The Irish republican army: An assessment of sectarianism
- 1 March 1997
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Terrorism and Political Violence
- Vol. 9 (1) , 20-55
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09546559708427385
Abstract
Although the Irish Republican Army (IRA) has been active for more than 25 years, interpretations of the motivation of the IRA are varied. For some, it is a sectarian organization engaged in a tit‐for‐tat campaign with Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. For others, it is a guerrilla army waging a military campaign against the British presence in Northern Ireland. This article assesses the degree to which the IRA was or was not engaged in sectarian activity between July 1969 and December 1993. Although the Irish Republican Army killed more than 340 Protestant civilians in this time period, this examination suggests that the IRA, in general, was not a sectarian organization.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- On Measuring Political Violence: Northern Ireland, 1969 to 1980American Sociological Review, 1993
- The provisional IRA: A case studyTerrorism and Political Violence, 1991
- Interpreting Northern IrelandPublished by Oxford University Press (OUP) ,1990
- The Provisional IRA: An Assessment in the Wake of the 1981 Hunger StrikeGovernment and Opposition, 1982