Bandit Country : The IRA and South Armagh

In Bandit Country Toby Harnden draws on interviews he carried out after arriving in South Armagh in 1996, during an uneasy peace, with IRA members as well as RUC and British Army personnel. He served about ten years as a Royal Navy officer, then became a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, with Belfast among his postings. His later book Dead Men Risen, about the Welsh Guards in Afghanistan, won the Orwell Prize for books.

The South Armagh Bandit Country of the title is the border area where the IRA's South Armagh Brigade ran one of its most effective campaigns. Harnden covers the brigade's sniper teams and the capture of its sniper unit, home made mortars, attacks in England, Libyan weapons and attempts to bring down British Army helicopters. He also writes about the Kingsmill massacre, the 1979 Warrenpoint ambush, the SAS presence and alleged Garda collusion. In December 2013 the Smithwick Tribunal reported collusion, with the IRA receiving information from an unidentified person in Dundalk Garda station, but it could not link this to any named officer.

Peter Taylor, reviewing for the Guardian, called it "Courageous journalism and compulsive reading". The Irish Times credited it with showing what set South Armagh apart, through interviews with police, soldiers and republicans. Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA prisoner writing in The Blanket, said republican readers found it fair, while An Phoblacht/Republican News noted its heavy use of police, army and informer sources.

This Bandit Country book is the 2024 Biteback paperback edition, running to 544 pages. It is of interest to readers of the IRA campaign in Bandit Country Ireland's border region, and reviewers credit it with explaining why the security forces found that campaign so hard to defeat.