Northern Ireland raises alert against IRA dissidents as new police chief begins 1st day on job

NIreland security high on police chief’s first day

DUBLIN — Police in the British territory of Northern Ireland mounted increased checkpoints and patrols Tuesday as their new commander began his first day’s work under the shadow of Irish Republican Army dissidents.

“The threat is real,” said Chief Constable Matt Baggott, who previously commanded a smaller police force in the English county of Leicestershire. “The way to deal with it is for communities themselves in the vast, vast majority to say no to the people who want to return to the past.”

In advance of Baggott’s arrival, the 7,500-strong Police Service of Northern Ireland launched Operation Dissent, an effort aimed at deterring IRA dissidents from planting bombs or hoax devices. Officers at road checkpoints wore body armor, an unusual sight in Northern Ireland as the menace of the IRA’s 1970-1997 campaign has gradually faded.

Police cited information from its own Intelligence Branch and the British domestic spy agency MI5 suggesting that the Continuity IRA and Real IRA were scheming to greet Baggott’s first day in Belfast with bloodshed. Both splinter groups are trying to unravel the IRA’s 1997 cease-fire and the 2007 power-sharing deal it inspired.

Police raided several properties Tuesday morning in Catholic neighborhoods in Dungannon, west of Belfast, and arrested a man on suspicion of dissident IRA activity.

Last week, Continuity IRA dissidents rioted for three nights in the town of Lurgan, hijacking and burning vehicles and shutting down Northern Ireland’s major railway line, after three members were convicted of plotting a rocket attack on a police patrol.

Earlier this month, police found a 600-pound (275-kilogram) roadside bomb concealed in bushes near the Republic of Ireland. They said Real IRA dissidents had tried to lure police into the area and could have triggered the bomb using a command wire running across the border.

The dissidents are trying to topple a central pillar of Northern Ireland’s 16-year push for peace — growing support within the Irish Catholic minority for a rapidly changing police force. Catholic hostility to Northern Ireland’s previous, overwhelmingly Protestant police force fueled support for the IRA.

Baggott pledged to continue the work of his predecessor, Sir Hugh Orde, to build “an impartial policing service for the benefit of everybody.” He said the key to defeating dissidents was for their host Catholic communities to reject and expel them.

Sinn Fein, the major Irish nationalist party that delivered IRA disarmament in 2005, today helps lead a Northern Ireland government alongside the British Protestant majority. The IRA dissidents condemn Sinn Fein for accepting a government role and police authority in Northern Ireland, a region of the United Kingdom that the IRA spent decades hoping to force into the Republic of Ireland.

Sinn Fein politician Alex Maskey, a member of a cross-community panel that selected Baggott, said he was concerned that Operation Dissent would boost the splinter groups’ egos rather than stop any planned attacks.

Maskey said the dissidents would be defeated only when Catholics wholeheartedly back the police force and said high-profile security deployments were only likely to stir up anti-police sentiments.

As part of a mammoth reform plan to encourage Catholic involvement, the former Royal Ulster Constabulary became the Police Service of Northern Ireland in 2001. Today, following concerted efforts to hire Catholics in preference to Protestants, the force is more than 25 percent Catholic compared to 8 percent in 2001.

But dissidents particularly threaten police officers who live in Catholic areas, forcing virtually all to live in predominantly Protestant districts.