Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade - Lynagh's Strategy

Lynagh's Strategy

In the 1980s, the IRA in East Tyrone and other areas close to the border, such as South Armagh, were following a Maoist military theory devised for Ireland by Jim Lynagh, a high-profile member of the IRA in east Tyrone (but a native of County Monaghan). The theory involved creating "no-go zones" that the security forces of Northern Ireland did not control and gradually expanding them to make the country ungovernable. Lynagh's strategy was to start off with one area which the British military did not control, preferably a republican stronghold such as east Tyrone. The South Armagh area was considered to be a liberated zone already, since British troops and the RUC could not use the roads there for fear of roadside bombs and long-range harassing fire. Thus it was from there that the IRA East Tyrone Brigade attacks were launched, with most of them occurring in east Tyrone in areas close to south Armagh, which offered good escape routes. The first phase of Lynagh's plan to drive out the British security forces from east Tyrone involved destroying isolated rural police stations and then intimidating or killing any building contractors who were employed to rebuild them. Lynagh's plans met strong criticism from senior brigade member Kevin McKenna, who regarded the strategy as "too impractical, too ambitious, and not sustainable" in the words of journalist Ed Moloney. The IRA Northern Command, however, approved a scaled down version of the strategy, aimed at hampering the repair and refurbishment of British security bases. Journalist Kevin Toolis states that from 1985 onwards, the Brigade led an overall five-year campaign that left 33 security facilities destroyed and nearly a hundred seriously damaged.