Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade - 1980s and 1990s

1980s and 1990s

During the mid-1980s, the brigade focused its attacks on the RUC, killing 20 of its members between 1984 and 1986. Nine of these were killed in a mortar attack on the RUC police station in Newry in February 1985. In March 1989, two senior RUC officers were killed in an ambush near Jonesborough. Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan were returning from a meeting with the Garda Síochána in the Republic of Ireland, where they had been discussing a range of issues including ways of combating IRA attacks on the cross-border rail link when they were ambushed. This incident is being investigated by the Smithwick Tribunal which is looking into alleged collusion between the IRA and the Gardaí. As the divisional commander for South Armagh, Breen was the most senior policeman to have been killed during the Troubles.

In 1986, the British Army erected ten hilltop observation posts in South Armagh. These bases acted as information gathering centres and also allowed the British Army to patrol South Armagh with their personnel. Between 1971 and the erection of the hilltop sites in the mid-1980s (the first in 1986), 84 members of the security forces were killed in the Crossmaglen and Forkhill areas by the IRA. After this 24 security force personnel, and Lord Justice Gibson and his wife were killed in the same areas.

South Armagh became the most heavily militarized area in Northern Ireland. In an area with a population of 23,000, the Army stationed around 3,000 troops in support of the RUC to contain an unknown number of paramilitaries.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the IRA elsewhere in Northern Ireland found that nine out of ten planned operations failed to materialize. However, the South Armagh Brigade continued to carry out varied and high-profile attacks in the same period. By 1991, the RUC acknowledged that no mobile patrols had operated in South Armagh without Army support since 1975.

On 30 December 1990, Sinn Féin member and IRA volunteer, Fergal Caraher, was killed by Royal Marines near a checkpoint in Cullyhanna. His brother Michael Caraher, who was severely wounded in the shooting, later became the commander of one of the South Armagh sniper squads.

These squads were responsible for killing seven soldiers and two RUC members until the Caraher team was finally caught by the Special Air Service in April 1997. The South Armagh Brigade also built the bombs that were used to wreck economic targets in London during the 1990s, specially hitting the financial district. The truck bombs were sent to England by ferry. On 22 April 1993, the South Armagh IRA unit took control of the village of Cullaville near the border with the Republic, for two hours, making good use of dead ground. The fact that the IRA executed the action despite the presence of a British Army watchtower nearby, caused outrage among British and Irish parliamentary circles.

The South Armagh Brigade was by far the most effective IRA brigade in shooting down British helicopters during the conflict. They carried out 23 attacks on British Army helicopters during the Troubles, bringing four down on separate occasions: the Gazelle shot down in February 1978 near Jonesborough, a Lynx in June 1988, while in 1994 another Lynx and an RAF Puma were shot down in March and July respectively. The shooting down of the Lynx in 1994 during a mortar attack on Crossmaglen barracks is regarded by Toby Harnden as the most successful IRA operation against a helicopter in the course of the Troubles. A sustained machine gun attack against a helicopter was filmed by a Dublin television crew in March 1991 outside Crossmaglen Health Center. There was no reaction from British security although the RUC/Army base was just 50 yards away. The only successful IRA attack against an Army helicopter outside South Armagh was carried out by the East Tyrone Brigade near Clogher, County Tyrone, on 11 February 1990. By 1994, the safest way for the British army to travel across South Armagh and some areas of Tyrone and Fermanagh was on board troop-carrying Chinook helicopters.