NationStates Jolt Archive

Tensions between the Federation of Unified West Africa and its neighbor the Ivory Coast, always at a high level, threatened to break out into open war today as Ivorian government troops opened fire on a UWA border patrol on the the IC's southern border with the former Guinea.

The Ivorian government, under the leadership of elected president Laurent Gbagbo, have long accused Freetown of openly aiding the Muslim rebel factions which control the northern half of the country with arms and ammunition, as well as political support. These allegations surfaced 2 years ago, when significant quantities of Monrovian-manufactured SKS and AKM assault rifles were found in the hands of rebel troops. The UWA National Assembly, with its emphasis on regional and tribal autonomy, as well as land reform (a key demand of the northern rebels), has long been sympathetic to the rebel cause but denies any accusations of weapons smuggling. For its part Freetown has tried to bring the two sides to the table on several occasions, but to little avail.

Significant factions within the rebel movement, the National Dignity Front, have expressed interest in joining the UWA as an autonomous province with full powers of self government and implementation of the current government's policies of a significant land reform program; an attrative option to an area dominated by huge, foreign owned cocoa plantations worked by millions of landless peasants.

National Assembly speaker for the Social Democratic Party, Ms. Alannaise Otreu has warned Yammoussoukra to launch a full, unbiased investigation into the deaths of UWA soldiers involved in the incident and to pull back troops from the border, lest the current border fighting extend and result in more bloodshed.

(For now, just a tag.)

UWA citizens who had access to the newsmedia across the country all read a single, bold, all too common headline. The information, the interpretation, the depth of approval or disapproval was different depending on which paper one read; but the gist was the same.

War.

In a last ditch attempt to let the Federation know they were absolutely serious, Ivorian strike jets launched a series of surprise attacks against UWA military positions around the border and near Monrovia. Light fighter bombers and a handful of helicopter gunships assaulted Army encampments near the border, equipment dumps, and camps around the north that the Ivorian military claimed were weapons smuggling centers.

The exact death toll is unknown, but several million dollars worth of equipment were destroyed and at least 40 military personnel were counted among the casualties. At least one enemy aircraft accidentally (?) targeted a civilian village made up of members of the same ethnic group which composes the bulk of the Ivorian rebels. Bombs and Vulcan shells pummeled an open-air market, resulting in at least 35 noncombatant deaths.

In response the Federation's prime minister has asked the National Assembly to declare war. Though the official declaration may take days to pass, the Air Force wasted no time launching retaliatory attacks. A half-dozen MiG-23 fighter bombers launched guided missiles at Ivorian runways and fuel dumps, destroying many aircraft on the ground and ruining forward runways for enemy use. The 1st Motor Rifles division and a brigade of the 4th Infantry have been moved to the northern border posthaste, bringing with them hundreds of armored Humvees, old-line european APCs, and modified Soviet T-72 and T-80 tanks. The fact that this move was taken before war could even be officially declared has evoked outrage from the African Socialist Party and the Movement for Democracy and Developement, traditionally parliamentary enemies.

From the Lusakan embassy in London, where he resides in self-imposed exile at the head of a government in exile, Derek Igomo has pleaded for calm in West Africa. In his appeal, which was directed at both Ivorian and UWA governments, 'Mr.Derek' said that apart from the horror and disunity of war in itself, the devisive conflict could bring imperialist opportunists back to the region making losers of both sides.

General Tendyala, acting President of the UAR Lusaka, has not yet made his own position on the conflict clear, and it appears that his LUAN Party may be taking a more local view of Lusaka's role in international affairs as compared to the Igomo Social Progress Party's pan-African perspective.

Shah Khosru of Parthia condemns this action, while it is one thing for a first world nation to colonize a third world tinpot nation, it is another for a barbarous third world nations to do the same. While Parthia brings civilization to the savages of Africa, UWA will bring inferior socialist doctrines to ruin a nation eternally. We, the People of Parthia, beleive that nations such as yours are unable to even govern their own peoples, but will tolerate your existence, but to take over the Cote d'Ivoire is intolerable. As such, we request all UWA forces stand down before further action must be taken.

