NationStates Jolt Archive

Over 1,200 Soviets were now registered in the Namibian Soviet State and the masses –if in this bare land the sprinkling of residents could so be called- were rejoicing at the destruction wrought upon unemployment and the astronomical rise in wealth experienced by more than ninety percent of the population since the Indians arrived.

The Soviet bloc got what it needed, and Namibia was still selling some of its diamonds and minerals to the capitalist bloc, marketing them as, “bloodless”.

Golkonda fighters, Hound submarines, and Cobra battle tanks soon equipped the small South West African Commonwealth Guard, comprised of ten-thousand regulars and a largely theoretical Auxiliary Corps of more than half a million citizens.

Soviet medical aid began to arrive as joint Indo-Namib projects bean work on such things as a desalination plant and several phalansteries in the recently popularised Indian style.

Still, a minority of the population was upset by its loss of power. Fortunately for the revolution, most of that disquiet was contained within social-education facilities, for the likely dissenters were obvious from the get-go, and the remaining opposition came, then, mostly from those whose friends or relatives were so remanded.

They tended, of course, to be relatively soft next to the labouring classes, and would need much help before they could mount any notable resistance to Sovietism in Namibia.

Angola and the UAR weren’t likely to offer a way-in for NATO and landlocked Botswana wasn’t ideal given the location of anti-colonialist, socialist and communist forces between Namibia and Roycelandia et cetera.

Indian Soviet forces moved to the South African border to bolster policing of that frontier, SWACG hunted for political opponents within, and the INA was asked by the Final Soviets of India and SW Africa to take part in port security at Windhoek and Walvis Bay.

Windhoek, Namibia

"I'm not really sure you understand the implications of allowing your country to fall under Soviet influence", explained the Roycelandian Consul as he sat in a high level Minister's office. "You'll be a lot worse as a Soviet state, trust me."

"I have something to lose, all right! Or I had, anyway."

A glum minister couldn't do much for the ambassador.

"I'm redundant. The Soviet State doesn't need me for half of my work, anymore, and I can't justify this position off the other half. 'Direct democracy', they tell me.

"I can vote against it all, but government off... ex-officials and businessmen are outnumbered quite badly by the general population... I told them that streamlining the civil service would be the ruin of us!"

The minister, by week's end, would be a clerical worker at Windhoek-South's Regional Soviet, inking the typewriter of the nation's communist system, and resident at the city's fourth pantisocratic phalanstery. He wasn't especially happy about it, but if he didn't do anything he wouldn't get anything.

Counter-revolutionaries in Namibia were struggling. They had to participate in the rising phalansteries if they wanted to live and eat in them... old private residences were being converted or bulldozed en masse. Once part of a small community it was not easy -especially given that their former positions of wealth or power were known- to work unnoticed against the Soviets or to meet regularly with foreigners in secret.

If they were given cash so as to get by without living in the communes, people would begin to wonder where it came from and have Namibia's GSIC branch, the Gemsboks, asking questions. They could try to re-establish independent rightists bases, but these would be easy targets for the South West African Commonwealth Guard and their Indian-supplied weapons. They could live off the land, but in the unforgiving Namib this would not be easy, especially not for relatively soft capitalists and politicians!

A lot would have to get used to life as communists -or social-education students- or else -more likely- go into exile. And hundreds wanted to, seeking assylum in Roycelandian territories and elsewhere over-seas. Some of these would want to go back and fight the SWASC, of course.

Namibia

Two regiments of Union Marines, a force some 1,200 strong, are slated for deployment to Namibia via Zanzibar and Zimbabwe. With their comrades mere days away from meeting the hated Frenchmen in battle, posting to relatively quiet Namibia is not a very popular development, but with the Roycelandians clearly quite active in the country Mumbai is not about to take risks with such important base facilities. There are few fighting men more experienced and better than the IN's marines, after all, and doubtless over a thousand of them will be sufficient to effectively combat enemy raids on Walvis Bay and Luderitz. Close to 100 IN clearance divers are dispatched to Namibia with the marines as a more immediate anti-commando countermeasure. Mobile BrahMos launchers, mounted aboard Mahindra 8x8 trucks, are airlifted in with the marines to reinforce the six already present at Luderitz, as are FV101 light tanks and IC.1 APCs, giving the marines a modest armored warfare capability. A flight of Auxiliary Transport Service, or Foreign Service, DC-3s arrives in Windhoek as well to bolster the nation's existing force of HAL-built Alouette III copies and Karakoram trainer-attackers. And lastly, IAF Springers from No.37 Squadron are readied for a trans-ocean flight to Zanzibar, where they will stage for deployment to Windhoek. Word of Roycelandian special forces operating in the Namib desert is not taken lightly, after all, and if things should escalate between the Soviets and Roycelandia, Union commanders in Namibia would prefer to have at least some strike assets in the country. Doubtless the Roycelandians have learned to respect the Springer as much as the Unioners in their history of dealing with Beth Gellert.

Parliament is quick to approve assistance provisions for the Namibian Soviets, and, should they request it Union advisers are on hand to help with desert agriculture, mining, and infrastructure development projects. And emergency food aid is available should it be required. As far as the development of Soviets is concerned, that is left to the Igovians, and Parliament is not eager to interfere in the ISC's business as long as it is popular amongst the Namibian people. Certainly Namibia hasn't experienced such internal upheaval since the expulsion of the apartheid South African government in 1990, and nobody knows how better to manage it than the Igovian Soviets.

The Roycelandian Government is offering open and unrestricted evacuation to Roycelandian territory for anyone wishing to take advantage of it- especially educated or skilled workers, but really, anyone who wants out will be guaranteed a seat on an Imperial Airways, African Airways, or Imperial Maritime Air Service aircraft.

Rumours abound that the Imperial Foreign Legion are being deployed in more remote areas, with the goal of sabotaging crops and infrastructure, rendering phalastaneries unviable in the process, but so far nothing can be proven and the rumours are just "pub talk", as it were...