David McKittrick: There's plenty of evidence that the IRA is still there

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Leading article: Sinn Fein's embarrassment is a great step forward for peace

The Irish peace process is in a mysterious phase, replete with sinister shadows, unexplained events and dark deeds. Nobody anywhere seems to have an absolutely clear idea of what is going on.

The IRA is flitting about out there, having clearly been up to no good in Colombia but insisting that none of its activities threatened the peace process, or indeed Colombia's internal affairs. And republicans escaped relatively lightly at this week's Congressional hearings in Washington: they took some hits but it could have been much worse. They seem to have discreetly made it clear that whatever they were up to has ceased.

The IRA does not do drugs, but it still regards itself as part of the international network of armed strugglers and it keeps in touch with all sorts of movements all over the place. It still has a fondness for its old revolutionary friends.

Perhaps IRA people, underworked at home, now travel the world bringing fraternal greetings from Ireland to insurgents who have not yet delved into politics. There is, however, little sense, especially post-11 September, that they go round the world urging revolution.

Back home, it is still the case that no one can definitively say whether it was the IRA or intelligence elements who raided Castlereagh Special Branch offices. The denials of IRA involvement from Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have been so frequent and so comprehensive that, should it turn out to be an IRA job, their personal credibility would be hugely damaged.

Such mysteries have led to the theory – which it should be stressed is one among many – that some sections of the IRA may have been given a free hand to act independently of the leadership. Perhaps, it is said, this would confer plausible deniability. Such independence of action has not happened before now: the fact that it is now being considered reflects the depth of the puzzlement about the whole thing.

But some things are not in doubt. The IRA still kills an average of two alleged drug dealers each year, still carries out punishment attacks and still orders "anti-social elements" into exile. It continues to maintain intelligence files on senior Conservatives and some others.

The two big arguments for putting up with such unsavoury and sometimes lethal behaviour are firstly that the peace process has already saved many lives and secondly that this is a transitional phase for republicanism.

These arguments hold sway in London, Dublin and Washington, where all three governments examine the balance sheet and conclude that, for all its failings and defects, the process is actually going pretty well. A glance at the Middle East and elsewhere, it is commonly said, shows how well Ireland is doing.

For eight solid years the primary Unionist demand, elevated above all others, was for the decommissioning of IRA weapons. The IRA eventually obliged, having extracted maximum advantage from the issue, and has now twice put tranches of weaponry beyond use. But decommissioning, when it came, brought little comfort to Unionists: Protestant opinion remains as pessimistic and demoralised as ever, and David Trimble did not receive the boost he had expected. As a result his party is in a state of barely suppressed panic, plaintively asking for assistance from all quarters to avoid taking heavy losses in next year's Assembly elections.

The IRA may have decommissioned, but the obvious fact that the organisation is still there, coupled with the many political gains Sinn Fein picked up along the way, has done nothing to lift Unionist hearts. A strong republican performance in the Dublin general election, which was called yesterday, will deepen Unionist misery.

The almost obsessive focus on decommissioning over the years meant that the IRA's various nefarious activities received occasional ritual condemnation but relatively little prominence. This may have assured the organisation that it could get away with such things with relatively little cost to Sinn Fein.

Perhaps, in this next post-decommissioning phase, the emphasis will shift away from the essentially symbolic to the more fundamental: perhaps the time has come to concentrate on pushing for an overall run-down of the IRA and its activities.

Or perhaps again it is too late for that, since the IRA's continued existence has become accepted in so many quarters as an inevitable if fairly undesirable fact of peace process life.

This assumption was evident in the response of the authorities to the discovery of an IRA targeting list. The police, the intelligence people and the Government all examined it, and concluded that it was not worth telling Tories that their names were on an IRA file.

As this suggests, the IRA has come to be regarded as offering no real menace to Britain or to the peace. This is new: it is as if a once-feared beast had been captured and caged. It remains dangerous, but now it is behind bars, the hope being that it has become imprisoned by the logic of the peace process.

A US edition of 'Making Sense of the Troubles', by David McKittrick and David McVea, is published this month by Ivan R Dee of Chicago