ASSIMILATION, AGING THREATEN CYPRUS MARONITES

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 NICOSIA 000052

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL UNFICYP PHUM PREF TU CY
SUBJECT: ASSIMILATION, AGING THREATEN CYPRUS MARONITES

REF: 06 NICOSIA 2051


1. SUMMARY: The Maronite community -- self-described as
6,000-strong but likely half that -- enjoys "official
religious group" status under Cyprus's 1960 constitution.
Concentrated historically in four villages south and west of
Kyrenia, the Catholic Maronites endured near-total
dislocation after the 1974 conflict; just 125 remain in the
area now administered by Turkish Cypriots. Community leader
Antonis Hajiroussos, who holds a non-voting seat in the
Republic of Cyprus Parliament, briefed Emboffs January 11 on
problems facing his community and its prospects for the
future. In the Maronite enclaves north of the Green Line,
the situation resembles that of their Greek Cypriot
counterparts in the Karpass Peninsula (Reftel): some soon
will vanish, while those hamlets with a critical mass of
inhabitants should limp on, at least medium-term.
Demographics is catching up, however, as average inhabitant
age nears 75. Maronite leaders have concentrated their
attention on lobbying Turkish Cypriot authorities to
liberalize "visitation" rights for refugees residing in the
south, and on pressuring the Turkish Army to relocate
military facilities from the villages. Their entreaties thus
far have received only lip service, however.


2. In the RoC-controlled areas, Hajiroussos revealed,
Maronites long ago had abandoned agriculture for trades,
small business, and the professions, many becoming
prosperous. They had enjoyed less success in government,
politics and big business, he lamented, owing to Greek
Cypriot clannishness. Assimilation into the dominant Greek
Orthodox community threatened his compatriots, Hajiroussos
worried, with mixed marriages now the norm. Politically,
Maronites remained solidly conservative, with left-wing AKEL
winning only 10 percent support. No group backed
rapprochement and a Cyprus solution more fervently than the
Maronites, Hajiroussos asserted. As such, the slow pace of
CyProb negotiations and worsening climate surrounding
bi-communality troubled his community greatly. END SUMMARY.

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Island More than Greeks, Turks
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3. The Maronite community, whose roots lie in neighboring
Lebanon, traces its arrival on Cyprus to 900 AD. "Catholics
of the Oriental Rite," they fall hierarchically under the
direction of the Patriarch of Antioch (Lebanon) and the Pope
in Rome. Nearly all members speak Greek as their first
language and are conversant in a Cypriot Arabic dialect;
priests conduct their liturgy in Aramaic, however, the
language of Jesus. Official Maronite literature claims the
community's size reached 60,000 "at some stage" and now
numbers 6,000; most demographers claim 3,500 a more realistic
figure. Prior to the conflict of 1974, nearly all Maronites
practiced agriculture and lived in four villages in northwest
Cyprus: Asomatos, Ayia Marina, Karpasia, and Kormakitis.


4. Cyprus's 1960 constitution recognized the Maronites,
along with the Armenians and Latins, as "official" religious
groups and gave them the option of aligning with either the
Greek or Turkish communities for voting purposes. Primarily
for religious and linguistic reasons -- although economics
too played a part -- all chose to side with the more numerous
Greeks. As a result of the 1974 conflict and subsequent
demarcation of the cease-fire line, however, all four
Maronite villages fell under the control of the Turkish
Cypriot "state." Most residents relocated south in the
negotiated population exchanges which followed, establishing
refugee communities in Nicosia and second-city Limassol.
Some 250 Maronite villagers, mainly elderly, chose to remain
in the north; predictably, their numbers are dwindling.

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Leader Reaches Out
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5. Maronites in the government-controlled area enjoy
expanded voting rights, electing both regional
parliamentarians and a non-voting MP who represents the
community. The MP currently encumbering the latter position,
Antonis Hajiroussos, invited Poloffs to a January 11
roundtable to discuss his community's plight and its hopes
for a brighter future. Attending as well were prominent
Maronite Petros Markou, head of the Cypriot Consumers'
Association, and a smattering of village "mukhtars"
(essentially, small-town mayors).


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6. No group had suffered a harsher fate than the Maronites
as a result of the 1974 conflict and de facto division of
Cyprus, Hajiroussos argued. Members of the community, "per
capita, once the largest landholders on the island," had had
to abandon fertile fields and a pastoral lifestyle for the
concrete of Nicosia and Limassol. Only the old and infirm
had remained behind. Currently, just 160 Maronites inhabited
the villages in the Turkish Cypriot-controlled area, he
revealed, and all depended on RoC transfer payments to
survive. While T/C-imposed restrictions on movement had
diminished in recent years and relations with the larger
community were cordial, the situation was far from perfect.

