Divide And Conquer
Good things come to those who wait. After decades of allegations, false starts, and stymied investigations, a UK police report has finally confirmed what even the dogs in the street could have told you: UK Government forces both trained and operated Protestant terrorists and death squads and helped them kill, bomb, and assassinate Catholics who they perceived as a “threat”, or sometimes just as sacrificial lambs in the interests of expediancy.Elements within the UK Government both planned and carried out a campaign of terror and assassination, and police death squads marked certain Catholic human rights lawyers and activits in Northern Ireland for assassination. This lends weight to Sinn Fein’s insistence that the the RUC police force in Northern Ireland is discredited and should be reformed or replaced to eliminate the sectarian prejudices that seem engrained within it.
Rogue elements in the security forces were involved in a deadly plot with loyalist paramilitaries to carry out a series of sectarian murders in Northern Ireland … Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Sevens concluded there was damning proof of the use of agents in assassinations and the withholding of evidence … “From day one this obstruction was cultural in its nature and widespread within parts of the Army and RUC, the FRU, and RUC Special Branch in particular.” … Alex Maskey, the party’s Lord Mayor of Belfast said: “This is not about rogue elements within the British system. It is about a state policy sanctioned at the highest level.”
A covert Army unit, commanded by Brigadier Kerr, then a colonel, in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as RUC Special Branch officers, colluded with Protestant hit-squads to kill IRA suspects … four or five members of the Force Research Unit (FRU) ran a rogue operation in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s that led to murders. The FRU passed information to loyalist terrorists, mainly through Brian Nelson, an agent who infiltrated the Ulster Defence Association.
Apparently the UK intelligence services offered up innocent Catholic activists as sacrifices to divert Protestant terrorists from assassinating Stakeknife, a highly placed IRA double agent about whom there are many conspiracies, and theories that (s)he is possibly a triple agent, and possibly Gerry Adams himself.
When, in 1987, Stakeknife was targeted by members of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Freedom Fighters, who had no idea he was a double agent, the FRU is alleged to have guided the loyalists away from him to another man, Francisco Notarantonio, who was allegedly “sacrificed” to protect their man. Mr Notarantonio, 66, an IRA member in the 1940s who had not been actively involved for many years, was shot dead as he lay in bed.
Why did the UK army and police forces maintain such a devious secret campaign of terror against Catholics in Northern Ireland? Northern Ireland is a classic post-colonial society characterized by a lack of foreign investment and a decayed industrial base. It also features a strong caste system and large, fixed income disparities and social opportunities between the castes. Many of the members of the “Protestant” caste from lower regions of the SES are employed by the security forces and earn far higher “danger” wages than prevail in the rest of the UK. Within its ossified economy, the war against “terror” has, after several decades, become possibly the largest industry within Northern Ireland and certainly its largest employer: the quantity of prison officers, police, military/police base service personnel, and informants is hugely out of proportion to the rest of the UK. With this bizarre economic impetus, it was of primary importance to members of certain carceral institutions that their reason for being not disappear: the perception and performance of sectarian conflict. A “peace dividend” within Northern Ireland would mean a huge rise in unemployment within certain strata of Northern Irish society with ensuing political disaffiliation and unrest. Thus, a horrible desire to maintain the status quo is buried deep within certain Northern Irish actors and decision makers and the conflict has become institutionalized… in a similar fashion to how the US’s “War On Drugs” now consumes $20 billion annually, wrecks countless lives, and accomplishes very little of note. Yet despite this lack of affect and purpose, these endless wars become tenaciously fought with every legal (and some illegal) means available.
The conflict in Northern Ireland was needlessly intensified and prolonged by the “disastrous” activities of a core of army and police officers who colluded with the terrorists responsible for dozens of murders … unprincipled collusion “ratcheted up the hatred and bitterness” between Catholics and Protestants, and that the system of recruiting and handling the agents responsible for the killings was “out of control” … “There has to be regard for the rule of law, otherwise we will descend into absolute chaos,” the source said. “A lot of innocent people were killed.” … “If you get into the business of state sanctioned assassinations, you are [morally] dead,” said a well-placed source. “These individuals got into the centre of a loyalist paramilitary killing machine… you cannot justify it. Sir John believes there must be proper central control and proper standards so we never have this nonsense going on ever again.”
So many people within the UK seem to have learned after 30 years of fighting dirty that there is no easy way to fight terrorism that does not reduce you to barbarism and transform you into a mirror image of the forces you fight against. I wonder how long it will take many Americans to realise this?
Sir John’s report paints a shocking picture of how elements within British army intelligence and the Royal Ulster Constabulary collaborated with loyalist gangs on operations in which innocent Catholics were murdered. Members of the loyalist gang who went to Pat Finucane’s house in 1989 and shot him in front of his wife and children were informers, with army or police handlers. So was the terrorist quartermaster who provided them with the firearms they used. So was the paramilitary intelligence officer who told them where the Finucanes lived.