Steven Katsineris
The US wants to upgrade its half-century intelligence presence on Cyprus into a fully fledged army base when the Greek and Turkish Cypriot sides agree on reunification, according to a report by Iason Athanasiadis in the March 6 edition of the Beirut Daily Star.
The Pentagon has suggested it might begin by establishing a "bare-bones" military presence on the island, following the eventual reunification of the divided country, according to several strategic analysts.
The tactic of forward deployment of large numbers of US soldiers is increasingly outmoded in the age of rapid transport. Instead, the Pentagon has developed a network of "forward operating locations" into which its troops can regularly rotate and prepare the ground ahead of a major deployment. The planned base would help facilitate US military interventions in the eastern Mediterranean region and the Middle East.
Britain and the US have had intelligence interests on the strategically placed island ever since the beginning of the Cold War. They have maintained sophisticated surveillance equipment atop Mount Troodos — the highest point on Cyprus — scouring the airwaves across the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The huge dishes and antennas of this secret base scan electronic and radio signals, intercepting commercial, diplomatic and military communications.
"Cyprus played a crucial role in the Western defence system by acting as an electronic ear for the whole of the Mediterranean", former Cypriot diplomat Marios Evriviades told Athanasiadis.
The two British bases on Cyprus — established in 1960 and still very active today — are there intercepting military and diplomatic signals around the Middle East for the US and Britain. There are also some US intelligence facilities in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, such as those in the US embassy. They are used for tactical intelligence, monitoring Arab radio broadcasts, then transcribing and translating them for Washington.
During the Cold War, Cyprus was a key part of the NATO security mechanism against the Soviet Union. In particular, it was a crucial link in the axis that stretched from West Germany to Turkey in an arc that wrapped around the Soviet Union's south-western flank.
Cold War spy base
The US intelligence presence in Cyprus began with the UKUSA Agreement, which dates from the end of the second world war and outlines an intelligence agreement between the US and Britain, but also includes Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Later, the US National Security Agency installed an automated spy post in the Turkish-occupied north.
"The NSA listening post in Northern Cyprus plays the same role as the one in the southern part", said Evriviades. "These were operations that were restarted after the Turkish invasion of 1974. For a long time [the US] pretended it was not restarting them but today the Cypriot government does not have the luxury of arguing with the United States."
Beyond providing a base for US spying, Cyprus has been a major launching pad for most of the past half century's US-British military interventions into the Arab world. In the 1950s, US military involvement in Lebanon and Jordan was initiated from the British bases on the island.
The US military also secured rights from Britain to move bomber groups into Cyprus in the event of a global war against the Soviet Union and to launch U-2 spy planes to monitor Soviet military developments.
Following abandonment of its military bases in the Suez Canal in 1954, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden stated that British military bases on Cyprus were vital to protecting the flow of cheap Middle East oil to Britain. "No Cyprus", he declared, "no certain facilities to protect our supply of oil. No oil, unemployment and hunger in Britain. It is as simple as that."
Cyprus has traditionally been viewed by European and US colonial policymakers as a strategic Western outpost next to the hostile Arab world. The eastern Mediterranean receded in significance for a while after the Cold War, but the "war on terror" has brought it back into the spotlight, especially with US incursions on the rise in the region.
With US troops in Iraq, Bahrain and Central Asia, and a new US naval base in Djibouti, to US planners Cyprus is an increasingly desirable location for a base to cover the Arab world from the eastern Mediterranean.
The US occupation of Iraq, the conflict in Palestine, NATO's expansion east, terrorist attacks in Turkey, increasing US pressure on Syria and Iran and Washington's concerns about oil and other US economic interests in the region have put Cyprus back in focus as a key intelligence and logistics centre.
There are very high stakes for the US, not least of which are the oil and gas resources of the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and North Africa, an expanding military presence throughout the Caucasus and the ambitious Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline.
Washington hopes that eventual reunification of Cyprus will open up opportunities for an expanded and more permanent military presence in addition to its well-established intelligence gathering activities.
