We've lost control of Ardoyne, IRA warns

[Beorn]

We've lost control of Ardoyne, IRA warns

The IRA has lost its grip on Ardoyne, the well-known republican stronghold in north Belfast, the Irish government has been warned.During disturbances in Greater Belfast last Monday organised by republican dissidents, two leading figures in the Provisional IRA told Irish government representatives they could no longer control elements in Ardoyne opposed to the peace process.

And in a sign of growing confidence, one of the dissident terror groups issued a chilling expulsion order last night against four west Belfast men whom they said would be killed unless they left Northern Ireland (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/northernireland) this weekend.
Dissident groups such as the Continuity IRA and Real IRA have also been gaining ground in other republican redoubts in the city, including the New Lodge, Market and Lower Ormeau Road areas.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland revealed last week that the dissidents, working in unison for the first time in Greater Belfast, were responsible for 37 hijackings and bomb warnings that temporarily closed many arterial routes into the city. Security alerts continued yesterday, with army bomb disposal officers having to deal with a suspect device on the Andersonstown Road in west Belfast.

The British government was briefed on the warning about the dissidents' growth in north Belfast last week. British sources told the Observer that the loss of control in areas such as Ardoyne was a worrying development, particularly with the Ulster loyalist marching season looming.
The shops at Ardoyne are a major flashpoint between nationalist protesters and Orangemen and their supporters at two major parades in the city in June and July.

"The Irish were told that they [ex-IRA members and Sinn Féin activists] would be unable to police their side of the line in Ardoyne this year. In previous years mainstream republicans helped keep the peace in places like Ardoyne. It's worrying if they have lost control because the dissidents will seek to exploit the marching season," the British source said.
The Observer has also learnt from the same source that the dissidents tried to set a trap for the PSNI in Ardoyne during last Monday's disruptions.
"After they burned a vehicle in the area, the fire service asked for police back-up to put out the fire. The PSNI received intelligence that a large cache of petrol bombs had been prepared in Ardoyne to attack police if they moved into the area. To avoid a riot, or something even more sinister, the PSNI took the decision not to go in," the British source said.
The caution was based on avoiding a repetition of what happened on 9 March when the Continuity IRA lured police officers into a private housing development in Craigavon, Co Armagh. The CIRA, using local youths from a nearby estate, first attacked a family home in the area. The family called the police for help. When a patrol arrived, a CIRA sniper shot and killed Constable Stephen Carroll, the first PSNI officer to die at the hands of terrorists.

The organisation that has issued the expulsion order is Óglaigh na hÉireann (ONH), one of the three main dissident organisations, which made a statement using a recognised code word warning four named men to leave the country during the next 72 hours or be shot. The group accused the four men - from the Falls Road area - of drug dealing and being police informers.
"All the people listed are under immediate death threat," it stated. "This action will be taken as a result of an investigation by Óglaigh na hÉireann intelligence units over a period of three months. "These people have 72 hours to leave the country or they will face execution. This is not an idle threat."

ONH is a breakaway faction from the Real IRA that disagreed with the RIRA's attempt to call a cease-fire following the Omagh bombing. The group is led in Belfast by a former IRA prisoner and its main base is in East Tyrone.
The ongoing pressures on the security forces have prompted the government to try to postpone Sir Hugh Orde's expected departure from Northern Ireland. The PSNI chief constable is a leading candidate to win the presidency of the Association of Chief Police Officers in an election on 15 April. However, government sources said this weekend that if Orde won the post they would try to persuade him to remain at the PSNI until September, guiding the police through the 2009 summer marching season.

Source (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/05/ira-ardoyne-republican-belfast)

[Orange&BlueBear]

A bomb alert in North Belfast today, in the past week a petrol bomb attack and other missiles thrown at the Protestant twaddel avenue (across the road from ardoyne shops). Just down the Crumlin road within the past few weeks Clifton street orange hall was petrol bombed by republicans while a meeting was taking place, in north antrim a Protestant church has been attacked 3 times in the last week in Ballycastle and a Orange hall petrol bombed a few nights ago.

Union flags have been removed and burnt from Protestant properties in border areas with increasing regularity. A sinn fein advice centre has been burnt by dissidents in Londonderry and sinn fein members homes attacked. At the moment most of the dissidents who are carrying out these attacks are teenagers or men in their early 20s basically a new generation of young republicans, as these dissident groups grow in size and capability they obviously have plenty of recruits to continue this current terrorist campaign for the foreseeable future.

The signs seem to be from the amount of graffiti and republican flags up in republican areas that the dissidents are taking over in areas once regarded as PIRA strongholds and in Ardoyne and parts of Londonderry they are carrying out numerous punishment beatings so they can portray themselves as ’defenders of the area’. Over the marching season they will create tension at interfaces, Irish republicans aren’t stupid, they know sectarianism works for them, rattle the prods, get them to attack the Catholic community and hey presto there’s a few hundred more young Catholics looking to join their ranks and they can make themselves out to be the defenders of the Irish people, the PIRA used the same tactic nearly 40 years ago when they started a riot at a Orange parade going up past ardoyne and shot dead a few prods and when they got two catholic youths to go up the Protestant newtownards road in East Belfast and wave a tricolour outside a Protestant bar in order to provoke Prods, when the Prods chased them down the Newtown, the IRA opened up from the grounds of the Catholic church in East Belfast at the bottom of the Newtownards road beside Short strand, this incident went down in Republican folk lore as the IRA defending short strand from the Prods in East Belfast, but they started the trouble purely for propaganda purposes and to make sure the flames were well and truly lit, it’s the same with the present day dissidents they know by killing a few British soldiers and policemen that they can legitimise these terrible acts of murder, sectarian attacks on the other hand are hard to try and justify, but they do cause a lot of trouble and heartache and make a lot of people very hard line in their beliefs.

Personally I think the dissidents will never achieve anything other than maintaining Northern Irelands position within the United Kingdom, the more trouble they start the more hard-line the Unionist community becomes. I seen in the attitudes of people after the soldiers had been murdered the same sort of hard line talk that I haven’t heard since I was a small boy, the average joe on the street basically wanted the scum who carried out the murders themselves to be murdered by the SAS. What does worry me is the potential of these dissidents to cause a lot of trouble for isolated Protestant communities, with attacking Protestant churches and orange halls in areas with a low percentage of Protestants the local Protestant communities mightn’t have the willpower or the confidence to rebuilt or repair their damaged buildings and also the damage these isolated terrorist attacks can cause.

It will be interesting to see what happens, within the ordinary Roman Catholic community in the Province there isn’t much support for a return to violence, after all the PIRA killed more Irish Roman Catholics than the British security forces or the largest loyalist paramilitary group ever did and so far the dissidents have killed more Irish Roman Catholics than loyalists have in the last 10years. So the idea that these people are defenders of the Irish people is nonsense from the outset. The Civil service in Northern Ireland is majority Roman Catholic and many young Roman Catholics see nothing wrong with a career in the police force, the mindset of dissident republicans that these people are traitors or collaborators just doesn’t wash with the average Roman Catholic in Ulster.

Sinn fein members getting insulted and their houses attacked and attacking the dissidents for doing the exact same things that they did in the past is funny to an extent. I’m waiting for the dissidents to start shooting the PIRA/Sinn Fein, if that happens then its poetic justice