‘Dirty war, mind games, psychological warfare and black ops’

Declan Kearney, Sinn Féin National Chairperson, writes on recent events in yesterday’s An Phoblacht. I’m not sure exactly what he is driving at with elements of his article but I’ve extracted some sections that seem to be focusing on a theme:

AT the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle meeting on 7 March we discussed PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde’s call some days previously for the redeployment of British undercover soldiers in the North and the staged media leaks beforehand. The meeting was reminded that, notwithstanding the advances of the Peace Process, the shadow of the ‘Dirty War’ remains. It was a prescient reminder – some 10 hours later, two British soldiers were shot dead in Antrim.
Make no mistake about this: the impetus for that attack and the killing of a policeman in Craigavon two days later did not originate with real republicans. The clue to understanding these events stems back to the work of agents provocateurs.

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The recent killings owe nothing to a resurgent armed struggle and everything to the machinations of the old dirty war; then add to the mix the potential for agents provocateurs

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These events need to be understood for what they are, as not only anti-Peace Process but also anti-republican and counter-revolutionary. They required that the republican struggle, and by extension the aim of Irish unity, be defended by Sinn Féin. That was the correct strategic thing to do. And doing
this in itself left the way open for other hostile commentators to conjure up their own latter-day civil war polemical analysis and imagery. So what is going on?

It’s all familiar terrain, with the distinct echoes of mind games, psychological warfare, the stuff of ‘black operations’ and, behind all that, the manipulation of agents provocateurs. The shadow of the dirty war still looms.

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