Editing Official Irish Republican Army (section)

==Support==
{{See also|Irish Republican Army–Soviet Union collaboration}}
The Official IRA had relations with the Soviet Union during the Troubles. One Irish diplomat in Moscow once wrote that Ireland provided the Soviets with a "convenient stick with which to beat the West."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://historytothepublic.org/a-convenient-stick-with-which-to-beat-the-west-northern-ireland-under-soviet-eyes/|title=Northern Ireland Under Soviet Eyes|last=Casey|first=Maurice|date=2015-08-26|website=History to the Public|language=en-GB|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200203115134/http://historytothepublic.org/a-convenient-stick-with-which-to-beat-the-west-northern-ireland-under-soviet-eyes/|archive-date=3 February 2020|access-date=2019-08-03|url-status=dead}}</ref> Assistance from the Soviet Union first occurred in late 1972 when [[Yuri Andropov]] who was then the head of the [[KGB]] (later to become General Secretary of the Soviet Union) authorized weapons shipments. On 21 August 1972, Andropov had presented a plan known as SPLASH to the [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]]. It was entitled "Plan for the Operation of a Shipment of Weapons to the Irish Friends". Two machine guns, 70 [[automatic rifles]], 10 [[Carl Walther GmbH#Handguns|Walther pistols]] and 41,600 cartridges were sent. The pistols were lubricated with West German oil and the packaging was taken from several countries around the world by KGB agents so that the weapons could not be traced back to the Soviet Union. The weapons were brought to Ireland using the ship known as the [[Reduktor]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.irishecho.com/2011/02/kgb-armed-official-ira-book-reveals/|title=KGB armed Official IRA, book reveals|date=February 16, 2011}}</ref> Official IRA members also travelled to the Soviet Union for training. North Korea also sent arms to the Officials and taught them with assassination techniques and bomb-making skills. Throughout the 1980s, at least 5,000 weapons were supplied by Soviet and North Korean officials to the OIRA.<ref name="DWAD"/><ref name="POP"/>

In July 1973, Irish [[Garda Síochána|Garda]] discovered eight cases of 17 rifles, 29,000 rounds of ammunition and about 60 pounds of gunpowder in Dublin sent to the OIRA by Canadian citizen John Patrick Murphy.<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27041321|title=The Canadian Dimension to the Northern Ireland Conflict|author=Andrew Sanders and F. Stuart Ross|date=2020|page=200|journal=The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies|volume=43 |jstor=27041321 }}</ref> While the Officials tried to gather help from supporters in America, there was little to no evidence of such a thing happening.<ref>{{cite book|title=Inside the IRA: Dissident Republicans and the War for Legitimacy|author=Andrew Sanders|date=April 25, 2011|page=121|publisher=[[Edinburgh University Press]]|isbn=9-7807-4864-6043}}</ref>