Cyprus-Forum.com

[Bananiot]

Harding and Makarios agreed on everything in 1956 and on February 29, Lennox-Boyed came to Cyprus for what was supposed to be a routine meeting with Makarios, to simply sign the agreement reached between Harding and Makarios. Boyed, as the Minister in charge for the colonies, was the proper person to sign the agreements on behalf of the Government. Grivas had other ideas and he is responsible for a missed opportunity, as you suggested, for solution. Once again Grivas blundered badly and of course we all suffer the consequences of this fool whom you think defeated the British Empire.

[kimon07]

Harding and Makarios agreed on everything in 1956 and on February 29, Lennox-Boyed came to Cyprus for what was supposed to be a routine meeting with Makarios, to simply sign the agreement reached between Harding and Makarios. Boyed, as the Minister in charge for the colonies, was the proper person to sign the agreements on behalf of the Government. Grivas had other ideas and he is responsible for a missed opportunity, as you suggested, for solution. Once again Grivas blundered badly and of course we all suffer the consequences of this fool whom you think defeated the British Empire.

I am sick and tired of having to post the same things over and over againd to counterdict your lies. ELEOS.

"Makarios misses an opportunity"

NEVERTHELESS, despite the strategic mistakes of the EOKA struggle the Greek
Cypriots were given an opportunity to achieve their original aim.
It occurred during the negotiations of Makarios with the Governor, Field Marshal Sir John
Harding, when the British offered the promise of self-determination at some
unspecified moment in future. But the talks collapsed.

Field Marshal Sir John Harding and Archbishop meet before their talks on Cyprus
collapse in February-March 1956.

This was the first and last time that the British talked with the Greek Cypriot
leadership, hoping to achieve the pacification of the Island through a political
settlement. It was also the only time when the British government conceded,
theoretically at least, the possibility of unitary self-determination,
fulfilling one of EOKA's original objectives. This proposal was made at a time
when certain officials were contemplating to 'tell the Turks that 18 per cent of
the [Cypriot] population cannot have an unqualified veto on the remaining 82 per
cent'.

Unwittingly Makarios turned down the Harding proposal and failed the litmus test that the British policy makers had set up for him.
His refusal to co-operate with the British was fatal. From that moment the British government resolved it
could no longer deal with the Greek Cypriots or the Greek government.
http://britains-smallwars.com/cyprus/Da ... iracy.html

Aren't you ashamed of yourself bananitot to twist hystorical facts like that?

[boomerang]

SPYCATCHER

by

PETER WRIGHT with Paul Greengrass

WILLIAM HEINEMANN: AUSTRALIA

First published in 1987 by
HEINEMANN PUBLISHERS AUSTRALIA
(A division of Octopus Publishing Group/Australia Pty Ltd)
85 Abinger Street, Richmond, Victoria, 3121.


Copyright (c) 1987 by Peter Wright
ISBN 0-85561-166-9

extract
I first became involved in Cyprus shortly after I joined MI5, when theDirector of E Branch (Colonial Affairs), Bill Magan, sent me somepapers on the escalating conflict. The Greek Cypriot ArchbishopMakarios was leading a vigorous campaign for full independence, supported by the Greek Government, the AKEL Communist Party, and EOKA, the guerrilla army led by Colonel Grivas. Britain, anxious to retainCyprus as a military base, was resisting, and by 1956 a full-scalemilitary emergency was in force, with 40,000 British troops pinned downby a few hundred Grivas guerrillas.

British policy in Cyprus was an utter disaster. The Colonial Office wastrying to pursue political negotiations in a deteriorating securitysituation, relying on the Army to keep order. Grivas needed to belocated, isolated, and neutralized before political negotiations stooda chance, but although the Army launched massive searches, they failedto find him. I was convinced, studying the papers, that MI5 could dofar better than the Army, and I told Magan I was confident that, giventime, we could locate Grivas accurately by tracing his communicationsin the same way I planned our attacks against the Russians.

