The New Year has opened on an ominous note for Britain. On New Year’s day itself 600 more British troops were flown to Cyprus to police an uneasy truce between the embattled Greek and Turkish communities there. On the spot in Nicosia, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, Mr Duncan Sandys, intervened forcefully with the President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, to secure at least the toning down if not the reversal of his disastrous announcement regarding the decision to abrogate treaties with Britain, Greece and Turkey. This decision would have invited Turkish intervention, the threat of which prompted Britain to rush troops there last week.
No one here claims to know how long the British troops will have to carry on with this holding operation in Cyprus. All that is clear is that even if it proves possible, as is proposed, to convene a conference in London of British, Greek and Turkish foreign ministers and the representatives of the bitterly hostile Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, the task of restoring the necessary confidence will be extremely arduous. Archbishop Makarios’s ill-considered announcement of last Wednesday has immeasurably complicated a highly complicated and dangerous situation.
Major Problems
Though Cyprus has been claiming the headlines for over a week, this is by no means the only major problem Britain faces in the New Year. On New Year’s day the security committee of the Malaysian Cabinet met to consider its protest to the United Nations on what it called the Indonesian aggression in Sarawak and Sabah (north Borneo). In a raid last Sunday in Sabah, a Malaysian officer and seven soldiers were killed and 19 soldiers injured. The next day the British Defence Minister, Mr Peter Thorneycroft, left on a 16-day tour of British military bases and garrisons which takes him to Aden, Maldive islands, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei and finally to Cyprus and Malta on his way back home. On the eve of his departure he let it be known that Britain was entitled in an emergency to draw upon its 53,000 troops in Germany, an eloquent commentary on the situation this country faces in the new year.
As reported previously in these columns 6,000 men are already committed to the defence of Sarawak and Sabah. It is generally agreed that if President Sukarno’s policy of “confrontation” takes a more active form in the coming spring this force will have to be substantially reinforced because the number of trained and armed men on the Indonesian side of the border is said to be around 12,000. Till recently it was expected that the brigade now in Kenya would become available for duty in Malaysia. In view of the outbreak of terrorism in the Somali-inhabited Northern district of Kenya the brigade is now to stay there. The British Government can withdraw some forces from Hong Kong but in all only six battalions are stationed there.
The British army’s total strength is 171,000. This includes 49,000 “home” troops which are not frontline troops. The garrison of 3,000 in Berlin and the British army on the Rhine account for 56,000 men. Already over 46,000 troops are stationed overseas – 15,500 in Aden and Bahrein, 11,500 in Singapore, Malaya, Sarawak and Sabah, 5,500 in Kenya, 2,000 in Libya, 1,800 in British Guiana, 1,200 in Gibraltar, 900 in British Honduras, 700 in Swaziland and well over 3,000 in Cyprus now. This leaves less than 20,000 troops in reserve. No other army in the world is more overextended.
Seventh Fleet
The British Government has maintained scrupulous silence regarding Australia’s and New Zealand’s unwillingness to post even token forces in Malaysia but there is no disguising the disappointment. The confusion in American policy is blamed for Australia’s and New Zealand’s policy of non-involvement. The British Government has welcomed the American proposal to send a part of the Seventh Fleet in the Indian Ocean in the expectation that this might help to dissuade President Sukarno from intensifying the struggle against Malaysia. It is, however, aware that some American officials still regard Indonesia with a population of over 100 million as a more effective bulwark against communism than Malaysia with a population of ten million.
In Aden 1963 ended with the stoning by Yemeni tribesmen of three British Labour members of Parliament who had gone there to investigate charges of detainees under the emergency being tortured and in the new year a critical constitutional crisis has been barely averted by the refusal of the Chief Minister to resign. The Aden base and the oil of the sheikdoms in Southern Arabia are the greatest strategic and economic prizes that are left of the vanished empire. The British Government is under no illusion that it is in for growing unrest in this area.
The revolt in Yemen last year changed the whole scene in this vital area. It not only brought the Arabian wind of change, symbolised by President Nasser, uncomfortably close to the outmoded tiny sheikdoms, but provided encouragement to the Yemeni workers in Aden to resist the merger of the politically conscious island base with the ramshackle South Arabian Federation. Britain cannot hang on to these prizes indefinitely but she must do so as long as possible if, to quote a commentator, “the rest of our overseas responsibilities are going to be met and also if the standard of living on this island is not to plunge”. And that is going to involve increasing military commitments.
As if to underscore another trouble spot, a new Southern Rhodesian High Commissioner took office on New Year’s day. He made a conciliatory statement to the extent that he did not hold out the threat of unilateral declaration of independence. But he ruled out amendment of the present constitution to provide for greater representation to the African majority community. Even if the British Government is willing to wait the situation may not remain static. African countries are clearly impatient.
To return to Cyprus, it is difficult to envisage a more complex situation than the one that exists on that small island of less than 6,00,000 people. We Indians are only too familiar with the havoc that the introduction of communal franchise played in our political life. In Cyprus the situation is further bedevilled by the fact that two foreign powers, Greece and Turkey, are legally entitled to intervene to secure the rights of the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots respectively. Britain is also similarly entitled but there is no threat to the British bases at the moment.
Under the Cyprus constitution, the Vice-President who has to be a Turkish Cypriot has the right of veto over the decision of the Greek Cypriot President. Parliament consisting of 35 Greek and 15 Turkish Cypriots must pass every major legislation with both an overall and a communal majority. This gives the Turkish minority of about 18 per cent, the power of veto which it has used to block all taxation and fiscal measures.
The constitution stipulates that 30 per cent of the civil servants and the police force and 40 per cent of the army personnel must be Turkish Cypriots. This may not appear too bad but the Turkish Vice-President insisted that the proposed army should be organised not as an integrated force but on a communal basis and the result is that the army could not be formed. The police force functions on a communal basis.
Unworkable
This apparently unworkable constitution is the symptom and not the cause of the malady. The Turks were not always the most beloved of rulers and the Ottoman empire left a trail of bitterness. The Greek Cypriots displayed no generosity either when the Ottoman empire gave way to British rule. They treated the Turks as if they were barbarians. The bitter struggle for the Greek Cypriots for union with the motherland fanned the worst fears of the Turkish minority. The result was the holocaust of 1958. This in turn led to the Zurich and London agreements and the present intricately architected constitution.
The British Government cannot turn away in horror. Cyprus is the only major military base in the Eastern Mediterranean. A conflict between Greece and Turkey, both members of NATO, could also mean collapse of the alliance’s flank.
The Times of India, 4 January 1964