Working on the ground, trained spotters dropped by moonlight or slipping ashore unseen in small craft, guided the incoming raiders to their targets.
Cypriots awoke to the wail of air raid sirens over the capital Nicosia and every town and village in the tiny island state. Then came the thunder from the skies, with all the terrible force of a Wall Street bunker-busting bomb. Wham! Laiki (‘Popular’) bank took a direct hit, blown to smithereens.
Ground-to-vault guided missiles took out most deposits over 100,000 euros, fortunately leaving smaller amounts only slightly singed, at least for the time being.
Specially tipped weapons designed to detect hot Russian money found their targets with exquisite precision. (Not)
Air Marshall Mario Draghi at ECB Fiscal Bomber Command in Frankfurt declared the mission ‘a complete success.’
‘We have taken a small and defenseless country and bombed it back to the fiscal Stone Age, just to show that we mean business.
‘Of course it is a salutary lesson that when it comes to the might of the euro squadrons, resistance is useless.
‘Other so called ‘nation states’ and assorted back-sliders who may be tempted to the path of rebellion should survey the ruins of Cyprus and think again, long and hard. The imperial squadrons will in future strike hard and fast before there are any time-wasting pretexts at negotiations.
‘From now on, no savings are safe. From now on, no deposit account, no deep armored vault will resist the imperial raiders.
‘We tried the soft approach in Greece, by reducing the country to starvation and abject disorder. That wasn’t enough for the Cypriots. They plotted sedition and treachery in the middle of the night. Can you believe it, the miserable traitors even sent secret emissaries to the Evil Empire!’
‘And the ultimate heresy! They threatened to give away our gas and oil to godless infidels! Why this in itself was enough to start a war. It was time to act cleanly, quickly and surgically.’
He rose from his ornate desk, swished down a rolled map of the Southern Mediterranean, selecting Cyprus for a sharp thwack of his cane.
‘Enough is enough! No more of this seditious talk of seceding from the Union and the Glorious all-conquering Euro!.’
As Cypriots clambered through the morning rubble of their ‘nation state’, long queues formed at ATM feeding points. It soon became clear that the entire country was on starvation rations, according to another edict from the imperial commissars.
The last word belongs to Air Marshall Draghi: ‘If we have to starve them into submission, then we will.’
The Paintball Island: A short history of Cyprus and her neighbors.
Occupation circa four centuries by the Ottoman Empire.
Seized by the British in 1878.
Offered to Greece in 1915 on condition of entering European war. King Constantine I refuses.
1925: becomes a British Crown colony, heavily fortified to protect the Suez Canal, the empire’s main jugular.
1940: Greeks repulse attack by Italians, Germans invade and occupy the country with great brutality. Cyprus spared because Hitler decides to attack Russia. But the German conquest of her main export markets reduces Cypriots to penury.
1946: The island is a side theater of the ghastly Greek Civil War – incited when wartime partisans who defeated the Nazis are attacked by UK occupation troops ‘to prevent communist take-over.’
1950’s uprising against British occupation, in pursuit of Enosis (union with Greece). Wartime Greek resistance hero Colonel ‘Digenis’ Grivas defeats huge British occupation force with a handful of picked men and women.
Mocking clumsy British over-kill tactics, Grivas wrote this sally: ‘One does not use a tank to catch field mice: a cat would do the job much better.’
1959 referendum among Greek-Cypriots favors Enosis by a huge margin. Nervous Turkish population readies for trouble.
1960 UK grants quasi-independence, retains large military sovereign bases. Uneasy cohabitation between Greeks and Turks in a unitary government.
1971: Western-backed military neo-Fascist junta seizes power in Greece
US/NATO convince themselves that Cyprus, the west’s aircraft carrier moored off the turbulent stews of the Middle East, is the embryo Cuba of the Med. The president, the Orthodox Archbishop Makarios, is absurdly painted as a ‘clerical Castro’ and agent of Moscow.
Western powers provoked by Henry Kissinger decide to force division of Cyprus between Greeks and Turks. The wily and calculating Makarios, originally pro-union with Greece, resists.
Civil war erupts between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, leads to horrific pogrom: Turkey and Greece close to full-scale war in a series of evolving crises. Aerial dogfights erupt.
1974: Greek junta sends western-backed guerillas (contractors) to invade the island and assassinate Makarios, who narrowly escapes and flees to the UN in New York. Reign of brutal genocidal terror lasts seven bloody days.
US ambassador in Cyprus, Rodger Davies, shot dead when the embassy in Nicosia is surrounded without warning by well-trained armed men.
By pre-arrangement among the four guarantor powers (UK, US, Greece, Turkey) Turkish forces land in the north and establish a separate Turkish Cypriot conclave. Allied policy of sundering the island to protect NATO installations at last successful. As a bonus, the detested and now disposable Greek Junta collapses.
UN lands forces to separate the Greek and Turkish Cypriot protagonists. The Turks unilaterally declare Northern Cyprus a sovereign independent state.
May 2004: The southern Greek rump of the island is allowed to join the EU. The Turkish North is excluded, unrecognized, frozen in time and a state of suspended animation.
Another first for Cyprus: she is the only EU member state to host UN peace-keepers, the thousand strong force mustered from a dozen countries, the so-called ‘holiday army’ which finds itself still on duty after 50 years. The blue caps are the mainstay of prostitution, a significant contributor to island GNP.
Cyprus is a pawn that frustrates Turkey’s ambitions to join the EU. All international efforts aiming at reconciliation between the two communities run into sand.
With no as-yet exploitable natural resources, save sunshine and beaches, Cyprus evolves into a tax haven and huge money laundering spigot. Brussels looks the other way, despite famous EU ‘no hiding place’ accords on stamping out tax evasion and illegal international cash transactions.
The island’s potentially significant offshore oil and gas reserves have become a serious bone of contention between Israel, Greece, Turkey, the European Union and Russia. Oil wars loom.
March 24 2012: Greek Cyprus reverts to the status of a colony under ‘direct economic management’ of the EU. The Turkish north is excluded.
Relevant reading: Blood on their Hands, by this author (copies to be found on second hand networks), and Gladio (see below).
Edited by Madison Ruppert and WD
Richard Cottrell is a writer, journalist and former European MP (Conservative).
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