Republican dissidents got an unexpected break last week. They haven't killed a single member of the security forces, but they have been able to dictate the north's political agenda at the very moment Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness attempt to display a united front to Barack Obama and American investors.
For the first time in years Sinn Féin is rowing back on support for the PSNI. Martin McGuinness himself has said that his confidence in Sir Hugh Orde, the PSNI Chief Constable, has been shaken. He went on to accuse Orde of taking a "stupid and dangerous" decision over the deployment of special forces in the province.
The struggling republican micro groups have not only put Sinn Féin under pressure on security but have also sown serious dissent within both the Policing Board and the power-sharing Stormont executive. Unionists are lining up behind the PSNI, calling for tougher measures and pointing the finger at Sinn Féin. It's just like old times, but, thankfully, without the bodies on the streets, so far anyway, which used to surround such flare-ups.
Orde's decision to call in the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), an SAS trained surveillance organisation, to combat the dissident threat is at the centre of the dispute. The SSR are the lineal descendants of the 14th Intelligence Company, also known as the Det, which carried out many of the shoot to kill ambushes on the IRA which were popularly attributed to the SAS. Robert Nairac played an influential role in its early days.
The Det also shot loyalists, including Brian Robinson, the UVF assassin gunned down as he made his getaway on a motorbike after taking part in the murder of a Catholic in 1989. Deployment against loyalists is played down in the republican narrative. Such units spent their time colluding with the loyalists, McGuinness has claimed.
The Det were formed for use in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and operated from four main bases in RAF Aldergrove, Palace Barracks in Holywood (now a base of MI5), Ballykelly and Fermanagh. Its job was surveillance, including planting listening devices and cameras and aerial.
Since some of their targets were live paramilitary operations, or arms dumps where explosives were held, they were expected to open fire if lives were at risk. They were tasked by the RUC and often supplied with devices by the MI5. Some specialised in breaking and entering to plant listening devices in paramilitary safe houses or arms dumps.
Soldiers in the Det generally served three years or less before being transferred back to their original regiments, so this training was fairly widely distributed throughout the army. In 2005 the SRR, which is based in Hereford alongside the SAS, was formed around a core of these veterans and used in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the streets of Britain. They were said to have been involved in the botched surveillance operation which led to the shooting of John Charles de Menezes by London police firearms experts in July 2005.
Orde's decision to bring them into Northern Ireland followed MI5's upgrading of the dissident-republican security threat from "substantial" to "severe"; in other words that imminent life threatening attacks are likely.
It doesn't take a genius to work that out. Recently police discovered a 300 lb bomb which the Real IRA intended to drive into Ballykinler army camp to cause maximum loss of life. Gardai have discovered weapons and other terrorist material in Donegal, and according to Orde, probably saved the lives of PSNI officers. And the dissidents have Semtex, the Czech made explosive which transformed the PIRA campaign after they were given supplies from Libya.
Dissidents have also stolen hand guns in raids on licensed gun dealers. If Sinn Féin and the International Monitoring Commission (IMC) are to be believed, they have also built up effective funding structures which no longer depend on armed robbery. They now control rackets in diesel and cigarette and fuel smuggling, as well as extorting drug dealers, brothel keepers and people traffickers.
So serious is the threat that MI5 devotes 15% of its total manpower and resources to intelligence gathering against the dissidents.
They are operating the same basic tactics as other IRA campaigns from the 1920s onwards. Their main target is the security forces and the first priority must be to isolate them from the nationalist community to discourage recruitment and weaken support.
The dissidents are nowhere near being able to mount a sustained campaign like the Provisional IRA. There is plainly not the support in the nationalist community to sustain one. However, there is the fear that if they start to pick off police officers, or force the army back on to the streets, they will have made progress. If policing becomes heavy handed and repressive, officers become distrustful of the community and Catholic recruitment slows.
Dissidents could then put a wedge into the power sharing arrangement and argue that republicans could not support the PSNI with a clear conscience. The delay in devolution of policing powers to the assembly increases the scope for the dissidents to destabilise events. If they can strike now; or even if they can increase tension and make security an issue, they will encourage more fissures between the DUP and Sinn Féin of the type which have opened up in recent days.
Some suspect that Sir Hugh Orde, the PSNI Chief Constable, is demob happy. Last month, he narrowly missed the job of Commissioner of the Met; he is now hot favourite for the plum job of President of ACPO – Britain's top cops' association, a post replete with power, status and perks.
Mentally, he must be dividing his time between his farm in Surrey and ACPO's lavish Presidential apartment in Westminster. Who could blame him after nearly seven successful years in the province?
The problem is that, like troops ending their tour of duty in Northern Ireland, the last days are often the most risky. They can become over confident, let their guard down and end up injured – or worse.
Can Orde have been fully focused last Friday? After all, he spent the entire day with the Policing Board, making a song and dance about how accountable he was and discussing the dissident threat – yet never once mentioned that he had called in the SRR. What could have been more calculated to enrage board members? Perhaps he simply didn't want the earache of fielding their repetitive, predictable questions?
If so it was understandable, but a misjudgement none the less. However tedious it may be, democratic accountability is a chore which modern police chiefs avoid at their peril. No matter how big and bland the PSNI Press office becomes, Northern Ireland is a small place where secrets are hard to keep.
As soon as Orde walked out the door of the Policing Board, he was asked for comment on the RSS by Vincent Kearney, the BBC's dogged Home Affairs Correspondent. He will spend the next few days dealing with the issue, and arguing that he doesn't have to tell the Policing Board every little thing won't wash in the current atmosphere.
If he tries to argue that the army and MI5 are national security agencies which he doesn't need to mention to the Policing Board, he may please some unionists. But he will enrage nationalists and thus inflame the situation further.
The reaction to the SRR deployment has a knee jerk quality. Orde has unwittingly pushed the wrong buttons with each community, but he has also exposed their unwillingness to come to grips with security choices. So far, nationalists on the policing board have resisted the use of plastic bullets, tasers, firearms and most other security measures, while talking wistfully of bobbies on the beat and community policing.
Unionists, for their part, have called for more tasers, more guns and more troops.
These are the sort of knock about positions adopted in opposition, where politicians become armchair generals. Where everything is a matter of principle, nothing need be considered in detail. This lends events the kind of dull predictability where dissidents can set the pace.
The answer is to put more, not less power, in the hands of local politicians. That means pushing ahead with the devolution of policing and justice powers to Stormont and taking full local responsibility for handling law enforcement and community security.
