Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade

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The South Armagh Brigade was a brigade within the Provisional Irish Republican Army that operated mainly in the south of County Armagh during the Northern Ireland conflict and was one of the most notorious IRA units. The brigade was able to act with far greater freedom than IRA units in other parts of Northern Ireland - supported by an exceptionally high level of support from the almost exclusively Catholic nationalist population. The British Army avoided the overland route in the south of Armagh, operated mostly with helicopters and tried to control the area from several watchtowers .

Between 1970 and 1997, the brigade was responsible for the deaths of 165 members of the British Security Forces (123 British soldiers and 42 RUC police officers ). An additional 75 civilians died violently in the area during the conflict. Over the same period, 10 IRA members of the South Armagh Brigade were killed (4 were killed in premature explosions of their own bombs and a further 6 were killed by British security forces). Another member also died while on hunger strike prisoner . In total, the RUC recorded 1,255 bombs and 1,158 shootings within a 10-mile radius of South Armagh's geographic center during the conflict.

South Armagh

The area known as South Armagh is approximately 500 square kilometers and has approximately 30,000 inhabitants. By far the largest towns in rural South Armagh are the villages of Bessbrook and Keady , each with around 3,000 inhabitants, followed by Crossmaglen with around 1,500. The hilly landscape is dominated by the Ring of Gullion with the extinct volcano Slieve Gullion as the highest point. It is bounded in the east by the A1 motorway (Belfast-Dublin), the Newry River and the inner-Irish border. In the south and west it also borders the inner-Irish border. In the north it is bounded by a horizontal, imaginary east-west line that runs through the towns of Mountnorris and Keady. Thus, the southern Armagh is surrounded on three sides by the inner-Irish border. The population is predominantly Catholic-nationalist. Especially south of the A25 road, almost exclusively Catholics live. Only in the north of South Armagh, especially in Bessbrook, Newtownhamilton and Keady, do a sizable number of Protestants live.

The course of the inner-Irish border was laid down in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The demarcation interrupted the close ties of the area in the extreme south of Armaghs around Crossmaglen to the city of Dundalk and the counties of Louth and Monaghan . In 1925 a proposal by the joint border commission became known to add an area around Crossmaglen with about 14,000 almost exclusively Catholic-nationalist inhabitants to the Irish Free State. The proposal remained unrealized.

South Armagh has a long Irish Republican tradition, with many local men serving in the Fourth Northern Division of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and on the Republican side in the Irish Civil War (1922-1923) fought. Men from the area also took part in IRA campaigns in the 1940s and 1950s.

Organization and members

The brigade was divided into two battalions. The first battalion operated in the west of South Armagh around the villages of Crossmaglen, Cullyhanna , Creggan and Culloville and in the northeast of Monaghan and in the northwest of Louth. The second battalion operated in the east of South Armagh around the villages of Forkhill , Dromintee and Jonesborough and in northeast Louth around Dundalk and occasionally in the south of County Down around the town of Newry . The brigade consisted of approximately 40 members, approximately half of whom lived in the Republic of Ireland . Unlike many other IRA units, the South Armagh Brigade was not comprehensive of informants or agents of MI5 , the British Army , RUC and Gardaí infiltrated . She was commanded in the 1970s by Thomas Murphy , who later also allegedly became a member of the IRA Army Council , and is even considered a former IRA Chief of Staff. Seán “The Surgeon” Hughes was the brigade's commander from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. Even so, Murphy remained the most influential IRA man in South Armagh. After the 1997 armistice, Hughes also rose to the IRA Army Council.

The South Armagh Brigade is suspected of having carried out not only paramilitary operations, but has also been accused by British and Irish security forces of large-scale smuggling across the Irish border, as well as money laundering and subsidy fraud.

development

Police and army barracks in Crossmaglen (April 2001)

The first fatalities in the Northern Ireland conflict in South Armagh were two RUC police officers who were booby-trapped in August 1970. The attack on the two police officers stationed in Crossmaglen met with widespread opposition on the spot. In August 1971, a British soldier shot dead a South Armagh construction worker in Belfast when his car misfired several times . The death of the construction worker led to riots in Crossmaglen and is often cited by locals as the actual start of the troubles in South Armagh. In the months that followed, numerous young men applied for membership in the IRA.

