The new group includes the Real IRA and Republican Action Against Drugs as well as a coalition of independent armed republican groups.
In a statement released to the Guardian, the new organization claimed that it had formed a “unified structure, under a single leadership”. It said the organization would be “subservient to the constitution of the Irish Republican Army”.
This is the first time since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that a majority of the forces of dissident republicanism has coalesced.
Republican sources told the Guardian that the new paramilitary force included several hundred armed dissidents, including some former members of the now disbanded Provisional IRA who have been conducting a campaign of shooting and forcible exile of men in Derry City whom they accuse of drug dealing.
It also includes what the statement calls “non-conformist republicans” or smaller independent groups from Belfast and rural parts of Northern Ireland.
Republican Action Against Drugs and the Real IRA will cease to exist, one source close to the dissidents said.
The new organization is planning to intensify terror attacks on the security forces and other targets related to what it regards as symbols of the British presence, according to the source.
Such targets could include police stations, regional headquarters of Ulster Bank, and the UK City of Culture 2013 celebration in Derry – which the dissidents have dubbed “normalising British rule”.
“In recent years the establishment of a free and independent Ireland has suffered setbacks due to the failure among the leadership of Irish nationalism and fractures within republicanism”, it said in a statement. This is a reference to the split between hardline republicans opposed to the peace settlement and Sinn Féin, which has followed a political strategy. Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin, Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, was a leading figure in the Provisional IRA.
MOL/AS/HE
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