberies for personal gain.
The latest revelations about how the IRA is operating post-ceasefire comes after a damning security assessment from the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) in a confidential document left behind in Farmleigh, the State-owned mansion in the Phoenix Park. That document said the IRA was still recruiting, training and gathering intelligence information, but it was designed for "defensive purposes".
Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Cowen was quick to point out that the assessment came from the NIO and that the Government's position was that there was a commitment to the peace process by the republican movement with a ceasefire in place.
However, despite two decommissioning moves by the Provisionals, with the details known only to General John de Chastelain and his staff, the IRA is reckoned to still have enough weapons to equip the equivalent of three infantry battalions of around 1,500 men.
The amount of weaponry available to the Provisionals is put into perspective when it is compared to the legitimate army of the State, the Irish Defence Forces, which can only field nine infantry battalions in all.
The IRA arsenal includes more than half of 1,200Kalashnikov rifles delivered by Libya; more than 500 handguns; 50 heavy and general-purpose machine guns; RPG-7 rocket launchers; home-made grenade launchers and mortars; the remains of the two tons of Semtex explosive sent from North Africa, and a small number of SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles.
IRA-linked operations which have come to light so far include an alleged spy ring in Stormont, the arrest of republicans in Colombia and a gun-running operation from the United States.
While loyalist terrorists are responsible for most of the murders and punishment beatings in the North, the IRA is blamed for at least one murder this year and 106 punishment beatings.
Loyalists, meanwhile, carried out 203 attacks and nine of the 13 killings in 2002, according to PSNI figures.
- JIMMY GUERIN