-Foreign Minister Piruz Savhadkohi

Shah Khosru of Parthia condemns this action, while it is one thing for a first world nation to colonize a third world tinpot nation, it is another for a barbarous third world nations to do the same. While Parthia brings civilization to the savages of Africa, UWA will bring inferior socialist doctrines to ruin a nation eternally. We, the People of Parthia, beleive that nations such as yours are unable to even govern their own peoples, but will tolerate your existence, but to take over the Cote d'Ivoire is intolerable. As such, we request all UWA forces stand down before further action must be taken.

-Foreign Minister Piruz Savhadkohi
We stand by our ally, And demand that UWA forces stand down.

http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=372240



"We demand that under the terms of the Fabus Doctrine, UWA cease all hostilities against Ivory Coast."

Czar Roger Fabus

Considering that the Ivory Coast launched these brutal attacks which has resulted in war, and that the Ivory Coast is basing it's actions on flimsy evidence, I would like to declare that the United West African state has the full support of this nation.

Though I wish to see peace and an end to bloodshed and destruction, I will say that any power outside of the African continent attempting to intervene, for reasons which are less than benevolent, or suspicious, will inevitably incurr the wrath of the Soviet State of Hrstrovokia. If this is to be a war, then it is a local and limited one. Let's not escalate the choas.

President & General Secretary Sean Matthews

OOC:UWA what nations do you clam for you nation?

The People of Parthia will gladly protect the soverignty of the Cote d'Ivoire.

-Shah Khosru III

OOC: Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, and Sao Tome & Principe.
GNN NEWSWIRE

Military operations of the Federation against the Ivory Coast continued today even as several major cities within the UWA have been wracked by a series of strikes and demonstrations.

The 4th Infantry, backed up by several elements of the northern rebel armies, has engaged Ivorian government troops on several border towns. Heavy artillery bombardment has forced many Ivorian troops to disengage, causing casualties thought to number in the low hundreds. Due to the UWA's rapid but haphazard industrial developement and military modernization under Edolian guidance, the Ivorians are at a tremendous technological disadvantage and are being forced to fight mostly in delaying actions.

The Air Force also targeted several buildings in Abijan with guided munitions, leveling several buildings over the past two days. UWA military spokesman say that the targeted facilities were munitions factories and army barracks; Ivorian government press liasons claim that at least two were a hospital and an abandoned embassy complex.

Domestic opposition to the war is also rapidly rearing its head, lead by the newly elected Chairman Motu Mohammed of the Africal Socialist Party (Marxist Leninist). Addressing a large crowd of demonstrators in Conakry, Mohammed voiced an apology to the Party's consituancy for entering into a coalition with the ruling Social Democrats. In a fiery speech calling for direct action to end the war, he called the SD's "...sadly a once progressive political force, which played a leading role in the creation of our state, but which is now a party of the big capitalists controlled by imperialist and bourgouisse class forces."

"The war against the Ivory Coast and the continuous meddling in their internal affairs is nothing more than a cynical attempt by the foreign agribusiness interests and their cronies in the Social Democrats to gain control over the North's cocoa fields," said Mohammend. "Their promises of land reform ring hollow, in light of the plight of our nation's peasants who are increasingly coming under the domination of factory farms or are being left without enough land to support their families."

The chairman then called for a general strike in Conakry, Freetown, and Monrovia in both the state owned industries and the private factories and workshops and mines. Several munitions factory workers have already responded, occupying the Karmine Industries plants and locking out owners in Conakry and several other major state-owned mines.

The Shah demands the tribal groups of UWA pull out of the Cote d'Ivoire. You are imperialists who seek to dominate other nations while your own nation is a socialist basket case of state-owned companies and bloated corrupt government. Only those who can bring more than the inferior peoples they dominate deserve the right to rule over another. Pull out or face war.

-Shah Khosru III

While Derek Igomo continues to appeal for reason and calm from both sides and for general unity, the acting LUAN government has, through new Secretary of the Republic Mini Sinkala, finally shown some leaning to one side in the West African conflict. The UAR Lusaka has offered to sell at cost AFRISAM LS-8 medium-range surface-to-air missile systems to United West Africa, both to guard against further Ivorian attack and to provide a credible and affordable defence in the event of interference from imperialist factions of the so-called developed world.

It does not appear that there will be any repeat of Igomo-era Lusakan troop deployments to the far end of the continent, as Lusakan forces remain -along with Zimbabwean comrades- engaged in a security operation in West Zambia.

