Our View: Buffer zone incident more than an excuse for bluster

The foreign ministry protested to the United Nations about an incident in the buffer zone where armed Turkish soldiers ordered a Greek Cypriot shepherd to leave and threw stones at him. Before the government stepped in, the community leader of Denia, Christakis Panayiotou, had reported the incident to Unificyp, the National Guard and the foreign ministry; he had also taken a video of the incident.

There were no peacekeepers in the area at the time, said Panayiotou, but the spokesman of Unficyp, Aleem Siddique, told Cyprus News Agency that the incident was being investigated. “The investigation must be completed before we reach any conclusions,” he was quoted as saying. This was understandable as Unficyp could not accept the version of events given by the Greek Cypriot unquestioningly.

What might appear strange to anyone unfamiliar with the intricacies of the Cyprus problem, is why Unficyp would waste time and resources investigating a trivial episode, which did not exactly threaten peace in the area. Some occupation soldiers intimidated a shepherd and then threw stones at him, which does not amount to anything in the wider scheme of things.

Our political parties, always looking for an excuse to engage in a little grandstanding, issued fire and brimstone announcements, with Diko condemning the “aggressive, threatening, criminal new provocation by armed Turkish soldiers” and urging the government “to treat the demarches it makes with particular strictness.” Edek attacked Unficyp for failing to provide security to “legal residents that enter the buffer zone to carry out their work,” reminding it that “the buffer zone is territory of the Cyprus Republic that was ceded to the UN for supervision purposes.”

After the obligatory, theatre the matter has been forgotten. There may be some general reference to it in next report by the UN Secretary-General for the renewal of the Unficyp mandate, assuming there will be one. The possibility that the mandate might not be renewed in January or in a year’s time, because the UN presence would be deemed unjustified by the Security Council, does not seem of any concern to the parties, which are under the illusion that Unficyp will remain, monitoring the buffer zones and acting as mediators in petty squabbles.

What will the defiant parties do if this doesn’t happens? Are they certain the buffer zone will be returned to the Republic? To whom will they protest then, if armed Turkish soldiers decide to enter the buffer and stay there? This is what our parties should be focusing on – what happens when Unficyp withdraws from Cyprus – instead of making a big song-and-dance about a minor violation of the buffer zone, about which they can do nothing.