"No-one can say with certainty that there has been a deal between Turkey and the US regarding an American military presence... it depends upon what turn the negotiations take", said a European diplomat in Istanbul, speaking to Athanasiadis on condition of anonymity.
The base would be like those the US is constructing throughout strategic locations in east Africa and Central Asia. A move to Cyprus would be in concord with the current realignment of the US presence in Europe, from Germany to eastern Europe, while maintaining the primary focus of military operations on the Middle East.
'Peacekeeping force'
According to Greece's Daily Times, Washington is studying the possibility of "sending a military force to Cyprus, in the form of a peacekeeping force".
"US officials have already proposed this to the Turkish Cypriot side, stressing the island's strategic importance for the superpower's geopolitical interests", wrote Daily Times diplomatic correspondent Manos Roussos.
Cyprus would be turned into an "international mandate country" serving the interests of the US and its British ally, claimed the Cypriot newspaper Simerini. It reported said NATO is particularly interested in getting access to the Gecitkale airport in the north of the island.
Using Cyprus as a logistics base would allow the Pentagon more flexibility in planning its interventions in the Middle East and give it firmer control over the oil-rich regions of the Middle East, North Africa and the Caspian Sea, especially at a time when Libya is reopening to Western investment.
In addition, it would allow easier supervision of regional sea routes and complement the US military presence in Djibouti that guards the southern access point to Egypt's Suez Canal, by establishing a military presence near the canal's northern exit.
Cyprus's southern extremity is just 200 kilometres from the Suez Canal. On February 6, the Turkish NTV television news channel reported that the strategic planning department of the US European Forces Command considers Cyprus a "strategically important place" because of its proximity to the oil fields of the Middle East, the Caucasus and Africa, as well as for the security of the BTC oil corridor.
The NTV report noted that a US base on Cyprus would increase US "emergency intervention capacities" in the Caucasus, Middle East and Central Asia and boost Washington's pre-emptive strike capacity, as well as guaranteeing it a "security belt" in the area.
Oil pipeline
The strategic importance of the Turkish port of Ceyhan — situated about 70km from the northern tip of Cyprus — is set to increase over the coming years as northern Iraqi oil flows out on the Kirkuk-Yumurtalik pipeline and the ambitious BTC pipeline comes on stream. The US already has a base close to the port, in Turkey's Incirlik air base.
In an April 10 article for Asia Times Online, Athanasiadis reported that there are strong indications that US plans for Cyprus go beyond military bases to a more moment and extensive Western presence.
The island "could become an offshore financial and services centre" for US corporations, John Sitilides, director of the Washington-based Western Policy Center, told Athanasiadis, adding: "Turkish Cypriots could be brought up to speed with the assistance of high-tech giants such as Microsoft and Sun Microsystems; a knowledge economy can be established that spans the eastern Mediterranean and serves the Balkans, Turkey and the Arab world."
Although Cyprus hasn't rated highly in the global arena of US military activity, the rather sudden intense US involvement in trying to reunify the island could rapidly change that. Due to past US interference in Cyprus and the region Cypriots are very distrustful of US motives and participation in the Cyprus conflict.
Signs of the Bush administration's strong political and financial backing for a solution to the Cyprus problem has fuelled speculation that a US base would be set up in the unified state that emerged. The renewed US interest in the Cyprus conflict has included offers of "generous" aid to promote a resolution.
Arab fears that Cyprus will become a US protectorate have been heightened by Washington's moves to redeploy its military forces in Germany to bases further east and media reports that the US applied considerable pressure on Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his trip to Washington to resolve the Cyprus issue, promising up to US$35 billion in investments.
The US is also angling for NATO troops to replace the UN force on the island. "Cyprus is going to be part of Europe first", said Hassan Kaoni, a professor of international relations who also sits on Turkey's military dominated National Security Council. "If and when the Europeans accent to follow American policies in the Middle East, then it can become an important base. This will be discussed in NATO meetings in Turkey."
As Cyprus is not a member of NATO, it remains to be seen what decisions the US and NATO will make for the island.
From Green Left Weekly, June 9, 2004.
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