Nabbed by the National Guard

Well the Army found Alex on Friday.

Most lads get their papers at age sixteen, and since he had made it to seventeen and a half without their being served, we were wondering if somehow he had slipped through the cracks. Perhaps the host of irregularities attending his birth (mixed parentage, unwed parents, no number on his birth certificate, no baptism (previously only Orthodox boys served), parents moved district in early childhood) had led to his somehow evading the system – and since it is the obligation of the State to serve the papers than for the boys to volunteer, we thought that he might just be blessed with the choice of whether or not to don a uniform and pick up a rifle (there is no chance of non-combattant status in the Cyprus National Guard) when he finished school.

I had rather mixed feelings about this choice, and knew that should he face it, he would have to make it alone. On the one hand, I am a pacifist and hate the thought of my sons serving as conscripts in an army – as well as resenting the fact that the two years that the Army takes (and in many cases wastes with endless guard duty rather than taking the opportunity for serious training and creativity within either a military or a community service sphere) are two that would otherwise be spent in the enthusiasm of youth's creativity, curiosity, passion. On the other, I recognise the Army as almost a rite of passage for Cypriot men. If someone doesn't do it, everyone thinks 'Lucky Sod!', but they also realise that that individual has missed out on an experience that nearly everyone else endures – a bonding, for better or for worse... So I had resolved to stand well back and let him make his own choices within the embrace of parental support.

But a phone call from the police on Friday changed all that. The Army had been looking for Alex for weeks in Nicosia and had finally found him through a relative in the police with the same surname; he had to report to the 'Army Office' to sign his papers and provide reason for any possible deferrment within the next fifteen days, or he would be conscripted in January.

We went this morning to the government building, found the Army Office, and spoke to a corporal behind the desk. “Where do you go to school?” she enquired when he said that he had spoken to the police. When he told her, she sighed: “You pay all that money for a private school, and they don't get the papers right with us, ever!” He filled out his form, signed it, and she explained that we had to have a letter from the school by December saying that he was enrolled for this year – which corresponds to the Third year of Lyceum. Next year, when he will be finishing his A-Levels and school is not mandatory, he will need another letter and proof of fees paid.

“Typical!” Alex snorted when we got into the car. “You remember N, the kid who was like the unofficial student council, the liason last year when there was all the trouble (our school has undergone a series of upheavals in the last few years culminating in total shake-ups, take-downs, and seismic changes)? He was in a similar situation. Told the Army he was at my school, the Army called for verification, and the school said he wasn't a student. He couldn't finish his A-levels and he's doing his two years now...” I don't know what N's story was – except that he is indeed a gun-bunny these days rather than the A student that he was – but I suspect that his parents (like many at our school) had not paid this year's deposit because they wanted to see what all the changes would bring before committing to another year – and thus the school, with no reason to protect N, simply said that he was not enrolled.

We went to the school, and requested the verification of Alex's being a student, and the Director explained that he never filled out the Army forms. “I can't,” he said. “It's a violation of the state's privacy laws to give details of my students to anyone, even the government!”

That may be true, but at least he could have let parents know that the papers had been served so that they had the choice of whether or not to fill them out, avoiding a last-minute scramble! All of Alex's other friends from school have already either gone into the Army – being a year ahead, are foreigners who are exempt, or are girls.  

Heat and Unrest

With several consecutive nights of demonstrations outside the Presidential Palace behind them, police in Nicosia have spent today supervising the clearing of ornamental rocks from the big roundabout in front of the Palace gates. People here are angry. They are calling for the President's resignation as it becomes more and more evident that not only the National Guard was aware of and counselling the removal of the 2000 tonnes of explosives that took out the Navy base and the power station on Monday, but also the Ministers of Justice, Commerce, Defense, Foreign Affairs, and Finance – as well as two high ranking people from the President's office -- all of whom had surely submitted minutes of meetings and reports as to the seriousness of the situation.

But Mr Christofias has yet to offer an apology, or an explanation for the government's continued inaction. And he is sure to duck any responsibility (such is the nature of corruption and cronyism in a society as small and interrelated as ours)  – though he has promised 'A thorough investigation and full accountability.' He had a 'conversation' with the Attorney General the other day.. A chat, I imagine, in which the two discussed how the president might best be exculpated. Nothing like the criminal investigation that should be taking place.

Meanwhile more details are emerging as to the actual events. The base commander, realising the dangers posed by the poorly stored ammunition following some minor explosions of the detonators within the containers last week, organised an exercise that got all personell off-post. The officers, NCOs and conscripts were sleeping under canvas some distance away – and probably cursing their CO for the heat and inconvenience. When the fire broke out in the early hours of Monday morning, the commander orderd that the sentries leave their posts, and dismissing his own driver ('Where shall we go sir? How can we leave the base unguarded?' they asked. But 'Go to the others, go somewhere, just get the hell out of here!' he answered) went with his commander, a senior NCO, and the 19-year-old twin conscripts who were manning the base firefighting apparatus, to assist the fire crews in putting out the brush fire. The driver, on his way out of the gate after collecting something from his office was caught in the blast but survived. Of the base, nothing is left but a huge crater.

