NationStates Jolt Archive

To: President Taylor
From: The Exaulted Heinrich Sebastien

Greetings under the Light of God.
Your MTF may enter Tilookan soil under the following modifications:
* Armed troops of external nations on Tilookan soil are an insult to the Faith. We will provide you a company of the Tilookan Army as escourts for your protection. Your men will be allowed to carry such weapons and equipment as required for basic self defence (pistols, body armor, etc), but heavily-armed troops will specificly not be allowed.
* Prior to arrival, we request an inventory of the equipment you will be bringing within our borders and our customs enforcers will be given the opportunity to inspect this equipment.
* You will specificly not have the authority to extract LaFleur from Tilookan soil, should he be found. As a citizen of another nation, he should be surrendered to Tilookan authorities, who will then surrender him to Czardas upon their request. Alternatively, if you are able to convince Czardas to a joint MTF, they may extract him directly and immediately, and do with him as they wish.
* You will accept the appointment of an intelligence specialist as both guide and intermediary for your intelligence group and the local law enforcement communities.
In the meantime, please ensure your MTF members are familiar with the Faith and Tilookan customs.

A Primer: Things (not) to do in (Tilooka) when you're (trying not to be) dead

The country that is Tilooka is in an area that has traditionally been plagued with fierce religious warfare. The four largest faith groups had segmented the region into religious communities and were engaged in near constant fighting.
15 years ago a young priest named Heinrich Sebastien was living in what then was the city Tilooka. Three of the major faith groups had broken Tilooka down into a war zone.
Heinrich had an excellent analytical and abstract mind that he set to the issue of bringing stability to Tilooka. Over a period of a year and a half, he postulated a theological system now called the Faith. There were a few tenets:
1. God exists.
2. God demands obedience.
3. Obedience in no way requires harm to come to other members of the Faith.
The Faith required non-specific terms be used to refer to religious concepts. It avoided giving preference to a specific religious community. As long as the group believed in a monotheistic God, they were welcomed into Faith communities.
As the charismatic Heinrich began preaching the Faith, the war-weary population caught onto it quickly as a way to dismiss their differences. Within a few months, Heinrich found himself at the head of a strong Faith community, and as their leader, he felt it was required that he lead a quasi-military attempt to bring peace to the area.
In some cases, Heinrich was able to peacefully bring an area of the city to the Faith when he was allowed to preach to them and show them the relative stability of Faithful areas. In other cases, force was required to bring an area in line. However, besides disarming conquered areas, the population was allowed to live in peace without oppression, and eventually came to the Faith.
After Tilooka and the surrounding area was stabilized, Heinrich established a semi-democratic government and was content to retain the stability of the area. However, continued attacks from outside the area prompted him to begin a conquest of the entire region that would later become known as Tilooka.
Skip ahead a few years...
The Tilooka of today is a semi-democratic Theocracy. The term "Cleric" is used to designate a career politician. A Cleric's studies require the understanding of each faith group that comprises more than 10% of the population. In order to qualify for an elected government seat, the candidate must be a government-certified Cleric. The population as a whole, however, votes for government seats from the available Clerics. Political parties are outlawed, since they encourage division within the Faith.
The government is centrally strong, and local governments have very little actual power. This also is to ensure that regions don't become divided within the Faith.
Self-determination is very important to Tilookans. As a result, citizens aren't actually required to believe in the Faith, as long as they don't publicly speak on the subject.
Profaning a religious name or concept belonging to any major religion is a serious crime in Tilooka. However, Tilookan criminal justice is centered around rehabilitation. Most crimes require a period of "Faith Re-education".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: The Libertarian Concordance of Czardas
To: Tilooka

Greetings from the Concordance of Czardas! We wish to send our own task force to Tilooka to join in the manhunt. As requested the inventory of what they shall be carrying is:

100 total men and women, armed with:
Light assault rifles
GPS tracking devices
Smoke bombs
Pepper spray
Tasers
Wireless deactivators (These are not weapons per se, they simply turn off all wireless devices on a set wavelength.)

If Tilooka objects to any of this, kindly let us know so we can change the weaponry.

~Fld. General Ogden, Czardaian Military Commander
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OOC: Just incase you don't know, here is a quick rundown of the MTF (Military Task Force, this is not a general name, this is the name given to my personal one).

It is a small well trained force, drawn from the most elite troops the military had to offer. They are trained to carry out a number of tasks, including anti-terrorism, hostage release, policing and front line combat (even though this is their primary training). They are equipped with above standard equipment, designed for light-weight and efficiency.