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Village-by-village: Bigger is Better
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7. Just three elderly Maronites, all women over 80,
inhabited Asomatos, once a thriving village of 500 some
twenty-five kilometers southwest of Kyrenia. Visitors were
few, arriving usually on Sunday for the weekly mass. The
Turkish Army long ago had commandeered unoccupied residences
in Asomatos for officers' housing, Hajiroussos claimed, but
many former Maronite homes remained vacant. Church and
community leaders had requested UNFICYP's assistance in two
matters: first, in petitioning the Army to relocate its
forces to a neighboring T/C village, and second, in obtaining
permission for former Maronite villagers, now resident in the
south, to renovate their ancestral properties for
vacation/weekend homes. Turkish Cypriot leaders had agreed
in principle to meet the demands, Hajiroussos and Markou
noted, but taken no action. Frustrated, the Cypriot
Maronites had pressed their counterparts in Lebanon to raise
the matter with visiting Turkish PM Erdogan, to no avail.
Hajiroussos hoped the Embassy, too, might utilize its good
offices on the Maronites' behalf.


8. Conditions were bleakest in Ayia Marina, the southernmost
Maronite village. The site of a large Turkish Army camp that
housed heavy weapons, the village was fully off-limits, even
to UNFICYP blue-berets. Its absentee mukhtar realized that
hopes to dislodge the Army from Ayia Marina looked scant. He
had lowered his aim, however, to winning blanket approval to
open the village church for mass on its holy day, July 17.
For assistance, Maronite leaders had petitioned not just
UNFICYP but also Turkish Cypriot politician Serdar Denktash,
owing to prior, positive dealings with the now-in-opposition
politician. (NOTE: Under the current SOP, Christian leaders
wishing to celebrate mass at churches in the Turkish
Cypriot-administered area must solicit permission from "TRNC"
authorities on a per occurrence basis. Maronites sought and
received said authorization in July 2006, eventually
conducting the first service in Ayia Marina in 33 years. END
NOTE.) In response to Emboffs' inquiries regarding possible
Maronite usage of the European Court of Human Rights in
seeking property reinstatement, Hajiroussos claimed his flock
had chosen not to take that route, believing it could only
incense the majority T/C community and thus make life for the
enclaved more difficult.

9. Twelve elderly Maronites called Karpasia home, its
mukhtar declared. Six others resided half-time in the
village, located five kilometers west of Asomatos. The
Turkish Army had raised a large camp on Maronite land outside
Karpasia, and officers were inhabiting 18 houses -- "the
nicest," Markou added. Again via UNFICYP, Maronite officials
were petitioning the Turks to redeploy their forces and allow
former villagers to renovate their ancestral homes. In other
parts of Karpasia, pre-1974 residents had done just that, and
crossed north regularly for weekend and holiday stays.
Masses occurred weekly, the elder revealed.


10. With 1100 residents Kormakitis was, in the pre-1974
period, the largest of the ancestral Maronite villages. It
has padded its advantage with time; currently, 108 Maronites
reside there, and it hosts the only functioning, albeit
small, Maronite businesses (mainly family restaurants.)
"Most inhabitants are afraid to work," Hajiroussos claimed.
When pressed, he explained that Turkish Cypriots had not
forbidden the Maronites from opening businesses. Rather, the
villagers feared that, in meeting the regulatory requirements
of the "state," they might somehow jeopardize their standing
in the government-controlled areas. Karpasia's mukhtar
called relations between Maronites and Turkish Cypriots
"excellent." They were long-time neighbors, after all;
unlike in the Karpass Peninsula, home to the enclaved Greek
Cypriots, the Maronite areas hosted relatively few mainland
Turk newcomers.


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11. Help for enclaved Maronites might be imminent,
Hajiroussos hoped. European Union assistance funds for the
Turkish Cypriot areas would soon start flowing, and the
community hoped to capture a portion of the 259 million euro
allotment to improve infrastructure in their villages. The
MP had secured a January 11 appointment with EU Head of
Office Alain Botherel and intended to pitch possible
proposals. Hajiroussos claimed the EU official had welcomed
Maronite interest.

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In the south, a Mixed Bag
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12. Ninety-eight percent of Maronites had abandoned their
villages in the population exchanges that followed the 1974
conflict. Many had emigrated to Australia and the UK, but
most settled in Nicosia and Limassol. Deprived of their
properties and knowing only agriculture, they endured great
difficulties in the early years, Hajiroussos explained.
Buoying the community, however, was its appetite for
education. "We are among the best educated Cypriots," the MP
exclaimed, citing his community's success in law, medicine,
and other professions. Maronites also made excellent small
businessman. His compatriots had failed to break into
government, politics, or corporations in numbers commensurate
to their population, however. Greek Cypriot clannishness
deserved blame, Hajiroussos ventured, and exhortations of
"Don't vote for him, he's a Maronite" were not just relics of
the past. Since 1974, only two had won election to
Parliament as voting members, and none had headed ministries.


