User:One Night In Hackney/Fixing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the 1970s, sniping was one of the preferred tactics of the IRA in Northern Ireland. One of its leaders, Seán Mac Stíofáin, supported the use of snipers in his book Memories of a Revolutionary, attracted by the motto 'one shot, one kill'.[1] The AR-15 Armalite rifle became the weapon of choice for IRA members at this time.[2]

Contents

[edit] Sniper teams in South Armagh

However, the early 1990s saw some small-scale activity, which led to the purchase of US made Barrett M82 and M90 long range rifles,[3] which became the usual weapons of the South Armagh snipers. An unidentified IRA volunteer, quoted by Toby Harnden, said that:

"What's special about the Barret is the huge kinetic energy...The bullet can just walk through a flak jacket. South Armagh was the prime place to use such weapon because of the availability of Brits. They came to dread it and that was part of its effectiveness."[4]

Three of the security forces members killed in this campaign were instead the victims of 7.62x51 mm rounds. Five missed shots belonged to the same kind of weapon.[5]

Contrary to the first British army assessment, or the speculations of the press,[6]there may have been more than one sniper.[7] According to Harnden and a British soldier, there may have been two different teams, one responsible for the eastern part of South Armagh, around Drumintee, the other for the western area surrounding Cullyhanna.[8] Each team comprised at least four members, not counting those in charge of support activities, such as scouting for targets and driving vehicles. Military officials claim that the Drumintee-based squad deployed up to 20 volunteers in some of its missions.[9]

[edit] The shootings

There were 24 recorded sniper attacks in South Armagh between 1990 and 1997. The first eight operations ended in misses, including two shots fired at the patrol boat HMS Cygnet at Carlingford Lough.[10] In August 1992, the team mortally wounded a Light Infantry soldier. By April 1997, nine servicemen, seven from the Army and two from the RUC, had been killed. An RUC constable almost lost one of his legs in what became the last sniper attack during the Troubles. The marksman usually fired from a distance of less than 300 metres, despite the 1 km effective range of the rifles. Sixteen operations were carried out from the rear of a vehicle, with the sniper protected by an armour plate in case the patrols returned fire.[11] The last serviceman killed by snipers at South Armagh, Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick, was also the last British soldier to die in the conflict, on February 12, 1997.

[edit] Caraher team arrested

Even when the ceasefire was still ongoing, an alleged member of the Drumintee squad, Kevin Donegan, was captured by a RUC patrol in relation with the 1994 murder of a postal worker in the course of an armed robbery.[12] When the IRA broke the ceasefire with the Docklands bombing in February 1996, the organisation made clear that operations in Northern Ireland would be restrained, in order to avoid the return of full scale violence. This policy was aimed to keep an open door for a second cease fire, while awaiting a political gesture from London and Dublin.[13] This restriction hampered further sniping activity.

After two successful attacks in 1997, an SAS unit arrested the ASU based in the west of the region and responsible for several deaths. A Barret M90 rifle was seized.[14] After a brief fist fighting, James McCardle, Michael Caraher, Bernard McGinn and Martin Minnes were arrested in a farm near Freeduff by the SAS. The British special troops were under strict orders of avoiding IRA casualties.[15]

One of the IRA volunteers captured, Michael Caraher, was the brother of Fergal Caraher, a Sinn Fein member killed by Royal Marines at a checkpoint on 30 December 1990.[16] He was thought to be the shooter in several attacks,[17] but he was only indicted for the case of the maimed constable. The other three ASU's men were convicted in 1999 for six killings, two of them unrelated to the sniping operations, that being the killings when one of the team's member, James McCardle, planted the bomb at Canary Wharf in 1996. The men were set free 18 months later, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.[18]

[edit] Conclusions

The IRA sniping activities further restricted the freedom of movement of the British Army in South Armagh by hindering their patrols. [19] Their morale was so low that some servicemen had to be disciplined for remaining in shelter while under orders of checking vehicles.[20] The IRA strategy also diverted a large amount of British security resources from routine operations to tackle the threat.[21] Until the 1994 ceasefire, even the SAS was unable to prevent the attacks. The truce between 1994 and 1996 made surveillance easier for the security forces. This led to the success against the Caraher team.[22]

Nevertheless, by the second IRA ceasefire, another team was still on the run, and two Barret rifles remained unaccounted for.[23] The Highway Code style sign Sniper at work, mounted by the IRA near Crossmaglen became an icon of the Republican cause.[24]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Harnden, page 406
  2. ^ Taylor, pp. 108-109
  3. ^ O'Brien, pp. 354-355
  4. ^ Harnden, pp. 406-407
  5. ^ Harnden, page 400 and pp. 502-504 (Appendix A)
  6. ^ Stubblefield, page 232
  7. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Harnden.2C_page_400.2C_quoting
  8. ^ Harnden, page 400 and 404
  9. ^ Harnden, page 404
  10. ^ Harnden, page 400
  11. ^ Harnden, page 403
  12. ^ Harnden, pp. 410-411
  13. ^ Taylor, page 407
  14. ^ Harnden, pp. 420-422
  15. ^ www.telegraph.com/1999/03/20
  16. ^ Sutton index of deaths
  17. ^ Harnden, page 408
  18. ^ Harnden, 424
  19. ^ Harnden, page 405: The defensive measures the Army was forced to take meant that its operations were more constrained than at any time since 1970s.
  20. ^ Harnden, page 401
  21. ^ Stubblefield, page 232
  22. ^ Harnden, page 411
  23. ^ Harnden, page 425
  24. ^ Horgan, pp. 12-13

[edit] References

  • Harnden, Toby: Bandit Country:The IRA and South Armagh. Coronet Books, 1999.
  • Taylor, Peter: Behind the Mask:The IRA and Sinn Féin. TV Books, 1999.
  • Bowyer Bell, J. (1997):The Secret Army: The IRA. Transaction Publishers.ISBN 1560009012.
  • O'Brien, Brendan (1999):The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Féin. O'Brien Press.ISBN 0-86278-606-1.
  • Geraghty, Tony: The Irish War. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
  • Horgan, John:The Psychology of terrorism. Routledge, 2005.
  • Stubblefield, Gary: Killing zone: A professional guide to prepare or prevent ambushes. Paladin Press, 1994. ISBN 0873647866