Still at war ... dissidents revive grim memories of the Troubles

Small in numbers, three former IRA factions are competing in a ghoulish game of catch-up that poses threat to fragile peace

Graphic: Recent dissident republican attacks (pdf)

Behind the spot where a Continuity IRA sniper shot dead a police officer in Northern Ireland on Monday night, there are two painted messages that give some indication of deepening divisions within Irish republicanism.

A mural on the right-hand side of a house on the Drumbeg housing estate in Craigavon commemorates 13 Provisional IRA men and women from North Armagh killed during the Troubles alongside two local Sinn Féin activists.

The mural is peeling and fading - symbolic, perhaps, of how the mainstream republican movement has put "armed struggle" in the past. To the left, however, a fresher message is bellicose and defiant: "CIRA - still at war". Beside the words are two stencilled outlines of a masked gunman brandishing an assault rifle.

A situation that was complex after the murder of two soldiers last weekend - claimed by the Real IRA - became more so when Continuity IRA boasted it was responsible for the shooting of PC Stephen Carroll. But the claim also underlined that the dissidents are not all fighting under the same flag. Security sources said yesterday that the murder of the police officer was comparable to CIRA playing "catch-up" with the Real IRA.

They fear that an onus has now been placed on the third dissident republican faction, the Tyrone/Fermanagh-based Óglaigh na hÉireann, to emulate the others in a grim game of one-upmanship.

But although the anger and anxiety that have been created over the last few days is widespread, the membership of the groups causing it is thought to be relatively small, with a support base and infrastructure nothing like as complex or well-funded as the Provisional IRA.

Continuity IRA, the oldest of the three main republican dissident terror groups opposed to the peace process, may have only 50 activists, 80 at most. It was formed out of the split within the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin in 1986 when a minority within the republican movement objected to Sinn Féin's decision to recognise the legitimacy of the Irish parliament. Up until the Provisional IRA ceasefire, CIRA remained a southern-based, dormant organisation with little weaponry, comprised of older, traditional republicans. At the time of the 1994 IRA ceasefire the provisionals dismissed CIRA as the "long guns", a reference to their arcane weapons and the fact they were trained at the north from a long, safe distance.

The ceasefires, however, galvanised CIRA, and the organisation set about recruiting disaffected northern republican youths who had little experience of the realities of "war" in the Troubles. The group is thought to have units in Craigavon, on the border at South Armagh, and one in north Belfast; it is understood to have M79 and AKM rifles, and known to have obtained funding by robbery, extortion, fuel-laundering and smuggling.

It remains small in comparison with the Real IRA, which is still the largest of the three main armed dissident groups. The RIRA was founded during a second split within the provisionals in November 1997 following a rancorous PIRA "army convention", by a minority of IRA delegates, led by the provos' quartermaster general, Michael McKevitt, brother-in-law of Bobby Sands, who objected to the decision that republicans should renounce violence as a tactic in order for Sinn Féin to be accepted into all-party peace talks.

Those talks between unionists and nationalists came under severe strain the following year after what was now called the Real IRA launched a bombing and mortar campaign aimed (just like the current upsurge) at driving the parties apart and making any chance of an agreement impossible. It was behind the 1998 Omagh bombing which killed 29 people, an atrocity that generated such revulsion that it pushed the group further to the margins.

Its project that year failed because all of the parties signed up to the Good Friday agreement. At present, this same strategy appears to have pushed Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists closer together and nudged Gerry Adams's party in particular towards a more forthright condemnation of terrorist murder.

There are RIRA units in north, south and west Belfast, it has a presence in south Antrim, Derry city and South Armagh. But, again, the number of hardcore activists is small - perhaps only 100 in total.

The leadership of the Real and Continuity IRAs have pragmatic reasons for preferring to recruit young "clean skins" with no record of involvement in republicanism.

One means of drawing in young, fresh recruits is through what has become known as "recreational rioting". The estate from where the Continuity IRA sniper shot dead PC Carroll was the same one rocked by three days of riots last summer. An entire generation of radical republican youth from the estate, albeit small in number, had been "blooded" through the three-day confrontation.

The PSNI obtained a fascinating insight into the RIRA's recruitment policy when it raided a house in west Belfast two years ago. As officers broke down the door, they discovered an initiation ceremony involving a seasoned terrorist lecturing a group of young men. One of the recruits was 15 and came from not far from Antrim, the scene of Saturday's murder of two British soldiers Massereene barracks.

Graphic: Recent dissident republican attacks (pdf)

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