Analysis: The murder of former IRA assassin Kevin McGuigan signals emergence of new shadowy paramilitary unit on the streets of Belfast

Earlier this month history was made at the West Belfast festival when George Hamilton became the first chief constable in Northern Ireland to speak at the republican community event.

Among those in the audience to hear Hamilton debate alongside the deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, was the Provisional IRA’s last director of intelligence from Belfast, the man who helped mastermind the £26m Northern Bank robbery, the biggest bank heist in Irish or British history.

Even while Hamilton was speaking , the ex-head of IRA intelligence was surely aware of the existence of a new secret republican unit in Belfast, comprised of veteran figures from the Provisionals who had only one item on their agenda: murderous revenge.



Their task that night was to confirm their suspicions that one of their former comrades had killed another back in May.

Then, on Wednesday night, in the Catholic enclave of the Short Strand in predominantly loyalist east Belfast, they carried out their final objective with cold, ruthless efficiency. Former IRA assassin and feared hard man Kevin McGuigan was shot dead outside his home because this new unit believed he had personally killed Gerard “Jock” Davison back in May just across the river Lagan in the republican Market district of central Belfast.

McGuigan’s motives had been highly personal. The pair had fallen out after Davison ordered that McGuigan receive a “six pack” punishment shooting where he was shot in his arms, knees and legs after beating up a member of a respected republican family in a dispute. McGuigan, who at one time actually killed alleged drug dealers alongside Davison in another secret IRA unit known as Direct Action Against Drugs (DAAD), consistently vowed to take revenge on his former comrade.

By assassinating one of their former top assassins, the top tier of the Provisional IRA in Belfast knew they were taking an enormous political gamble. No one in Belfast, from the residents of the neighbourhood where McGuigan lived and died to the political class at Stormont, believes it was anyone but ex-Provisional IRA mainstream republicans aligned to Sinn Féin who carried out this killing.

Furthermore it is no coincidence that over the last week a shadowy new terror group calling itself Action Against Drugs (AAD) re-emerged in the pages of the Belfast daily paper, the Irish News, vowing to strike back at drug dealers operating in Catholic areas and tellingly promising revenge for Jock Davison’s murder four months earlier.

This organisation is perceived by many to be modelled on DAAD, which was set up after the Provisionals’ 1994 ceasefire to help maintain the organisation’s grip on nationalist communities by waging war on a popular target, namely drug dealers.

The killing squad also kept IRA foot soldiers busy in the business of paramilitary activity while they were on ceasefire. And although DAAD killed more than a dozen men over a decade, it was clear the state turned a blind eye to those actually behind the murder campaign in the interests of peace process realpolitik.

AAD, the son of DAAD, is the resurrection of that strategy and has been established by close comrades of Davison to ensure in part that they won’t be next, that the families and relatives of their victims will not think about taking revenge on them.



That is why so much has been put at stake by the decision to gun down McGuigan.

It all leaves Hamilton with a huge question to answer: will he as chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland ask who was actually behind the killing of McGuigan? And does he think there is any connection between this latest murder and some of the republican veterans he addressed in west Belfast just a few weeks earlier?