The commander had also had the presence of mind to send part of the fire crew to warn the power station, and to block the road to the arriving shift. A friend of Best Beloved's got to work there shortly after seven to find a scene reminiscent of a war zone.

'But if they knew that it was going to blow, why didn't the commanders leave too?' Alex asked last night. 'They could have saved themselves...'

'Because it was their job,' we answered. 'There was still the possibilty of putting out the fire, of saving the base and the power station – and as long as that possibilty existed, they had to go. Even knowing that they were probably not going to make it, trying was their duty. And knowing that the young brothers with them were probably going to die too, they still had to try. That's what it means to lead, to take responsibility – whatever the consequences.'

The last few days have been full of funerals.  S has been to three, including those of the twins:  'These are my friends, guys my age, guys who got drunk and joked, guys I had push-up competitions with... Another friend is lying in hospital with no eyes and half his brain gone.  We all feel bad: our officers are telling us that these guys were heroes -- maybe so, but they're still dead.' The funerals have been marked by anger, but also by dignity. And underlying the sadness and bitterness is a fear for the future: Cypriots were feeling fairly comfortable, despite the recession. Now, with 60% of our electrical generating power knocked out, with rolling power and water cuts affecting pretty much everyone, the economy is set to take a heavy blow.  Small businesses are losing money, people can't use the banks, the supermarkets are dark, hot, running on a skeleton staff.  Traffic lights stop working as the power once again shuts down... It will be a long road back.

Explosion at Mari

Yesterday morning at around six two containers of ammunition – part of a stockpile of 98 containers confiscated in 2009 from an Iranian ship heading for Syria – exploded at the navy base near Zygi. Twelve men were killed: the Commandant of the Navy, the commander of the base, an NCO from OYK (the Cyprus SEALS), twin brothers doing their national service, and six firefighters who were part of a crew that had been called out to deal with a brushfire an hour and a half earlier. The base was destroyed, and the new power station next door – responsible for delivering 40% of the Republic's power – was so badly damaged that it will have to be rebuilt, and much of the island was without power yesterday. The airports and hospitals ran on emergency generators and the desalination plants have been switched off. Nearby houses and villages were extensively damaged. Sixty-two people were injured: two remain critical.

The explosion was about 50 miles from us, and we didn't hear it. We had a short powercut in the immediate aftermath, and a haze of smoke reached us at about 10 a.m. Other than that, so far we are unaffected.

Rumour control worked overtime yesterday, but today some things about the case seem to have crystallised. The Defense Minister and the head of the National Guard have resigned. The President has sent his condolences to the families of the dead. Funerals are happening today. The National Guard is busy building firebreaks around all its bases and ammunition facilities.

The Cyprus Customs seized and impounded the cargo of the Cypriot-flagged vessel following the urgings of the American and Israeli governments, and against the wishes of the National Guard leadership who insisted at the time that they lacked the facilities to store the munitions, stored them at the Evangelis Florakis Naval Base at Mari. American, British, and German offers to remove, store, or help destroy the munitions were refused as the Cypriot government did not want to upset negotiations with the Syrians. Despite numerous reports from the Base Commander and other senior officers stating that the containers were deteriorating and that urgent action needed to be taken, nothing was done. And a brush fire, so common during these hot summer days, triggered a catastrophe – the only possible consolation being that, but for the integrity of the base commander (who ordered hundreds of conscripts packed into trucks and evacuated rather than sending them out to fight the fire) and the early hour (a nearly empty motorway rather than one packed with commuters), could have been so very much worse.

As usual, in a community as small as Cyprus, everyone is either affected by an event like this or knows someone who is. Our family got off lightly: Best Beloved's brother was due at the base for training with OYK at 0700 – he arrived an hour after the blast and spent the day there cleaning up. BB himself drove past on the smoke-shrouded, debris-strewn motorway on his way to work at 0730. Stelios, the Big Ones' friend, nearly finished now with his military service, had trained with OYK: one of his instructors and two of his friends are dead.

'It's a wake-up call for all those guys who think they're safe doing National Service here,' said Sophia at lunch today. 'This is Cyprus. It's supposed to be safe here to be in the army... It's not like we've got wars or anything. They're all crapping themselves now, digging trenches round the bases and making sure that everything's properly stored...' I don't agree. The army has plenty of ways to hurt you in peacetime, and incompetant politicians can hurt us in war or in peace.

What I'm left wondering – and no pundit that I've read has taken on this question – is what happens now with the other 96 containers? They're presumably still in the same place, still sealed, still exposed to the summer sun, and even more unstable than ever... 'Budget cuts', according to the press, was the reason that funds were denied to build any sort of a shelter. Let's hope that the budget can stretch to safe and efficient disposal before another avoidable tragedy strikes.

