Cyprus: colonial terrorism; false flag operations

I've decided to post separately, here, the notes on terrorism and false flag operations (state terrorism) in colonial and what cannot honestly be called post-colonial Cyprus, which I had jammed into the bottom of the post on the Vietnam War: faked Tonkin Gulf incident; Strait of Hormuz (on samarkeolog).

That post wasn't especially surprising or particularly relevant to my work, but its examples were important and they were also good examples of a more general problem that I've been faced with reading up on Cypriot history, which is getting past all of the "public knowledge", which is often incorrect, but perpetuated through misbelief or malice. Unfortunately, I cannot currently present any examples directly related to my own work, but I hope I will be able to in the future.

Still, a Serb friend of mine will be delighted to read something indicting the British and affirming his theory that, contrary to popular opinion, it is they who are playing the Americans for fools. (Disappointingly, 'it was not a British plan', but American after all, with the assent of Greece and Turkey.)

Writing about Britain's operations against EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters)) - a Greek Cypriot terrorist organisation struggling to unite the island with Greece (enosis) - in colonial-period Cyprus (via Sergeant Major Herbert A. Friedman and Brigadier General Ioannis Paschalidis), Stephen Dorril relayed that:

The IRD [British Information Research Department] became "a thorn in the flesh" of the Colonial Office, for its insistence on presenting the Cyprus problem in terms of communism.

"Secret intelligence reports" were dangled before American correspondents, who were told that "captured documents" - which they never actually saw confirmed that EOKA was in league with the communists.

This was a totally distorted view; the Cypriot Communist Party (AKEL) link to EOKA was tenuous at best. EOKA was, in fact, anti-communist [and] became engaged in a feud with AKEL, which eventually denounced the use of terrorism.

In another post, I regretted that 'it [would] be a long time before - if - I ever [got] to discuss the British government's betrayal of the occupied Greeks' anti-Nazi resistance, ELAS', but what I can, at least, reiterate, is what Daniele Ganser (2005: 213) said, which was that, during the Nazi occupation of Greece,

former Nazi collaborators and right-wing special units, such as the fascist X Bands of Cypriot soldier George Grivas, with British support started to hunt and kill ELAS [Ellinikos Laikos Apelevtherotikos Stratos (Greek People's Liberation Army)] resistance fighters.

General George Grivas was later the 'founder and military leader' of EOKA and its successor organisation EOKA-B, which, in its struggle forenosis, killed British military and civilians (as well as Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots) and made British colonial rule of Cyprus unaffordable. How's that for blowback (1)?

It's worth noting, too, something that TMT (Türk Mukavemet Teşkilâtı (Turkish Resistance Organisation)) - a Turkish Cypriot terrorist organisation struggling to partition Cyprus between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots (taksim) - did during the EOKA campaign against the colonial British, as an example of false flag operations in Cyprus.

In 1958, the Turkish Cypriot Press and Information Office (PIO) [the Press Office of the Turkish Consulate] was bombed and EOKA blamed, though Turkish Cypriot extremists TMT were responsible. Then leader of TMT, Rauf Denktash, later stated that 'Army officers in Turkey were in head of TMT'.

So, this incident also exposes Great Power games on the island, even with disregard to the suffering of the community they claim as their own. (It's also worth noting that 'British troops... were materially aiding Turkish insurgents', possibly even under official 'British orders'.)

(It was the NATO-supported, CIA-backed, Greek-junta-directed, Cypriot National Guard, with EOKA-B, which held a coup against President Archbishop Makarios and the NATO-supported, American-backed, Turkish military that invaded to defeat the coupists and partition the island.

Both of those actions were accepted or actively supported by the Americans for a multitude of reasons, including, control and/or containment of the Middle East, NATO, Soviet Russia, Communism (more generally), etc., while they were acceded to by the British, whose intervention the Americans vetoed.)

1. British blowback from recent operations in Bosnia and Kosovo has been discussed by British Labour MP Michael Meacher (the first link to the Guardian article, the second to its reproduction on his blog).