From the mid-1970s, the south of Armagh, especially around the villages of Crossmaglen, Cullyhanna, Forkhill, Drumintee and Jonesborough, developed into a no-go area for British soldiers and the RUC. The South Armagh Brigade mined so many roads there that it was almost impossible for the British military to travel overland. From the British side, this area was therefore also referred to as "Bandit Country".

Because of this, the British Army tried to massively restrict the IRA's freedom of movement in the area. South Armagh became the most militarized area in Northern Ireland. The British Army stationed around 3000 soldiers there to support the RUC against the local IRA activists. The joint headquarters of the British forces and the RUC in South Armagh was in Bessbrook. It was built in an old linen factory from the 19th century. From there, the area was monitored with other jointly run fortress-like police-army bases in Crossmaglen, Forkhill, Keady and Newtownhamilton. As recently as 1971, these bases had been small village police guards upgraded to mini-fortresses for millions of pounds against grenade launchers and bombing attacks. In the mid-1980s, there was also a system of cameras, bunkers and watchtowers in the open area, which, like the bases, had to be largely supplied by helicopters because of the risk of attacks. The headquarters in Bessbrook temporarily became one of the busiest take-off and landing fields for helicopters in all of Western Europe. However, these were also often targets for attacks by the South Armagh Brigade.

It was by far the most successful IRA brigade in shooting down British helicopters during the conflict. Her volunteers carried out 23 attacks on British military helicopters, in which they managed to crash a total of four in 1978, 1988 and 1994. The only other successful IRA attack on an Army helicopter was made by the East Tyrone Brigade near Clogher, County Tyrone , on February 11, 1990. Because of this danger, Army helicopters only flew in groups of three over South Armagh to protect each other from attacks .

On August 27, 1979, the brigade carried out the Warrenpoint attack , which killed 18 British soldiers. This was the British Army's greatest loss of life in a single attack during the Northern Ireland conflict. They are also said to have carried out the same day attack on Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma , in which Mountbatten and three other people died, including his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull.

On the evening of February 18, 1985, nine RUC officers were killed in a mortar attack on Newry Police Station . The attack was jointly planned by members of the South Armagh Brigade and the local South Down Command .

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the South Armagh Brigade, along with the East Tyrone Brigade, was one of the few IRA units that could still successfully carry out attacks. Most of the others, especially in Belfast and Derry, were incapacitated because they had too many informants in their own ranks. In contrast, the South Armagh Brigade even managed to intensify its operations during this period. These included the Jonesborough murders in 1989 , which killed the two top RUC officials in the Northern Ireland conflict.

Sniper at work , Crossmaglen 1999

The brigade formed two units of snipers, called South Armagh Snipers , who were responsible for killing seven soldiers and two RUC officers from 1990 until one of these units was arrested in April 1997 by the British Special Air Service (SAS). Eight of the nine victims died between August 28, 1992 and December 30, 1993. The last victim to be killed by snipers in South Armagh was Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick. He was shot dead on February 12, 1997 and was the last fallen British soldier in the Northern Ireland conflict. In this context, several self-painted, false street signs, which the IRA and its supporters attached, especially around Crossmaglen, became icons of the IRA. A masked sniper can be seen on the signs above the "Sniper at work" warning.

The South Armagh Brigade was also responsible for the 1993 and 1996 attacks in London and Manchester . The bombs were built in South Armagh and then shipped to England by truck by ferry.

Demilitarization

Since the 1997 armistice and the Good Friday Agreement a year later, the British Army began dismantling the military facilities. On July 28, 2005, the IRA declared the armed struggle over and completely disarmed itself. On the night of July 30th to 31st, 2007, the British Army ended its mission in Northern Ireland after 38 years. At midnight (local time) the newly formed Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), which is now also recognized by the Irish Republican Sinn Féin , took over sole responsibility for internal security and the majority of the military was withdrawn.