Magan immediately took me to see Sir Gerald Templer, who led thesuccessful counter-insurgency campaign in Malaya, and was a greatadvocate of the use of intelligence to solve colonial problems. Templerwas enthusiastic about my plan and agreed to lobby the Colonial Officeon MI5's behalf. But the Colonial Office remained adamant; they wantedto pursue their own security policy, and had no wish to involve MI5.
There was no great enthusiasm, either, inside MI5 for becomingembroiled in what was fast becoming an insoluble, situation. Hollis, inparticular, was opposed to becoming involved in Colonial Affairswithout a clear invitation from the Ministry. His attitude was that MI5was a domestic organization, and while he would provide a DefenseLiaison Officer to advise the Army, that was all.

In 1958, Grivas stepped up his guerrilla campaign in an effort tothwart the determined efforts to achieve a political solution beingmade by the new Governor, Sir Hugh Foot. The Army launched anothermassive search for Grivas, this time in the Paphos mountains, but onceagain he slipped through the net. Foot continued to press for apolitical solution, but agreed to call in MI5 as the situation wasrapidly deteriorating. From the start we were in a race: could we findGrivas before the Colonial Office stitched up a ramshackle deal?

Magan was convinced that sufficient intelligence about Grivas' locationmust exist in the files of the local Special Branch, and that it hadjust not been interpreted correctly. The problem was how to get at it.
EOKA had thoroughly penetrated the local Special Branch, and studyingthe files would be a dangerous business once an MI5 man's identitybecame known. One of our officers had already been shot in the highstreet of Nicosia.

Magan was a remarkable man who had spent a great deal of time on theNorth-West Frontier and in Persia, where he lived by himself with thenatives in tents, speaking their languages and cooking his meals on cowdung fires. He knew at first hand the dangers of terrorism, and ratherthan delegate the dangerous mission to a junior officer, he insistedthat he go himself, supported by the local Cyprus liaison officer, Colonel Philip Kirby Green, a tall soldierly officer of boundless courage and rectitude who was also a distinguished painter in his sparetime. I was to follow shortly afterward to plan and execute thetechnical side of the operation, which was given the code name SUNSHINE.

It would be too crude to say that SUNSHINE was an assassinationoperation. But it amounted to the same thing. The plan was simple: tolocate Grivas, and bring up a massive concentration of soldiers. Weknew he would never surrender, and like two of his trusted lieutenantswho had recently been cornered by the Army, he would die in the shoot-out.

I arrived in Nicosia on January 17, 1959, and went to Special Branchheadquarters to study Magan's analysis of the files. Grivas' campaignwas clearly well organized. There were numerous examples of well-coordinated terrorist strikes and civil disturbances across the whole island. He had therefore to be in regular communication with his fieldofficers. It was unlikely that EOKA would use either the telephone orthe postal system for these, even though they had both been thoroughlypenetrated. Communications rested on a system of couriers, and fromstudying the files it was obvious these were mainly women, traveling onthe public transport system. We plotted each sighting and interception, and the overall pattern showed Limassol to be the hub of the EOKAcommunications network. There were also clusters of sightings in theYerasa and Polodhia villages, several miles from Limassol. The besthypothesis was that Grivas maintained headquarters in each of thesevillages.

The first step was to place a secure telephone tap on Makarios' palace.
We were certain that Makarios, and probably EOKA at certain times, usedthe line secure in the knowledge that their post office spies wouldautomatically alert them to the presence of a tap.

We decided to place a concealed tap on one of the overhead cablesleading into the palace, using a radio transmitter which took powerfrom the telephone circuit to radiate the signal out to our waitingreceiver a mile or two away. John Wyke, MI6's best technical operator, and the man who actually placed the taps inside the Berlin Tunnel, withthe Vopos' feet just inches above his head, came out to help me. The whole operation was fraught with danger. Wyke had to climb a telephonepole in total darkness, in full view of the road, which was constantlypatrolled by Makarios' armed bodyguards and EOKA guerrillas. He bored ahole in the top of the pole to conceal the electronics, and made aconcealed connection to the telephone cable. Down at the bottom Iselected his tools and relayed them up to him. Every five minutes wefroze as a patrol came past, expecting at any moment to hear riflefire. Two hours later, our nerves frayed, the tap was successfully installed, and gave us the essential base coverage of Makarios.

