Police in the North are concerned that the UDA murder of postal worker Daniel McColgan at the weekend may signal an escalation in activity by the paramilitary group. Jim Cusack, Security Editor, looks at the UDA's track record of carrying out sectarian murders and bomb attacks
The Ulster Defence Association (UDA), also known as the Ulster Freedom Fighters and now using the further cover name of Red Hand Defenders, has carried out just under 20 murders in Northern Ireland in the past two years.
Some seven of these have been purely sectarian. About half the UDA's killings are a result of feuds with other loyalists.
The UDA's east Antrim brigade, whose leadership is based in the large 1960s housing estate of Rathcoole where 20-year-old Daniel McColgan was shot dead at the weekend, has been responsible for four of the purely sectarian murders.
There is now concern among the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) that the weekend murder marks a sinister escalation in UDA activity.
Since 1998 the UDA has been recruiting youths from the loyalist working class areas of west and north Belfast, east Antrim and in some provincial towns like Coleraine, Co Derry and Lisburn, Co Down. The principal terrorist activity the group has engaged in against the Catholic community has involved stoning and throwing crude pipe bombs.
However, in recent months the UDA has tried to develop its pipe bomb-making skills making the devices more powerful and deadly.
This has made the devices more unstable and dangerous to handle, having the reverse effect of killings its own members.
In the past two months, two young UDA men had killed themselves handling these devices: Glen Branagh (16), in north Belfast, and William Campbell (19), in Coleraine.
Security sources say the UDA does not have the patience and technical skills to rectify the design faults in the pipe bombs and may, for the time being, have dropped the idea of developing the crude bombs.
There is now concern that the organisation has decided to revert to its traditional policy of shooting vulnerable and innocent members of the Catholic community, particularly those who have to go to work in areas convenient to UDA strongholds. In Mr McColgan's case, he had to travel into the heart of UDA territory early each day to the sorting office behind the shops in the centre of Rathcoole.
The east Antrim UDA is developing a reputation as the most militant and dangerous element of an already highly unstable and dangerous organisation.
It was responsible for the murder of the Protestant teenager, Gavin Brett, who was shot dead near his home on the Hightown Road, Glengormley in July 2000 in mistake for a Catholic youth. In April 2000 they also murdered another Protestant man, Mr Trevor Lowry, also from Glengormley, mistaking him for a Catholic. In December 2000 they murdered a Catholic builder, Mr Gary Moore, as he worked on a site in Rathcoole.
Security sources say the actions of the east Antrim UDA might also be prompting other UDA groups to embark on campaigns of sectarian assassination.
Last autumn the UDA effectively dropped out of the political/peace process in Northern Ireland when it disbanded its political wing, the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP), whose leaders gave important support to the process at the time of the signing of the Belfast Agreement in Easter 1998.
The involvement of the UDA in the pipe bomb campaign of last summer led the North Secretary, Dr Reid, to declare that he regarded it as having broken its ceasefire.
However, Dr Reid and, in the past week, the United States special envoy to Ireland, Mr Richard Haass, have stated there is also a need for better understanding and consideration of the political problems facing the unionist and loyalist community.
Simultaneously, the PSNI is again re-engaged in a series of largely Special Branch-led operations to infiltrate and disrupt the activities of the most dangerous loyalist elements, including the UDA.
The Special Branch, which was considerably reduced in size as a result of the restructuring of the RUC, is reported to be devoting most of its energies to investigating developments in the extreme wings of loyalism. It is understood that it has found that a number of extreme elements, referred to by police sources as "doomsday groups" has been feeding into UDA thinking and encouraging more violent activity.
These groups include figures who have been using titles like the Orange Volunteer Force and sometimes the same Red Hand Defender title used by the UDA in recent years for attacks on Catholic churches, homes and businesses in rural areas.
The same elements have also been found on the periphery of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) group which is concentrated in the north Armagh area around Portadown. The LVF and UDA have been working closely together in recent years.
When the splinter republican group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), shot dead the LVF leader, Billy Wright, in the Maze Prison at New Year 1998, the UDA embarked on a campaign of retaliatory sectarian murders in Belfast, killing more than 15 people.
One of the causes for concern in the outlook on the security situation in 2002, is that the INLA will respond to UDA assassinations in kind.
The INLA issued a statement last week saying it would retaliate and has already shown that it still considers sectarian assassination as a response.
Last October the INLA in Strabane shot dead a former UDA man, Charles Folliard (30) in retaliation for the murder of a Catholic in Co Tyrone a few days earlier.
Mr Folliard, although convicted of UDA offences, had renounced violence and was going out with a Catholic girl in Strabane.
He was shot as he called to her house.
While groups like the UDA, LVF and INLA appear to pose the most serious threat to peace in the North, security sources point out that they are not alone.
The sources blame the IRA for fomenting and orchestrating the violence in Ardoyne last week.
According to the sources, the IRA was attempting to rekindle the crisis surrounding the Holy Cross school children in order to attract international media attention to their plight.
The reasoning behind this, it is claimed, is that this would distract media attention from the IRA's alleged involvement with their Central American terrorist counterparts in Colombia.
One of the principle concerns among police in the North stems from the fact that the force has been depleted through an early-retirement scheme in the re-organisation process.
Officers involved in public order policing are also said to be highly conscious of the fact that any time they have to resort to the use of plastic bullets or batons they are likely to be summoned to explain their actions before the North's Police Ombudsman which can bring criminal charges against them.
Police sources say there is a fear they may not be in a position to contain any major outbreak of major rioting and sectarian violence if the opposing terrorist groups significantly step up their subversion.