Pop Culture

Because of its high profile and its particularly effective warfare, there are several glorifying Irish rebel songs about the brigade. These include the songs 18 Brits , Armagh Sniper , Auf Wiedersehen to Crossmaglen , Eamon Wright , The Fightin 'men of Crossmaglen , McVerry's men , One shot Paddy , The two Brendans , Volunteer Peter Cleary , Volunteer Seamus Harvey , Volunteer Eugene Martin , Volunteer Brendan Moley and Volunteer Brendan Burns and Volunteer Michael McVerry .

swell

  1. ↑ a b Toby Harnden: Bandit Country . Hodder & Stoughton, 1999, ISBN 034071736X , p. 11.
  2. ↑ Brendan O'Brien: The Long War: The Ira and Sinn Féin . Syracuse Univ Pr, 1999, p. 160.
  3. ↑ Harnden, 'Bandit Country' , pp. 147f.
  4. ↑ Toby Harnden: Bandit Country . Hodder & Stoughton, 1999, ISBN 034071736X , pp. 92-112.
  5. ↑ a b Brendan O'Brien: The Long War: The Ira and Sinn Féin . Syracuse Univ Pr, 1999, p. 206.
  6. ↑ Brendan O'Brien: The Long War: The Ira and Sinn Féin . Syracuse Univ Pr, 1999, p. 204.
  7. ↑ Toby Harnden: Bandit Country . Hodder & Stoughton, 1999, ISBN 034071736X , pp. 21-35.
  8. ↑ Toby Harnden: Bandit Country, pp. 178-179, 204-205.
  9. ↑ Harnden, 'Bandit Country' , pp. 56f.
  10. ↑ Harnden, 'Bandit Country' , p. 49ff.
  11. ↑ The term is traced back to the British Minister for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees , see entry Bandit Country in: Adrian Room: Brewer's dictionary of modern phrase & fable. Cassell, London 2000, ISBN 0-304-35381-7 , p. 51. Description of the situation at the end of the 1980s in Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling, Ralf Sotscheck: The long war. Power and people in Northern Ireland. Verlag die Werkstatt, Göttingen 1989, ISBN 3-923478-34-8 , p. 308ff.
  12. ^ Danny Kennedy: Governments must end immoral indulgence of Sinn Féin / IRA . Retrieved on February 14, 2007.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.uup.org  
  13. ↑ Toby Harnden: Bandit Country, pp. 258-259.
  14. ↑ Copter Forced Down in Ulster . New York Times . February 12, 1990. Retrieved February 15, 2007.
  15. ↑ Toby Harnden: p. 167.
  16. ↑ Toby Harnden: Bandit Country . Hodder & Stoughton, 1999, ISBN 034071736X , pp. 232-234.
  17. ↑ Brendan O'Brien: The Long War: The Ira and Sinn Féin . Syracuse Univ Pr, 1999, p. 157.
  18. ↑ Toby Harnden: Bandit Country . Hodder & Stoughton, 1999, ISBN 034071736X , p. 291.
  19. ^ Richard English: Armed Struggle, A History of the IRA, p. 172.
  20. ^ Ed Moloney: A secret history of the IRA, p. 473.
  21. ↑ Bandit Country, p. 230.
  22. ↑ The Independent : Northern Ireland: The longest tour of duty is over ( Memento of the original from August 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , July 31, 2007 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / news.independent.co.uk
  23. ↑ 18 Brits on youtube.com
  24. ↑ Armagh Sniper on triskelle.eu
  25. ↑ Goodbye to Crossmaglen on triskelle.eu
  26. ↑ Eamon Wright on oneofthebhoys09.tripod.com
  27. ↑ The Fightin 'men of Crossmaglen on triskelle.eu
  28. ↑ McVerry's men on youtube.com
  29. ↑ One shot Paddy on oneofthebhoys09.tripod.com
  30. ↑ The two Brendans on triskelle.eu
  31. ↑ Volunteer Peter Cleary on youtube.com
  32. ↑ Volunteer Seamus Harvey on youtube.com
  33. ↑ Volunteer Eugene Martin on youtube.com
  34. ↑ Volunteer Brendan Moley and Volunteer Brendan Burns on youtube.com
  35. ↑ Volunteer Michael McVerry on youtube.com

Web links

  • TV documentary from Irish language broadcaster TG4 on its website about Thomas Murphy and the South Armagh Brigade Part 1 , Part 2 (English and Irish)
  • TV documentary from the Irish-language broadcaster TG4 on youtube.com about the Warrenpoint attack on August 27, 1979 Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 (English and Irish)