But the real purpose of SUNSHINE was to find Grivas. I was sure he mustbe using radio receivers to monitor British Army communications, andwas aware every time an effort was mounted to search for him. I decidedon a two-pronged attack. Firstly we would search intensively for theaerial which he used with his receiver. Then, simultaneously, I plannedto plant a radio receiver on him containing a radio beacon, which wouldlead us right to him. We knew Grivas obtained a great deal of hismilitary supplies from the Egyptians, who were selling off British equipment they had confiscated after the Suez war at knockdown prices.

MI6 recruited a Greek Cypriot arms dealer, who purchased a consignmentof receivers in Egypt which I modified to include a beacon, and we setabout trying to feed it into Grivas' headquarters.

The first part of Operation SUNSHINE went well. K.G., as Kirby Greenwas universally known in the Service, Magan and I made a series of dawnreconnoiters of the Limassol area looking for the aerial. It wasdangerous work, meandering down dusty side streets and across thesunbaked market squares, pretending to be casual visitors. Old menunder wicker shades looked at us as we passed. Small boys eyed ussuspiciously and disappeared down alleys. I felt the sweat drippingdown my back, and the uncanny sensation of an unseen rifle permanentlytrained on me from somewhere behind the terra-cotta roofs and ancient
flint walls.

In Yerasa I noticed a spike on the peak of the pyramid-shaped roof of achurch. It appeared, at first sight, to be a lightning conductor,
mounted on an insulator going through the roof. There was also ametallic strip going down into the ground, but when I scrutinized theconductor carefully through field glasses, I could see that the stripwas disconnected from the spike. It was obviously modified to act as anaerial. Rather foolishly, we tried to get closer, and, from nowhere, anangry crowd of local children emerged and began to stone us. We beat ahasty retreat, and made our way over to Polodhia, where there was asimilar setup. I was sure then that we had been right to pinpoint thetwo villages as the center of Grivas' operations.

I began to work feverishly on the radio beacons. We estimated thatSUNSHINE would take six months to complete, but just as we moved intotop gear, in late February 1959, the Colonial Office hurriedly settledthe Cyprus problem at a Constitutional Conference at Lancaster House.
The carpet was roughly pulled from under our feet, and the entireSUNSHINE plan aborted overnight. Magan was furious, particularly whenGrivas emerged from the precise area we had foreseen and was flown toGreece, ready to continue to exert a baleful influence on the island.
Magan felt the settlement was at best temporary, and that few of theoutstanding problems had been resolved. In his view, Colonial Officeshort-term expediency would lead to long-term misery. He has beenproved right.

Shortly before we left Cyprus, Magan and I had a strained encounterwith the Governor, Sir Hugh Foot. He was pleased that at last he wasextricated, and made it clear that he had always seen SUNSHINE as alast resort solution, to be implemented only in the event of thefailure of diplomacy. He seemed incapable of understanding thatintelligence, to be effective, has to be built into diplomacy from thestart. Looking back, I am certain that, had we been allowed toimplement Operation SUNSHINE when we first lobbied for it, in 1956, wecould have neutralized Grivas at the outset. The Colonial Office,
rather than EOKA, would then have been able to dictate the terms of thepeace, and the history of that tragic but beautiful island might havetaken a different course over the past thirty years.

The entire Cyprus episode left a lasting impression on British colonialpolicy. Britain decolonized most successfully when we defeated the military insurgency first, using intelligence rather than force of arms, before negotiating a political solution based on the political leadership of the defeated insurgency movement, and with British force of arms to maintain the installed government. This is basically whathappened in Malaya and Kenya, and both these countries have survived intact.