13. Politics in the community tilted right, Hajiroussos and
Markou disclosed. Maronites fervently supported former
President Glafkos Clerides, for example, and his Democratic
Rally (DISY) party. DISY remained the institution of choice
for 60 percent of Maronites, while 30 percent supported
centrist DIKO, the party of RoC President Tassos
Papadopoulos. AKEL, Cyprus's communist party and the
nation's largest, had won little Maronite support despite
targeting the group for recruitment. Only 10 percent of the
group voted AKEL, they claimed.


14. Maronite leaders fretted over possible assimilation into
the majority Greek Cypriot group, the MP divulged.
Maintaining a feeling of community, of separateness, was easy
in small villages, but not so in Nicosia or Limassol. Most
Maronites in the south attended Greek Cypriot schools,
Hajiroussos explained, although the RoC funded a school for
Catholics and paid small stipends to Maronite parents wishing
to send their children to private academies. Some 80 percent
of Maronites were marrying outside their community, he added.
While church canons stipulated that male offspring acquired
Maronite status at birth, the MP worried that future
generations might lose ties to their faith and clan.


15. A planned shift in RoC policy might also work to
assimilate the Maronites, Hajiroussos lamented. From the
time of Archbishop Makarios, Cypriot laws had exempted
community youth from military service. "For obvious
reasons," the parliamentarian chuckled, "as it's the GREEK
CYPRIOT National Guard." GCNG soldiers swore an oath to
Hellenism and the Orthodox Church, something no Maronite (or
Armenian or Latin, for that matter) should be asked to do.


16. Commenting on same-day media accounts that noted a
change was imminent, in part due to difficulties enlisting
sufficient numbers but also to Greek Cypriots' claims of
discrimination, Hajiroussos summarized his January 10
conversation with Defense Ministry Permanent Secretary Petros
Kareklas. Maronites were not averse to military service, he
had told Kareklas. Further as residents of Cyprus who
derived benefits from citizenship, they owed the nation
plenty. But for reasons noted above, service in the National
Guard was anathema to the religious group. His arguments had
fallen on deaf ears with the PermSec, however. "How will our
young men help fill the staffing gap?" Hajiroussos wondered,
as only 30-40 reached draft age every year.


17. Turning to the broader Cyprus Problem, Hajiroussos and
Markou fretted over growing discord between Turkish and Greek
Cypriots. Maronites, they claimed, remained solidly
pro-solution. "Ninety-five percent of us supported the Annan
Plan," the MP asserted, regardless of the fact that much
Maronite land would have fallen in the T/C federated state.
Close, stable relations between the two groups benefited his
community enormously, while friction did the opposite.
Maronites would continue to support efforts to reunite the

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island, he concluded.

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Hopes Don't Seem Great for Future
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18. COMMENT: Superficially, the Maronite enclaved in
northwest Cyprus resemble closely their Greek Cypriot
counterparts in the Karpass Peninsula. Both inhabit a
handful of villages smack-dab in "enemy" territory, featuring
hamlets with single-digit, elderly populations. Economic
prospects for residents in each are slim, and neither ethnic
community could survive without RoC transfer payments and UN
largesse. In actuality, however, the Maronites' plight in
the north is far graver. Demographics factor greatly: while
primary and secondary schools service some 50 G/C youth in
Rizokarpasso (Reftel),the school-age population in the
Maronite villages is exactly zero. Politics also plays a
part. While the RoC and Greek Cypriots writ large view the
Karpass enclaved as the last bastion of Hellenism in the
Turkish-occupied north, endeavoring to see them flourish,
they pay less attention to the Maronites, whom some G/Cs
consider quasi-collaborators (owing to the "freedoms" the
community enjoys under T/C rule, in comparison to the
enclaved Greeks). Barring a major and unforeseen
liberalization in Turkish Cypriot relocation regulations --
or great leaps in geriatric care -- this minority's presence
in the north seems doomed to become historical.


19. Via an ambitious program of church building and
religious/ethnocentric education, Maronites in the
government-controlled are attempting to avoid a similar fate,
benefiting greatly from the protected status Cyprus's 1960
constitution awarded. We doubt, however, the community will
prove able to maintain such privileges indefinitely, with
demographics again to blame. At the time of independence,
the three religious groups comprised 4.7 percent of the
island's population, a not insignificant number. Owing to
assimilation, greater fecundity of the majority G/C
population, and growing immigration from Asia and eastern
Europe, the picture in the government-controlled areas has
changed dramatically. Even their own, optimistic demographic
data, for example, show their portion has fallen to less than
half the earlier figure. Throw in the north, with its
100,000-plus mainland Turkish settlers, and the Maronites
represent at best one percent of the island's population.
Securing continued protected status under any envisionable
"United Cyprus Republic" would seem to require political
influence they just don't have. END COMMENT.
SCHLICHER