Undisbanded

Anyone tempted to believe that the "only sovereign body throughout the 32 counties of Ireland" has simply packed up and gone home should read this:

In the ten years since the Good Friday agreement brokered by Tony Blair kick-started the peace process, Northern Ireland has made impressive progress towards a deal acceptable on both sides of what was once a bitter sectarian divide.

With the major political parties onside, and the Provisional IRA and the main Protestant paramilitary groups abandoning violence, there was an almost tangible sense of optimism among the many friends whom I made as a journalist covering the worst of 'the Troubles'. But now concern is growing about the threat posed by armed Republican factions who remain bitterly opposed to the power-sharing arrangements that underpin the entire peace agreement.

Although a report to be published today says that the IRA's Army Council - which has never been dissolved - poses no threat, a senior security official has told The First Post that "dissident" Republican groups are deliberately targeting Catholic members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in a bid to deter potential recruits from the Nationalist community. The seven attacks that have taken place so far include one that saw a Catholic officer shot and wounded: another was shot at outside a police station and a number of serving officers have had to move home after they and their families came under surveillance by known extremist elements.

The most recent attack on police occurred last week when a masked sniper fired five shots at officers responding to telephoned bomb warnings during violent rioting on a housing estate in the town of Craigavon, south of Belfast. The local PSNI commander denounced this as "a deliberate attempt to murder my officers" after they had been drawn into the area. Ten days earlier, a foot patrol near the border with the Irish Republic had a lucky escape after a rocket-propelled grenade fired at them by a man who had jumped from a passing car failed to detonate.

Subsequent forensic tests on the weapon's warhead detected the presence of Semtex, the powerful plastic explosive that was used extensively by Provisional IRA bomb makers. In June, a massive home-made landmine concealed in a milk churn would almost certainly have killed two PSNI officers who had been lured into the vicinity had its trigger mechanism not malfunctioned.

According to security sources, the threat from dissident factions is now so great that MI5 - which has primary responsibility for counter-terrorism in Northern Ireland - deploys more of its electronic surveillance resources against them than in operations against Islamic militant cells in the UK.

Most of the attacks on police are attributed to the Real IRA, the ruthless splinter group that carried out the Omagh bombing which killed 29 people a decade ago, whose leaders have never been brought to court for that atrocity.

The group is believed to be composed of between 80-100 activists, including a hard-core of former Provisionals who remain committed to violence, with several hundred more supporters providing occasional back-up support. An alleged member of the Real IRA is currently awaiting trial in Lithuania on charges of attempting to procure arms and explosives.

Beyond the dissident groups, however, there has always been a solid bedrock of popular support for the measures set out in the Good Friday agreement. After the initial shock, people have become accustomed to seeing former top Provisionals such as Martin McGuinness – now the province's Education Minister and deputy First Minister - appearing on their television screen in suit and tie.

Shaun Woodward, the minister responsible for Northern Ireland matters in Westminster, observed recently that resolving the policing and judicial issues would effectively complete the process of devolving political power. "I don't think it is by chance that we are seeing more dissident violence than we have at any time over the past four or five years," Woodward noted. "They think their time is running out and they're right, because they don't belong in the new Northern Ireland."

If these people really were "dissidents", then they would already have been taken out by those from whom they were "dissident", the IRA.