Compared to other organizations like PLO, ETA, FARC, etc. And why did they disband while knowing the UVF would still exist?
>>18513419The UVF is still active.
>>18513420That’s based are they still fundamentalist Calvinists?
>>18513427I don't know
>>18513419They were pretty dangerous. They never had the manpower or weapons to ever actually force the British Army out of Ulster but they were a few thousand men in a poor rural country who evaded the best attempts to take them down for 30 years. They managed to hit the British mainland in attacks several times. Including nearly wiping out the Cabinet and firing mortars at Downing Street itself. They took out Lord Mountbatten also, a cousin of the Queen. They essentially pioneered the RC-IED, and their bomb making, and tactics for ambush and insurgency were later adopted by fighters in the War on Terror. They broke out 38 of their prisoners from a maximum security prison in 1983. All these things btw while blending into civilians in daily life. You didn’t know who could be in it. The man standing next to you in the pub could be an IRA man. The sweet kind granny on the street could have been holding semtex and ammunition under her floorboards that her nephew unknowingly placed there. Shit like that. They were everywhere and nowhere. Parts of Northern Ireland they made a nightmare for British patrols, downed helicopters, roadside bombs etc.That being said they weren’t super stealth assassins and ultimately failed their objective to remove British forces from Ireland. Although some say they partially won, as their goal was to be such a headache to the British state that they compromised. However full withdrawal and reunification never happened.
>>18513427They never were.
>how powerful?Pretty powerful, in the eyes of the British Army anyway. If you look up the gear they had and the stuff they pulled off, you'd see why this is obvious. Whilst smaller groups like the OIRA relied mostly on small arms exchanges, the PIRA campaign was extremely effective at its two main goals; killing British Security Forces and making NI ungovernable+economically wrecked.>compared to the PLO/ETA/FARCStronger than all of them in terms of military capability except FARC, who dwarfed them.>And why did they disband while knowing the UVF would still exist?The idea behind the GFA was that all paramilitaries would get off the scene. The PIRA allowed Sinn Féin to make the decision for them, as there was a general view that the military stalemate was going nowhere and Adams faction of SF were willing to sit down and discuss peace options.Loyalist paramilitaries aren't really comparable to Republican ones; they didn't have the same political cohesion and by the 1990s were mostly focused on drugs and infighting.>>18513427They are drug dealers with a new name, that's about it. They hold sway over the DUP but they aren't really capable of anything other than spurring up Loyalists to go out and riot, usually in Loyalist areas. They were never very good at combatting the IRA though; their main role varied between the aforementioned rabble rousing or sectarian killings. The peak of Loyalist Paramilitary cohesion was in the early 1970s with things like the Ulster Workers' Council Strike, but that was because the political talent in Unionism hadn't been booted out for being too soft yet.>>18513506>they never wereThey absolutely were, just not to the IRA.
>>18513420>>18513427It's active, but not really the same group.It's lead by Bunter Graham (picrel), who joined the UVF in 1974. He's what I guess I'd call a moderate in the UVF; not as progressively minded as Gusty Spence but a far cry from some of the other thugs who have been higher ups. His main claims to fame are:>Chief of Staff of the UVF Belfast Brigade (though he'd never admit it)>Saved from an IRA assassination by the RUC>Survived an assassination attempt by the IPLO because they shot a UDA guy that they thought was him>Tried to move the UVF away from sectarian killings and toward a more focused targeting of the IRA, but this ultimately failed>Heavily involved in the UVF's growing involvement in non-terror related criminal enterprises>Shot by the INLA in 1993, but survivedMost of what he did since around 2000 has been managing the endless infighting between Loyalist Paramilitaries, in particular the UVF and the UDA. He spent most of the 2000s and 2010s dealing with that, although iirc he also travelled to the middle east with IRA veterans to learn about peacebuilding.Last I heard he was running around Belfast again last year trying to deal with yet another UVF feud that broke out due to someone photoshopping pictures to try get someone else arrested or something retarded like that. They fight with the UDA for drug territory but it's become even more convoluted because both the UDA+UVF now source a lot of drugs from Kinahan Cartel (largest Irish criminal gang rooted in Dublin).>tl;drMost of what these groups have become are just bickering drug cartels like you'd find in other countries, but they have historical names/structures.