The fundamental problem was how to remove the colonial power while ensuring that the local military forces did not fill the vacuum. How,
in other words, can you create a stable local political class? The Colonial Office were well versed in complicated, academic, democratic models - a constitution here, a parliament there - very few of which stood the remotest chance of success. After the Cyprus experience I wrote a paper and submitted it to Hollis, giving my views. I said that we ought to adopt the Bolshevik model, since it was the only one to have worked successfully. Lenin understood better than anyone how to gain control of a country and, just as important, how to keep it. Lenin believed that the political class had to control the men with the guns, and the intelligence service, and by these means could ensure that neither the Army nor another political class could challenge for power.

Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the modern Russian IntelligenceService, specifically set up the CHEKA (forerunner of the KGB) with these aims in mind. He established three main directorates - the First Chief Directorate to work against those people abroad who might conspire against the government; the Second Chief Directorate to work against those inside the Soviet Union who might conspire; and the Third Chief Directorate, which penetrated the armed forces, to ensure that nomilitary coup could be plotted.

My paper was greeted with horror by Hollis and the rest of the MI5 Directors. They told me it was "cynical," and it was never even passed to the Colonial Office, but looking back over the past quarter of a century, it is only where a version of Lenin's principles has been applied in newly created countries that a military dictatorship has been avoided.

These ideas were also hotly contested by the CIA when I lectured to them in 1959. Helms told me flatly I was advocating Communism for theThird World. He felt that we had a decisive intelligence advantage which they lacked. We were the resident colonial power, where as in the insurgencies which they faced in the Far East and Cuba, they were not, and therefore they felt the only policy they could pursue was amilitary solution. It was this thinking which ultimately led the USA into the Vietnam War.

More immediately, it led them into the Bay of Pigs, and when, two years later, Harvey listened to my Cyprus experiences, he was struck by the parallel between the two problems: both small islands with a guerrilla force led by a charismatic leader. He was particularly struck by my view that without Grivas, EOKA would have collapsed.

This book was banned in the UK, Australia and the I think the US...huge controversy at the time...not sure if its still banned today...I got my copy in '88 in Taipei out of all places...

an interesting book documenting work from a field officer...worth the read...

[Bananiot]

You may be sick and tired, Kimon, because you found yourself a web site entitled "Britain's small wars" which you have quoted ad nauseum (but have you thought about the title? It says "small wars") which contains about a page of information of the events in 1956 and which you have used as it suits your stereotype mind. Perhaps you can now do some proper scientific research and tell us of the reasons Makarios failed to see the historical opportunity at the time. Can I suggest some proper books for your research? Can you take your blinkers off and see the light at last? Even if you start with the premise that "EOKA defeated Britain"?

[PC Bubble]

Britain defeated by EOKA ?

Another example of South Cypriots rewriting history to how they would like it to be written

Keep dreaming !

[kimon07]

SPYCATCHER

by

PETER WRIGHT with Paul Greengrass

WILLIAM HEINEMANN: AUSTRALIA

My sincere thanks for the post and for the link. I dedicate to banniot the parts of it that confirm that the British never defeated EOKA. Concerning the wrong tactics of the British forces, in my initial post I have quoted Grivas supporting exactly the same theory.
But I also found something wrong with the book. The MI5 planted bugs in the office of Makarios in 1959? And the streets were patrolled by armed Makarios supporters at that time? When was that exactly? Prior to or after the signature of the London Agreements? Wasn't Makarios out of Cyprus in 1959? And How come the British authorities did not arrest his armed "body guards"?

[kimon07]

To Bananiot and PCB.

Just read the post of boomerang above and the relevant link and stop littering the forum with your stupid and unsubstantiated posts.
Thank you.

And thanks again boomerang.

[Don Kelley]

So the Brits still keep hold of some Bases. This is a major comedown compared to wanting and having the whole island.

- Today, the bases are a symbol and a reminder of the crimes of the anachronistic British Empire.

Every Brit should feel ashamed to be so associated ...

It's not really a come down at all, (let alone a major one) as the whole of Cyprus only represented a very tiny part of the Empire in terms of area and the British would have given it up sooner or later.

