That's true. In fact a quadrant of my own family is quite fond of Gerry Adams, and I've seen the collection jars in bars in Boston. I don't know exactly who put the dollars in the jars, but there they were.
But the US government never even winked at that, not even when Kennedy was president. IRA terrorism was never supported officially, or outside the Irish community. Don't worry yourself about that. I never had any sympathy for it either, for what it's worth.
The arms trade is trade. And the Cold War made strange bedfellows. But in the past two decades, Western interaction with Africa, I assert, has been more than benign, focused almost exlusively on aid, not on influence.