UN Peacekeeping and India in a Fragmenting World Order

The UN Peacekeeping Ministerial held in Berlin in mid-May came together at a time of acute strain on the mission of the United Nations (UN) in upholding international peace and security amidst a fracturing international order. The Ministerial sought to reimagine the future of peacekeeping as a viable mechanism to limit armed conflict by making mandates more realistic, prioritized, and demand-driven. The recalibration of UN peacekeeping missions towards newer models requires a deeper understanding of the variety of conceptions of and engagements with such missions by member states, particularly those like India with a long tradition of participating in peacekeeping missions in various capacities.

As the biggest contributor to UN peacekeeping missions, India offers a unique vantage point on the impact that changing global order has on the nature of peacekeeping mission participation. During the Nehru era, India had played an outsized role in shaping early UN peacekeeping, through doctrinal development and extensive contributions to missions in Egypt (UNEF I) and Congo (ONUC). But it was India’s participation with the United Nations Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) that served as an inflection point in the country’s involvement with UN peacekeeping efforts and set the precedent for India’s involvement in further missions.

UN Peacekeeping and Cyprus

Soon after achieving independence from the British in 1960, the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus witnessed the outbreak of a civil war between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, the two dominant ethno-religious communities on the island. In an attempt to contain the violence and stabilize the situation, the UN intervened in early 1964 with the establishment of a peacekeeping force, UNFICYP, the longest running UN peacekeeping force that continues to monitor ceasefire on the fractured island till date. India showcased robust diplomatic engagement with the Cyprus issue – both bilaterally with the British, Greek Cypriots, and Turkish Cypriots and multilaterally at the UN. Yet, in a seemingly radical departure from its alignment with the emerging UN system and peacekeeping operations, India chose not to send troops to UNFICYP.

In our latest research paper, we aim to understand why this might have been the case, and to highlight how the geopolitical context of the Cold War, alongside an enduring spectre of Nehruvian internationalism impacted India’s engagement with the civil war in Cyprus. India’s preoccupation with its own frontiers given its defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian War, its negative experiences with the UN Mission in the Congo in the early 1960s – during which a substantial number of Indian military personnel were killed, and the passing away of Jawaharlal Nehru provide some explanations for the changing nature of India’s participation. However, other factors emerge from within the Cyprus question itself, unaccounted for thus far, that better explain India’s position on the geopolitical issue. These factors showcase how India used the international as a space to position itself as a leader of the postcolonial world.

The Spectre of Partitioning

The conflict in Cyprus became internationalized in 1964, four years after the island gained independence from the British. In late 1963, ethnic tensions between the majority Greek Cypriotes and the minority Turkish Cypriotes erupted into violence and open fighting, owing to different political imaginations for the future of the island. To quell the violence, the UNSC established the UNFICYP and appointed a UN mediator to negotiate a peace settlement.

India, owing to its non-aligned and decolonial politics, became engaged with the Cyprus issue at the UN at the time of the island’s path of self-determination since the mid-1950s. At the UN, India became a strong advocate for the independence of Cyprus and followed a strict stance that the island must not be partitioned between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, a position that put it at odds with both the Turkish government and its former British colonial ruler that had remained a key player in the Eastern Mediterranean, maintaining military bases on the island.

India’s strong endorsement of a political settlement in Cyprus that sought immediate and complete independence without a partitioning of the island stemmed from an anxiety over Kashmir, and fears of setting a precedent for Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations. Even in the mid 1950s, when the case of Cypriote independence began to be debated at the UN, V. K. Krishna Menon, India’s permanent representative to the UN, tabled a resolution at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) which advocated for the complete independence of Cyprus, a position bitterly opposed by Turkey and Turkish Cypriots.

Ankara, as well as the UK government, feared that an independent Cyprus would pave the way for the island to be united with Greece, leading to a waning of Turkish influence on the island while compromising the future of the Turkish minority. The British were concerned about losing their strategic stronghold in the Eastern Mediterranean. They argued that complete independence for Cyprus would lead to a “civil war” or a “permanent partition of the island,” instead calling for a seven-year plan for the gradual independence of the island. This British strategy of allowing colonial subjects to self-govern rather than achieve complete independence was all too familiar to New Delhi. India, thus, stood firmly against a partitioning of the island given its own post-independence experience.

The Kashmir Factor

At the UNGA, the delegations of India and Turkey disagreed publicly, with the Turkish delegate comparing the fate of Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus to that of Muslims in India, specifically in Jammu and Kashmir. Indeed, India’s views on Cyprus did stem from an anxiety over setting a dangerous precedent for Kashmir. Any endorsement of partition would have led to ideological inconsistencies with India’s own stance on the debate between self-determination of ethno-religious communities vis-à-vis the preservation of the sovereignty of a nation-state.

India at the time was making a powerful case at the UN for why a Muslim-majority Kashmir was an integral part of a Hindu-majority India, not a Muslim-majority Pakistan. The further partitioning of India, at the hands of foreign powers along ethno-religious lines, went against India’s struggle for self-determination as a secular republic. Greek Cypriots had originally framed their fight for the preservation of Cyprus’s unity as a national liberation struggle of self-determination against colonialism and aggression by external powers, which strongly resonated with India’s own anticolonial history. India consistently advocated for the protection of the sovereign, unified status of Cyprus, setting a different precedent for the future of self-determination in post-colonial entities.

