The intelligence war had had minimal impact on the IRA’s campaign by June 1972. Various factors explain the limited infiltration by intelligence services of the city and rural areas where the IRA was operating at that time. In urban areas, IRA support increased following the active role played by republicans in defending nationalist areas, indiscriminate British Army actions against the nationalist community and the lack of political and socio-economic reform by Stormont and Westminster. Other factors unique to rural areas restricted intelligence, included republicans’ long-term sense of injustice at being forced into a unionist-dominated Northern Ireland state in the 1920s. British forces also conducted various indiscriminate security operations in nationalist areas, such as in County Tyrone. These operations provoked further tension. The failure to coordinate British military and RUC Special Branch intelligence on a consistent basis made containing the IRA harder. In addition, IRA barricades in Derry City and Belfast, and the ability of some rural IRA units to use the border to evade detection, meant that surveillance of the IRA via vehicle- or personality-checking systems was difficult. The intelligence war’s failure to significantly erode the IRA’s capacity for conflict partly explains why the British government talked to the IRA in June 1972.