ANALYSIS:THE IRA infamously said after the 1984 Brighton bombing that killed five people, but failed to kill British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, "We were unlucky today, but remember we only have to be lucky once – you will have to be lucky always."
You can’t be lucky always, which in a way accounts for how the Real IRA gunned to death two British soldiers in Antrim on Saturday night and how 48 hours later the Continuity IRA (CIRA) shot dead PSNI Constable Stephen Carroll in Craigavon.
A 48-year-old married man, father and grandfather, he was the first member of the PSNI to be murdered by paramilitaries since loyalists killed RUC officer Frankie O’Reilly 10 years ago.
Terry Spence, head of the North’s Police Federation, the PSNI’s representative body, in a sense referred to the element of benign providence allied to good policing and security intelligence that has prevented many more members of the police and British army, as well as others, being killed by dissidents in recent years.
He said had the dissident republicans succeeded to “maximum effect” with their gun, bomb, rocket and mortar attacks – note the range of that arsenal – 40 PSNI officers would have been killed by these republican groups.
There was more than luck involved in the Real IRA killings of the unarmed soldiers, Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar. As senior British and Irish security sources acknowledged yesterday, you don’t gun down soldiers at the entrance to a British army base in a unionist town such as Antrim without careful planning. The Brownlow area of Craigavon where Constable Carroll was murdered is a disaffected republican place where dissidents would have some level of tolerance if not small pockets of support.
It is suspected that the police were lured into Lismore Manor in Craigavon by means of an act of vandalism on an innocent person’s home – and this indicates that the ambush was planned.
But Spence’s point still holds. Dissident republicans have been involved in scores of attacks over recent years, much of them against the PSNI with a lesser number directed against the British army. Seven police officers were injured in such incidents. Had the dissidents been “luckier” several more people undoubtedly would have died.
Most notoriously the Real IRA killed 29 people including a woman pregnant with twin girls in the 1998 Omagh bombing. That prompted them to clear the stage for a while but the organisation later regrouped.
Despite a subsequent split in the organisation, British and Irish security forces and intelligence services continued to regard them as deadly and dangerous, a view they also held about the CIRA.
There is overlapping and co-operation between these two main dissident groups, whom the Independent Monitoring Commission and security and republican representatives suspect are also heavily involved in drugs dealing, smuggling, extortion and other forms of criminality.
The Real IRA’s main area of activity tends to be Belfast, parts of Armagh, Derry, Tyrone and areas around Newry. The CIRA mainly operates in Fermanagh and Armagh, but also has a presence in Belfast.
In recent weeks and months MI5 has been reinforcing its resources in the light of the increased threat from the dissidents, something which Jonathan Evans head of the organisation alluded to when he gave an unprecedented interview to a number of London newspapers in January. That reinforcement is continuing, according to a British anti-terrorism source.
Security sources appear uncertain about the actual definitive strength of the dissidents. One Dublin intelligence source estimated that the “hard end” of the dissidents would number perhaps 100 or more, as in people who would directly engage in the shooting and the bombing. A “limited” number, perhaps a few hundred, would provide backup in terms of supports such as local intelligence and providing safe houses.
Sources say that membership is from people who have a Provisional IRA track record but who broke away from the organisation because of the political path taken by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
Their secretive leadership structure is understood to be based on the army council makeup of the Provisional IRA, although these groups are more disjointed and smaller.
They would be experienced in planning, training, surveillance and in mounting operations, an experience that they are passing on to younger recruits, some of whom would come from “purist” republican families.
Other disaffected republicans were also susceptible to the lure of such organisations. These groups actively have been seeking younger recruits.
Even going back over the past three years dissidents have been involved in dozens of attacks.
In the autumn of 2007 two PSNI officers were seriously wounded in separate gun attacks in Derry and Dungannon, Co Tyrone. Last May an officer was seriously injured in a booby-trap car bomb attack. These attacks were attributed to the Real IRA.
The CIRA said it carried out a landmine attack near Roslea, Co Fermanagh in June last year in which two police officers suffered minor injuries.
In August of last year three PSNI officers escaped serious injury in a suspected CIRA bomb attack in Lisnaskea, Co Fermanagh. That was additionally worrying for the security services in that Semtex was used in the attack, an explosive previously seen as solely in the hands of the Provisional IRA.
Both organisations also have been involved in a number of killings. In March 2007 in a suspected fall-out among CIRA members, Belfast taxi driver Joey Jones was bludgeoned to death in Ardoyne in north Belfast while on the same day Eddie Burns was shot dead near a GAA club in west Belfast.
Dissident republicans were also blamed for the murder of Andrew Burns from Strabane, Co Tyrone whose body was found across the Border in a Donegal churchyard in February of last year.
Last month a 38-year-old known drug dealer was murdered in Derry. The Real IRA is believed to be responsible.
Firebomb attacks by the Real IRA in 2006 caused millions of pounds of damage in Newry and Belfast. In January a 300lb bomb was abandoned near Castlewellan, believed destined for the Ballykinlar British army base about eight miles away.
The Real IRA was also viewed as the main suspect in a failed attempt in August 2006 to explode a 70lb bomb at a house undergoing building work in Co Louth which was owned by leading businessman and former Irish senator Dr Edward Haughey who is titled Lord Ballyedmond. The CIRA has threatened civil servants in Fermanagh.
Dissidents have also targeted senior republicans. They issued death threats against Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly in 2006 while one year later Mr Adams disclosed at the funeral of former senior IRA figure Martin Meehan that the night before he suffered a fatal heart attack he was searching outside his home for dissident republican bombs.
There are numerous more examples of attacks by dissidents in recent years. That catalogue of violence just proves the accuracy of Spence’s view that 40 PSNI officers could have been killed by these groups.
The British and Irish security forces and intelligence services have enjoyed success in combating these groups. There are 80-100 dissidents in prisons in the North and South.
Hugh Orde paid tribute to the work of the Garda for saving the lives of his officers from the dissidents.
But, as security sources in Dublin and London acknowledge, every attack can’t be thwarted, the PSNI and British army can’t be lucky all the time.
As one senior British counter-terrorism expert said: “One can have good intelligence on the intentions, the plans, the trends of the dissidents.
“But because of the geographically fragmented nature of these organisations it is quite another thing to be able to say that such and such an attack will happen at such and such a time in a such and such a place.”