However, Cyprus is unique as its probably the only former Crown Colony that the British kept a part of.

I agree that the base areas should be returned to the RoC, but as long as ethnic tensions exist on the island they will happily sit on the fence comfortably in the knowledge that that won't happen anytime soon.

The sensible Cypriots know how much they benefitted from the SBAs which were actualy policed by Cypriot SBA police even the SBA fire brigade was manned by Cyoriots, Cypriots found massive employment on and off the bases through their existence, there were also several UK military establishments in Limassol itself, you didn'y have to walk more than a few yards in residential areas of Limassol to find service personel in rented hirings.
When the Cypriot wage was around £5 were week you would rent a house for that much so think how much they benefited from The SBAs

[GreekIslandGirl]

So the Brits still keep hold of some Bases. This is a major comedown compared to wanting and having the whole island.

- Today, the bases are a symbol and a reminder of the crimes of the anachronistic British Empire.

Every Brit should feel ashamed to be so associated ...

It's not really a come down at all, (let alone a major one) as the whole of Cyprus only represented a very tiny part of the Empire in terms of area and the British would have given it up sooner or later.

However, Cyprus is unique as its probably the only former Crown Colony that the British kept a part of.

I agree that the base areas should be returned to the RoC, but as long as ethnic tensions exist on the island they will happily sit on the fence comfortably in the knowledge that that won't happen anytime soon.

The sensible Cypriots know how much they benefitted from the SBAs which were actualy policed by Cypriot SBA police even the SBA fire brigade was manned by Cyoriots, Cypriots found massive employment on and off the bases through their existence, there were also several UK military establishments in Limassol itself, you didn'y have to walk more than a few yards in residential areas of Limassol to find service personel in rented hirings.
When the Cypriot wage was around £5 were week you would rent a house for that much so think how much they benefited from The SBAs

I don't know where Me Ed gets the confidence to believe Britain would have given up Cyprus since all their own evidence at the time, and from before the EOKA struggle, records an overwhelming desire to hang on to Cyprus. The fact they kept the Bases ("unique" as Me Ed says) confirms and proves how much they wanted this Island's strategic position. The only way we're going to get full independence, now, is via Greece-EU. It's the same struggle, ongoing.

Britain knows, (as it did in the 50's) that the real divisions it must cause is to make us (majority/natives) believe we are NOT Greeks. They killed us if we so much as raised a Greek flag!

As for Don Kelley's insulting "wages" claims arising from the Bases - you conveniently ignore how wealthy Cypriots can become if left to their own devices. This slavery money was never asked for nor in reality needed as commerce/tourism will continue without the Bases. Did you mention any rent payments?

[GreekIslandGirl]

So the Brits still keep hold of some Bases. This is a major comedown compared to wanting and having the whole island.
- Today, the bases are a symbol and a reminder of the crimes of the anachronistic British Empire.
Every Brit should feel ashamed to be so associated ...

Strange isn't it how different people hold different views. Were you around in the early 60s when the people of Limassol loved the British who rented their houses used their shops, restaurants and just about evrything in fact?
The truth is that the British on the Episkopi/Akrotiri SBAs provided the bulk of the Limassol economy. When the British finaly got fed up with the continuing unrest between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots around 1965 they insisted that the UN take over.
Just 14 years after independence the Greeks pushed the Turks too far and got thrashed, had the British still been policing the Isaland the Turks wouldn't have dared thought of invading.
So do tell us where the Eoka (who defeated the british) were when the Turks invaded in 74, where is Eoka now that the turks have been in Cyprus 38 years, strange isn't it that you claim they beat the mighty, well trained, British Army but can't sort out a bunch of ill paid conscripts who are forced to enlist into the Turkish army.

Can you tell me some more about this point?

(BTW The Turks attempted their first, overt, invasion just 4 years after semi-independence NOT 14 years).

Where is EOKA now, you ask? EOKA has been replaced by Greece-EU. The struggle for freedom continues ... (Wondered why Britain is trying so hard to remove Greece from the EU? And so many Brits here still telling us we are not Greek?)