Ireland's Long War

In March 1989, the South Armagh Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out a bold, meticulously planned ambush near the border, killing two senior officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The attack became one of the most high-profile blows against British policing in the North during the final phase of the conflict known colloquially as ‘the Troubles’. “In the years that follo...

On a spring evening in 1987, eight members of one of the IRA’s most formidable rural units were cut down in a British Army ambush in Loughgall, County Armagh. It was the single deadliest day for the IRA during the post-partition conflict colloquially known as “the Troubles”—a turning point in what republicans called the long war against British rule in the North. Nearly four decades later, the amb...

Few figures from the conflict known as “the Troubles” evoke more suspicion, myth, and controversy than Captain Robert Nairac. While officially commemorated as a courageous British Army officer who died gathering intelligence behind enemy lines, he is remembered very differently within the Irish republican community—not merely as a soldier, but as a central figure in Britain’s covert war in Ireland...

Inside the 1989 commando-style IRA raid that stunned the British military. On Wednesday, 13 December 1989, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) conducted an unprecedented, highly organised and lethal frontal assault on a British Army vehicle checkpoint at Derryard, near Rosslea, County Fermanagh. The attack, which resulted in the deaths of two British soldiers and injuries to several others...