Ihab Shoukri’s death will not make any difference to loyalist paramilitaries. As Brian Rowan reports, they are still run by gangsters unprepared to let go of their guns

There is a spotlight once more on what we call loyalism — and on its different and many leaderships. The sudden death of Ihab Shoukri — once a paramilitary ‘brigadier’ — has made people look again at the UDA, but not just at that organisation.

They will look at the UVF also — and at all of the unfinished business.

At the weekend, First Minister and DUP leader Peter Robinson spoke of private assurances from the republican leadership ‘that the IRA is out of business for good and isn’t going to return’.

A republican speaking to this newspaper put it this way: “The IRA has gone — that’s the short answer to it.”

There is no similar short answer when it comes to the loyalist groups.

You get longer answers and assessments on the pages of the most recent report of the Independent Monitoring Commission.

The ‘split’ in the UDA — that Ihab Shoukri was part of — continues to hamper that organisation and its structure, six ‘brigades’, six different leaders and all with different agendas hamper it also.

In the words of the IMC it “makes it difficult to drive through change”.

“Despite this, most elements of the leadership continued to seek to downsize the organisation, encouraged members to report crime to the police, engaged constructively in interface issues and showed a determination to avoid inter-community conflict,” the Commission wrote.

All of that is positive, but it is only part of the story, only part of the IMC script.

“Some individual members attempted to manufacture a pipe bomb and some — including at a senior level — indicated an interest in acquiring weapons ... In some parts of the UDA recruitment continued,” the report read.

Both the UDA and the UVF were still attempting to identify suspected informers ? and paramilitary leadership structures “remain in place”.

It could not be said that the loyalists are ‘out of business for good’.

Ihab Shoukri and his brother Andre were part of a post-ceasefire leadership, along with others including the murdered UDA leader in east Belfast, Jim Gray.

Johnny Adair on his release from jail after the Good Friday Agreement was also part of that paramilitary inner council, with John Gregg (later murdered), Jackie McDonald and Billy McFarland.

McDonald and McFarland are the only survivors in today’s UDA leadership. They are not an Adams and McGuinness equivalent.

Loyalists have found it difficult, if not impossible, to follow a leader.

Look at how the political leadership of Gary McMichael and Davy Adams was dumped and John White given a role — White a convicted killer, an associate of Adair, a drug dealer and Special Branch informer in Belfast.

The more you look at the loyalist organisations the more you come to conclude that they cannot be delivered into the peace process — not all of them and all their parts and people.

A culture of crime grew up under the Shoukris, Adair and Gray on one side and Mark Haddock and others in the UVF part of that loyalist world. And there are too many loyalists who cannot live without a UVF or a UDA.

Those organisations give them their status, their power, their money and their way of living.

The loyalists are not killing Catholics — not now, but there are those who are strangling their own communities and destroying young people and young lives with drugs.

Yes, the UDA inner council and the UVF command staff have delivered significant change, but they cannot deliver everything that is asked for in a peace process.

There are loyalists who will resist decommissioning for their own selfish needs, who cannot live without guns and the money of drugs and crime. They were not part of Ulster’s war, but are the so-called ‘ceasefire soldiers’.

Ihab Shoukri, who is now dead, was part of that picture.