New commander of Unficyp appointed

Major General Cheryl Pearce of Australia has been appointed Force Commander of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (Unficyp), it was announced on Thursday.

She succeeds Major General Mohammad Humayun Kabir of Bangladesh, who completed his assignment on October 6.

In 2016 Pearce was the Commander of the Australian Joint Task Force Group in Afghanistan providing training, advice and assistance to the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces as part of Nato’s Resolute Support Mission.

Pearce was also the Australian Army’s Provost-Marshal and a military observer with the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor in 2002.

Born in South Australia, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies from the University of New England in Armidale, a Master’s in Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism from the Macquarie University in Sydney and a Master’s of Arts in Defence Studies from the Deakin University in Melbourne.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.