Global Networking: Trading in Terror?

For years, the Irish Republican Army has been courting terrorist groups across Europe and the Middle East — training its men in Palestinian camps in the ’70s and ’80s, acquiring arms from Libya in those same decades, and building close ties with ETA, the Basque separatist group. So when three suspected high-level I.R.A. members were arrested three weeks ago in Colombia after visiting the jungle stronghold of a cocaine-funded rebel army, the conclusion was that the I.R.A. had added yet another link to its global network of friends.

The I.R.A. is not alone in its Latin outreach campaign. Even before its men allegedly spent a month helping train fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), several representatives of ETA are reported to have visited the FARC . Meanwhile the Real I.R.A., a dissident offshoot of the mainstream Provisional I.R.A., is thought to have been buying weapons in Croatia and in Slovakia. A few months ago, a Spanish television documentary, in which journalists posed as drug traffickers seeking arms for Colombian guerrilla groups, claimed that Bosnian Serbs were supplying arms to both the Real I.R.A. and ETA. According to a British security official, intelligence agencies have been aware for some time of I.R.A. and ETA connections with the FARC and believe the groups have regularly shared weapons technology. These links were even discussed at an Interpol conference on terrorism last October, the official says. Yet such reports have never surfaced so obviously in public before.

Or with such disruptive impact. In Northern Ireland, where the I.R.A. is supposed to be winding down rather than expanding, news that Colombia last week charged the three men with terrorist activities came as a shock. Ulster’s peace process is already in crisis, with the largest party, the Ulster Unionists, now refusing to rejoin the Belfast government it runs along with three other parties, including Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.’s political wing. Unionists insist that before they return, the I.R.A. and other paramilitaries must start disarming, a process that was supposed to have been completed 15 months ago. To unionists, the Colombian news vindicated their suspicions that the republicans are not genuinely committed to peace.

In Colombia, meanwhile, the incident added yet another obstacle to stalemated peace talks between rebels and the government. In the U.S., the I.R.A.’s image took a knock, not least because of the republicans’ alleged links with a movement that collects hundreds of millions of dollars from the American cocaine trade, which Washington has given Colombia hundreds of millions to fight.

The three suspects — two originally from the Irish Republic and one from Northern Ireland — were arrested by military police on Aug. 11, after they had flown into Bogot from southern guerrilla territory and while they were waiting for a flight out of the country. Last week, Colombian authorities defied expectations that they would deport the men and instead formally charged them with traveling on false passports and “training for illegal activities.” Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan are accused of training the rebels during a five-week stay in the Switzerland-sized enclave that was ceded to the rebels in 1998 as part of peace negotiations. There is confusion as to whether, as claimed, four types of explosives were found on their clothing, or if this has any significance in the case. The trio, who claim they had been in the area as tourists and deny I.R.A. membership, will remain in a high-security jail for up to eight months while prosecutors prepare a case against them. If convicted, the three could face 15 to 20 years in jail. Senior FARC commander Raul Reyes claimed the men came merely to “exchange ideas and experiences about the two peace processes.” That did not impress the Colombian military, which, said former peace commissioner Daniel Garcia-Peña, has always been critical of the rebel enclave. “There is no doubt that the military is playing this up to force the government’s hand on the peace talks and the future of the rebel area,” he said.

While Colombian, British and Irish security officials suspect the rebels’ visitors of being members of the Provisional I.R.A., more damagingly they appear also to have ties with its political wing, Sinn Fein. Connolly, 36, who has lived in Cuba for the last five years, was described by the Havana foreign ministry as the official Sinn Fein representative there — although Sinn Fein denies this — and is thought to have arranged a meeting between Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams and Fidel Castro set for Adams’ forthcoming trip to Latin America. Trio leader Monaghan is considered to be an expert bombmaker and head of the I.R.A.’s “engineering” department. In his 50s, he is a former member of Sinn Fein’s national executive. McCauley, 38, also described as an explosives expert, was a Sinn Fein election-campaign worker in 1996. Sinn Fein, however, claims that the men have no current links to the party.

Exactly what the three were doing with the FARC is not entirely clear — though as Ulster Unionist minister Reg Empey said, “These men weren’t in Colombia to get a suntan.” There have been claims that they were testing out a powerful fuel-air bomb that creates a huge fireball and can demolish a building. Nigel Vinson, a security analyst at London’s Royal United Services Institute, doubts that either the FARC or the I.R.A. would need such an unstable weapon. He is more inclined to the theory that the I.R.A. might be advising the FARC on how to move operations away from its rural base into urban areas. “The I.R.A. are probably — with the possible exception of some groups in Israel — the world’s most sophisticated urban guerrillas,” he said. To Colombian former national security adviser Alfredo Rangel, the trio’s presence in his country is “another piece of evidence that the FARC is urbanizing the conflict.”

And what might the I.R.A. be collecting in return for this expertise? James Dingley, University of Ulster lecturer on terrorism and political violence, believes it is not drugs, given the I.R.A.’s aversion to any direct involvement in that trade, but money and perhaps weapons. “They would need money for the I.R.A.’s direct activities and for those of Sinn Fein, which is now active in a big way in politics in the Irish Republic as well as in Northern Ireland,” he says. Dingley and Vinson also speculate that the I.R.A. may be looking for supplies of “clean” weapons to replace those in Ulster that have traceable forensic fingerprints.

Dingley believes that an I.R.A.-ETA-FARC triumvirate could emerge as a major player in Latin America. Whatever the terrorist activities on that continent, however, British officials are also aware that the I.R.A. is a major player in Ulster, and the peace process needs its cooperation to proceed.