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SAIS Review 23.1 (2003) 325-327



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The Work of the UN in Cyprus: Promoting Peace and Development, edited by Oliver P. Richmond and James Ker-Lindsay. (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 279 pp. $65.

"Tourism! That is what the blue berets do all year long!" This is the answer a visitor will most likely get from both Greek and Turkish Cypriots when inquiring about the dozens of empty UN observation posts dotting the cease-fire line that has divided the island since 1974. Over the past several decades, the UN's unsuccessful interventions have disappointed many of its supporters, and its operations in Cyprus are barely an exception to this rule. Despite several rounds of UN-sponsored negotiations under four different Secretaries-General and several appointed mediators, the resolution of the conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots remained highly improbable during most of the forty years of communal strife that followed Cyprus's declaration of independence from Britain in 1960.

A new book entitled The Work of the UN in Cyprus: Promoting Peace and Development, however, refutes this gloomy picture by providing an alternative perspective. Despite the popular Cypriot perception that nothing much has been achieved in the fields of peace building and peacekeeping since 1974, the essays in The Work of the UN in Cyprus argue that indeed the lack of major tension and bloodshed over this period has been largely due to the United Nations Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP). But most importantly, this is the first work of its kind to examine the efforts undertaken to rebuild civil society through humanitarian activities. This approach has proven quite successful in getting the two separated communities to collaborate again.

The book, edited and authored by specialists on the UN's work in Cyprus, is not written for experts but for anyone interested in understanding how two peoples who had lived harmoniously for centuries on the same island took up arms against one another. The Work of the UN in Cyprus is conveniently divided into three parts: one examines the background prior to the initial UN involvement on the island in 1955 and up until 1960, a second focuses on the UN's contribution [End Page 325] to the conflict's resolution from 1964 onward, and a third addresses development and humanitarian issues. Hence, even readers who know nothing about the conflict in Cyprus can easily familiarize themselves with the subject. However, the narrative may be at times too detailed, especially in the first part.

One admirable quality of the work that greatly enhances its objectivity is that the authors, for the most part, avoid siding with either community's version of what led to the conflict or what makes it persist. They do not refrain from criticism, however, when they feel that some players were too intransigent and impeded progress toward a negotiated settlement. Indeed, when reading about UN-sponsored negotiations on Cyprus, one is struck by the diversity of interests present. Athens and the Greek Cypriots strove to achieve the island's union with Greece, while Ankara and the Turkish Cypriots aimed to prevent this and to achieve a division of Cyprus between the two "homelands." In the meantime, Britain, the former colonial master, sought to preserve its two strategically important bases on the island. In the background, the United States and the Soviet Union each wanted to make sure that Cyprus did not drift into the other's camp.

Under these circumstances, there is little wonder, the authors argue, that the UN could not achieve much diplomatically. The nature of the UN as an organization of sovereign states meant that all these diverging interests were also reflected in the UN's mandate, with each side trying to influence it to advance its goals. Without the means to impose its resolutions and lacking support from the two superpowers to pressure the individual governments, it is no wonder that most UN-sponsored initiatives were doomed to fail. In fact, the Cyprus case demonstrates amply how inadequately equipped the sovereignty-based structure of the UN is to deal with...

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