Toby Harnden
Hodder & Stoughton
1999
404 pages
At 404 pages in length, Bandit Country is, thus far, the shortest book on the Northern Ireland troubles that I have read. The 2010 edition is 574 pages. It is also the most highly focused as its author, journalist Toby Harnden, zeroed in on nationalist paramilitary activities in South Armagh, one of the most Catholic regions of Northern Ireland.
South Armagh, the southern end of County Armagh, borders with Ireland proper, and according to Harnden is a traditional site of cross-border smuggling. The IRA leader of South Armagh, ‘Slab’ Murphy, for example, has his ranch situated right on the borderline with the Republic of Ireland, a ranch that’s been assumed by British intelligence as a site of paramilitary command, and as a site of smuggling. Harnden posits this regional tradition of smuggling indicates a cultural disposition towards subversive behavior in South Armagh, and a precursor to the intensity of the IRA’s violence against the British forces in that region.
Harnden writes about the republican struggle in Crossmaglen, one of the largest towns in the county, and the locus of some of the fiercest fighting in Ireland. The British forces have set up watchtowers along the landscape to help them spot paramilitary activity, and Harnden describes an IRA operation where volunteers sprayed the contents of a fuel truck onto one of the towers and lit it on fire. When a sharpshooter (later revealed to be a team, which Harnden hypothesized) plied his or her trade in South Armagh, signs were posted on roadsign posts stating “sniper at work”. The region was very hostile to British soldiers, some of whom imagined working in South Armagh as being similar to serving in Vietnam.
Harnden’s book, like so many of the books about the IRA, is long and comprehensive, with detailed appendices and index. It appears to give a lot of voice to British military personnel, who, for example, say things like the townsfolk are brainwashed by the IRA (rather than fully conscious sympathizers), without much authorial commentary on such statements. Presumably such a disparity between military sources and IRA sources occurs in these kinds of texts because military sources are more readily available to journalists such as Harnden.