In the higher corridors of government, war plans were being drawn up for the continuation of the Ivorian conflict. Military transports were being prepared to head towards Lusakan ports to pick up AFRISAM SAMs, deals were being made with international arms contractors to buy even more advanced weapons; armor plating for Humvees, high grade anti-tank rockets, and heavy artillery. What had been billed as a war of self-defense was quickly becoming a war for conquest and power; and currently, a bloody stalemate with neither side able to hold significant amounts of ground for very long.

But in other circles far more important developments were occurring.

In the preceding weeks the African Socialist Party Marxist-Leninist had convened an emergency Central Committee session in Freetown amidst a wave of general strikes and heavy-handed repression of demonstrators and strikes by the Gendarmes. Important developments had occurred which the party had not addressed which needed immediate attention.

First, the old Social Democratic Party had begun to lose its routes and drift in a direction similar to that of the British Labor; the broad-based workers party had become openly neoliberal, beginning with a wave of privatizations of Federation Industry that had left thousands jobless and set the UWA working class back decades. The right to strike and basic union organizational freedoms were under attack. This was not to mention the "peasant problem", the increasing proletarianization of agricultural labor (moves away from traditional African subsistence farming towards waged, corporate controlled agriculture).

Second, the SDP's leadership was becoming openly imperialist. The Sao Tome and Principe incident was a veiled example of this, but the Ivorian war had made this crystal clear. The new president, Frederick Bantusa, had abandoned the old SDP's nationalist goals of building a unified, progressive state; his aim now was to make the UWA a 'small capitalist' power, a regional hegeomon.

So the principle question, as it always is in such situations, was asked: What is to be done?

All the Party's factions, or a clear majority, agreed that the electoral alliance with the SDP was to end immediately. What was in dispute was the precise nature of the new situation; was this a revolutionary development where the UWA's nascent proletariat was ready to take power into its own hands? Or was class consciousness, and the class itself, not significant enough for an extra-legal seizure of power?

Chairman Motu and his faction, the larger of the two, argued yes and denounced his opponents as defeatists and SDP sycophants. His rivals, arguing for a continued electoral approach, denouncing Mobutu's faction as insurrectionists and aventurists. And so the Party split; The ASP(ML) was now the ASP(ML) (Revolutionary) and the ASP (Continuity). Motu had resigned himself to this developement but the plan was to continue. He and the remaining Central Committee quickly drew up the first and most important document of the coming crises; the December Theses.

The Theses was broadcast over pirate radio stations and delivered by hand in dangerous runs to union officers and party activists. The plans in each individual workplace, Military Committee (the Party had significant prescence in the armed forces), and slum were drawn up in great secrecy behind closed doors, but everyone could smell the tension and felt something big was in the works.

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*Somewhere in Monrovia, outside a munitions factory*

"Hey! Hey you. What are you doing here without your uniform. Step aside."

"I'm no police either boss man, and I can't do that."

"Well, why are you standing out here with a gun? What's going on? I manage this facility dammit, and I demand entry! We need to continue negotiations."

"No sir. The Monrovia Soviet had forbidden it. This factory is now under the control of the workers. And as a Red Guard, I cannot let you in."

"Monrovia Soviet? You must be kidding. You idiots actually believed that broadcast, you think you have any support for what you're doing? The army will be called in, and you rebels will be crushed like the ungrateful insects you've become! In fact.."

The first man, dressed in a cheap business suit and gaudy tie, scowled and made his way over to one of the man roadblocks that had sprung up in the city virtually overnight. Some were manned by so-called Red Guards and striking workers armed with little more than pointy sticks, rocks, and primitive rifles and pistols. Some were manned by soldiers. This one was guarded by a soldier, clad head to toe in camouflage, body army, and toting a Kalashnikov assault rifle.

"You there, soldier! What are you people doing, sitting on your hands? The factory down the street has been seized by Marxists. Why don't you do something about it?"

The soldier ground the stub of his cigarette on the ground and replied in halting English, "We are protecting this street from rebels, sir. Can't leave my post, don't think."

Upon hearing this the soldier's commanding officer, a captain, shouted something long-winded in Bantu and threw his fist into the air at the end for emphasis. The soldier's eyes lit up in recognition.

"Ooooh." He waved to one of his comrades manning a roadblock on the street's opposite end. "Hey! Hey, Sergeant Kogomo! Haha, we ARE the rebels!"

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