Gone To Soldiers, (Almost) Every One

When Cypriot males reach eighteen years, they are required to perform military service. Last year saw the first wave of the Big Ones' friends leaving for military service: Stelios went to the navy and did his training as a marine to guard one of the missile bases agaist seaborne attack (in theory, anyway), and Yiannis went off to the commandos – to do whatever commandos do.

Last week saw another wave of friends shaving their heads and going 'to the KEN' – as basic training is known by its acronym for The Centre of New Recruits' Training. Yioti also opted for the navy: he wants to retake his exams to get a higher mark and figures that between pulling guard shifts he can swot his physics and computer studies, Nick is probably heading for the infantry, Tzirkalis wants to be a driver, Dinos has chosen the navy... and Joey, whose ambition for the last three years of technical college has been to be a chef, is headed for the catering corps.

Alex still has two years before his enlistment starts: because he repeated a year of kindergarten (don't ask!), he is a year behind anyway, and because he is taking A Levels he has Grade 13 to complete instead of finishing at Grade 12. This means that most of his friends will have finished their service by the time he joins up, but he doesn't seem to fussed about that. He wants to join the commandos ('At least I'll stay fit, be kept busy, and learn something,' he said. 'Rather than being bored to death pulling endless guard duty or sitting up on some Godforsaken Observation Post on the Green Line!') and is hoping that his less-than-perfect eyesight doesn't disqualify him.

It seems such a short time ago that my friends and I were sipping coffee at a mother and toddler morning discussing army service and how we hoped that the Situation would have been resolved by the time our sons reached conscription age. Now for me, that's unlikely – with Alex, at least (maybe by the time Leo's eighteen, ten years from now, conscription will have ended) – and for my friends, impossible.

And where would the Cyprus National Guard be without the soldiers' mothers? There are no washing machines on the bases ('We washed everything by hand!' said Best Beloved, who did his service in the early '80s), so mums collect the laundry. The food is pretty bad: 'Mystery Meat stew,' said Stelios. 'You learned not to ask what was in it!' so mums bring home-cooked meals (hopefully Joey will change that for his fellow soldiers). Many conscripts don't yet have their driving licenses, let alone a car (and the stipend they receive will in no way stretch to a taxi), so mums living within ten miles of their sons' bases are constantly driving their offspring on and of post at odd hours.

Ah well, it's all part and parcel of living here. It will be our turn soon.

Soldier Boy

Best Beloved just finished his annual army service for 2009. Conscription is mandatory here, and every July a crop of shaven-head eighteen-year-old males is herded off to the various training camps to spend the next two years running up hills, playing about in tanks, splashing around in rubber boats and guarding the Green Line from the 40,000 Turkish regulars who still squat in the northern 40% of Cyprus.

After their two years, all men have to do a regular reserve duty (most keeping their kit, service rifle, and ammunition at home) – the younger ones for several weeks a year, the older ones gradually tapering off their number of days until they reach their fiftieth birthday when they are assigned to Home Guard units.

Best Beloved did his army service as a Lt quartermaster in an armoured reconnaissance unit back in the early eighties. He hated most of it, but was a good shot and still loves weapons. When he came back from finishing college and work in the UK, he didn’t report to the police for Army Service, and after about a year they went to his parent’s house to ask where he was. His mother gave them our address, and shortly afterwards, they showed up at the door.

“Why on earth couldn’t you say that you didn’t know where I was?” he asked her.

“It was the police, son. And for your Army Duty! I couldn’t lie about that…”

“Thanks, Ma. Send me back to the tanks!”

The Army descended on him with glee, sent him to do another officer course, and ordered him to spend a couple of days a year at war games. When he began travelling regularly for work, they downgraded him until now he is out of his old unit and only has to report one day of the year.

So around December 1 each year, he dons his (too tight) camouflage and trundles off to base to play soldiers with the other forty-somethings who are too old for much and too young for Dad’s Army. They sit around and drink coffee and clamber into a five-ton truck for a shooting session before heading back to their city offices.

Last year he forgot. Missing your Army Duty makes you liable for a fine, but someone must have signed him in, because when he arrived today (“Don’t forget to remind me on Tuesday that I have to go to the Army, Manamou!” – but of course I forgot) no one said a word about it.

I just phoned him.

“I’m back at the office now,” he said. “But we were all saying that we need the chiropractor. Climbing into those trucks without a ladder is a bit beyond most of us now, and bumping over the tracks is a little hard on bones more accustomed to a Mercedes. The trucks’ll kill us before the Turks ever get a chance!”

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“Fired ten bullets.”

“Did you hit the target?”

“Well according to me I did – you can tell when your hitting it. But the bloke who was reading our scores really didn’t give a damn – he was just saying whatever came into his head. We could tell because the guy standing next to me always hits a near perfect score and so do I, but they told us both a silly number that didn’t mean anything, so we figured that they didn’t really care.”

Oh, it’s good to feel so well protected!