NATO or UN Peacekeepers?

Despite the importance India accorded to the future of Cyprus, Indian troops did not partake in UN peacekeeping mission on the island. Why? In the months after the formation of the UNFICYP in 1964, when violence had erupted on the island, negotiations at the UN over the nature of a possible peacekeeping mission in Cyprus proved to be incredibly challenging. Peacekeeping was deemed necessary for the maintenance of peace and security on the island by preventing a spiralling of hostilities.

While the British floated the idea of sending NATO peacekeepers to the island, the Greek Cypriot president of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, fiercely rejected this out of fear that Turkish Cypriots might gain an upper hand in determining the course and activities of a NATO-led effort. As a NATO member, Turkey was closely aligned with the British, especially in their efforts to prevent the spread of Soviets in the Middle East through the Baghdad Pact. Makarios was more in favour of a UN-led effort instead. Turkish Cypriots were aware that taking the matter to the UN would only result in a waning of their influence since non-aligned and Afro-Asian states constituted a large share of UN members, and Makarios had forged strong ties with states from those groupings, as Cyprus had become a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The NAM countries also supported Makarios’ cause for the preservation of non-interference and respect for sovereignty in Cypriot affairs against Western colonial influence in his country.

Ultimately, Makarios’ view prevailed, and the idea of an UN-led peacekeeping force gained precedence, paving the path for the establishment of the UNFICYP in March 1964. Strikingly, however, the Turkish Cypriots remained against the presence of Indian troops in the mission, due to tense relations between the two nations. As a result, when the UNFICYP was established, after months of negotiations over the nature of a peacekeeping force, India’s contribution remained limited to a few Indian military personnel serving in the headquarters in Nicosia and the provision of medical supplies as humanitarian aid.

Indian Peacekeeping Expertise

Despite the lack of troops on ground, India did have an important impact on UNFICYP through the presence of its military leaders, who had extensive experience overseeing complex UN peacekeeping operations in other conflicts. When it came to the matter of finding a suitable commander for the Force, the UN Secretary-General requested Lieutenant General Prem Singh Gyani, an Indian military commander, who had previously commanded UN forces in Gaza. Gyani arrived in Nicosia as the First Commander of the UNFICYP, but he soon handed over charge to General K. S. Thimayya. Thimayya, during his tenure, earned the admiration of not only the Americans and the British, but also from the Turks for his “ability and diligent efforts,” as he was seen as an apolitical commander, but sadly passed away while still in Cyprus.

By December 1969, a third Indian general, Maj. Gen. Prem Chand, arrived on the scene, and held the post until December 1976, through a very crucial period for the UNFICYP, including the overseeing of the de facto partition of the island into two distinct territories in 1974. Gen. Prem Chand also presided over a ceasefire on the island, the establishment of a security zone at the limit of the areas occupied by the Turkish armed forces, and the evacuation of all Turkish enclaves occupied by Greek or Greek Cypriot forces. The three Indian commanders were critical in carrying out the functions of the UNFICY: ensuring troop monitoring, minimizing the loss of life, upholding of the ceasefire, delivering of humanitarian assistance, and ultimately, preserving peace and security on the island.  

India and a Changing Global Order

The experience of the crisis in Cyprus represented a watershed moment for India’s involvement in UN peacekeeping. Indian diplomatic overtures did not translate into troop contribution to the peacekeeping mission; yet despite the lack of troops on ground, India had an impact on UNFICYP through the presence of its military generals. As peacekeeping missions were fundamental in the making and remaking of the sovereignty of states in an era of decolonization, they demonstrated how exactly an international organization like the UN could use a legal instrument to police the internal affairs of a state and intervene in territorial disputes without being seen as violating state sovereignty as protected by the UN Charter. India recognized the value of UN peacekeeping mechanisms, in the broader terms of doctrinal thinking on peacekeeping as an instrument for the preservation of sovereignty of postcolonial states against superpower intervention but also on the Cyprus mission specifically for the maintenance of international peace and security.

The Cyprus case also introduced the concept that Indian non-alignment did not always render it neutral in the eyes of the host countries. There is a conflation in the literature of Indian non-alignment viewing it as synonymous with “neutrality.” However, non-aligned politics was rooted in a larger corpus of India’s decolonial politics as a critique to the empire, advancing a vision of a world order that allowed postcolonial states to exercise agency in a world dominated by blocs.  Decolonization did not always lead to straightforward independence and the Indian experience of anticolonial struggle and postcolonial state-building was not always reflected across other new nation-states. Thus, in its treatment of international crises, it now seemed inevitable that India rely on more than its non-aligned stature. Ultimately, Cyprus proved pivotal to Indian foreign policy because it fundamentally altered the way in which India handled its contribution to the UN, and indeed, its larger internationalist commitments.

The views and opinions expressed in the CGO blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the programme and its partners.