They can strike targets quickly and efficiently, with precision.

IC:

We simply cannot operate within these conditions. You are, as we see it, at the moment, stopping us from obtaining justice. The MTF will enter armed normally and will not require support. We will respect your culture, religion and customs. We will not tolerate attacks upon our troops. We would be happy to give you a full run-down of the force upon arrival, but inspection beyond inventory checks will not be allowed.

Our intell team requests that the assigned intell officer does not get in the way, and does not have to be listened to. Similar to the troops, the intell team is well trained and have years of experience in military and civilian work. They feel that this will stop them from obtaining their goals.

Should LaFleur be captured, we see it as our duty to prosecute him for whatever crimes would be put against him, as he committed them on our soil. If he is wanted for other things, he can then be tried for those at a different place or at the same time. If Czardas want LaFleur, we would be happy to hand him over, pending investigation.

Our troops are ready for deployment. We will bring our own equipment, and will not need anything else but land on which to set-up a base of operations. Our troops and intell teams have received information on your country, including customs and how to act within your country.

We are sorry if our demands are too much, we can compromise but only to a certain degree. We are not coming to cause trouble or to start a war, we are coming as agents of the law.


Commander Dalston
Commander of MTF Unit 1

To: Commander Dalston
From: The Exaulted Heinrich Sebastien

Unfortunately, this is not acceptable. Armed troops of a foreign nation will be attacked by the Tilookan people, and will most likely cause a popular call for Tilooka to declare war.
Tilooka has a long-standing tradition of religious militias. They will offer whatever violent resistance they can.
We also cannot compromise on the issue of LaFleur. Czardas, however, has already requested permission to commit personnel to the effort, though, so this issue may no longer be important.
Our intelligence specialist will only be there to mediate between you and local law enforcement and the militias.
We are willing to modify our normal customs inspection procedure to a guided walk-through of the actual equipment when it arrives. This will allow your personnel to be hands-on during the inspection, but still allow us the confidence that you are not moving anything strange within our borders.

You can be assured that help will not be needed. These troops will not be on the streets actively. Until the intell teams have done their work the troops will be inactive.

We agree to use of an intell specialist, and to the equipment checks as they now stand to be done (with our personell present, and me personally).

This seems to iron out our differences. If anything else is needed, please say. We will be committing forces after confirmation.


Commander Dalston

Agreed. As long as your troops remain seperated from your active intelligence group until you absolutely need them, their presence is acceptable.
We request that any deployment of combat-ready personnel be preceeded by a notification so that regional clerics can attempt to calm the population and keep the militias from taking violent action.
Both Czardas and Muesilania are given immediate clearance to land in Tilooka City. There you will be joined by Martin Jansen, of the Ministry of Intelligence.

The Czardaian transport plane is carrying the whole task force and its equipment. There aren't too many of them, because it will be a maximum of forty or fifty rogue Czardaian troops and their commander that they will need to find. The rest are all accounted for, having surrendered to Scellia and being allowed to return to Czardas.

The plane touches down at Tilooka City airfield and the hundred-odd soldiers descend, carrying their backpacks and talking noisily. Outside they are greeted by a company of Tilookan soldiers and brought inside to customs, to make sure their weapons and equipment are all in order.

Although they chat and laugh, there is a prevailing sense of nervousness among the Czardaians. Perhaps it is because they are up against a murderous maniac who has stopped at nothing short of bringing two countries to war for his own, twisted ideals.

The troops piled onto a military 737. A huge cargo plane was on its right, carrying a large supply of munitions and food, water and intell equipment. This was their first major deployment internationally, they were calm, cool and collected.

The intell team joined them on the plane, with their bags of various creature comforts. Dalston went into the cockpit to deliver a message.

"You will be departing shortly, please prepare for take-off. I wish you all the luck in finding him, you know what to do. I will be departing for the region in a few hours, after I make sure everything arrives safely. See you out there guys!"

There was lots of noise on the plane, as the men talked to themselves and about the place they were going. The engines fired up and the plane taxied to the beginning of the runway.

-------------------------------

It appears I forgot to mention that extra supplies (vehicles mainly) will be arriving via a cargo ship, supported by two destroyers. Our forces will be arriving at various points over the day. We will require a port to dock in as we unload our ship. The destroyers will not enter the port at any point, we assure you of that.


Commander Dalston

Bump for all involved.

[ooc:] We kind of need Tilooka on this one...