NationStates Jolt Archive

AMW Only
(But that wouldn't fit in the title!)

Bihar Soviet State

A warm breeze carried the sounds and smells of primitive agriculture across the road from surrounding fields. Bihar was starting its second year Soviet, and promised development, in this northern region of the former Patelist state, came to little more than the new surface on this previously unpaved road. It was a very good surface, and, oddly, the paving was done not directly by the local or even state Soviets but through Sopworth Igo's production office in the Supreme War Soviet, and approved by Graeme Igo's development office.

Still, the road alone represented work and value enough for Patna, Calcutta, and Raipur to report 12% growth in the regional economy, which previously was based on subsisting and saluting the authorities.

For a few brief days the road had even teemed with two-way Indo-Armandian commerce. Now it just spat migrants in one direction as the Combine's death knell resounded on the Soviet landscape. Armandians were looking for work on Bihar's vast development projects and in communal industries robbed of workers and machines by the trials of the war effort.

In the University of the 20th of May, in Chennai, a computer model had predicted to within six months the collapse of the Armandian Combine, and the Supreme War Soviet, it now seemed, had been preparing. That wind didn't just bring sounds and smells of the countryside, it bore propaganda in great unrelenting gusts of hot air.

"...and do you know why the troops have to come home without giving Louis what for? Yes, because the old invader is at it again! Yes, even in his ruin, against which we have repeatedly warned him, the Armandian manages to stop India's good work and bring trouble to our gate!"

North Sienna was Armand's wasted potential. Won in war from Indian and Celtic peoples the vast area had been cut-off from Armand-proper and its petro-chemical wealth for generations. Llewellyn was a Celtic nationalist who wanted to see every last Armandian driven from the subcontinent, the INU always anti-authoritarian, and Sino obsessively anti-Communist. After the May Revolution, the Igovians were no more friendly to the old enemy until only weeks before the Combine's collapse.

North Sienna had the vast majority of the Combine's population, and almost none of its wealth or power. Raipur was, with Calcutta's lead, returning quickly to its anti-Armandian tradition. For a brief moment in history the Combine had been an ally, useful in Bihar. Now the Supreme War Soviet was revealing the truth.

"Constance had acted in spite, and only withdrew from Bihar when the Soviets agreed to open North Sienna's toxic borders!"

"Yes, that's right! I remember it well!"

"It had, in fact, been harbouring Patel!"

"True! True! They DID take him! From Muzaffarpur!"

"Armand is helping Patel! He lead their army into Bihar! He sneaks across the opened border to sabotage us!" The Jharkand-raised propagandist was by now almost shrieking, and the crowds and viewers at home in their communes were almost doing his job for him.

"So THAT'S why we never got the parts for the wind turbine! Patel stole them!"

"That's why we can't meet the Igovian development plan's targets, comrades! What say you?"

"I heard that Patel's just doing it because wants to get us all conscripted again out of spite."

"Well, you KNOW he wants to take away our road to the cities."

By now the world would have been watching Soviet troops returning to the border after withdrawing several miles during the brief reconcilliation and busying themselves with Patelist militias. Would but that the PCC and Dra-pol had destroyed most hostile satellites passing over the region, save those of the United States, and it was quite likely that the Quinntonians had their attentions elsewhere, since major ports, missile bases, anti-satellite facilities, WIG stations using in annexing Indian Ocean states, submarine bases such as the one from which the 7th Fleet was almost ambushed, and most military-industrial centres lay towards the sub-continent's southern end.

The Supreme War Soviet honestly hoped that rural northern India was of concern only to India, Armand, Nepal, and perhaps China.

And so Operation Indie began.

[OOC: Tias pops off and Neo Anarchos doubles its petrol exports, Royce wanders away and the Empire gears for war, Armand steps out and the Combine... collapses?

A house of cards it may be, but no more so than most... the day North Sienna implodes is the day FARC forms a government and Lusaka doubles in size].

OOC: Sorry for the schizophrenic post. I'm laying a lot of groundwork here.

London

British intelligence analysts look askance at their comrades in the gathering department, frankly shocked that a state so pervasive as the Combine could simply... cease to be. The control over the citizenry there bordered on mind control, and many had remarked upon the fact that a nascent collective consciousness seemed to have formed in the Combine as a result. Clearly, more information was needed. Local contacts, many left over from Britain's days in India and the continuing influence there even after the disillusion of Empire, were activated and asked to poke around gently. Information in North Sienna, long just a trickle from the one or two units remaining, began to flow more freely as the characteristically porous Soviet influence grew while the fanatical Combine influence faded.

By all accounts, the Combine's command-economy had collapsed under the massive strain of modern demands and pressures. The government, supported by its massive petrochemical exports, was suddenly rendered incommunicado. The entire Combine was teetering on the brink of simultaneous uprising, collapse and political reform. Whole sections were going Soviet, whole others seemed disgusted with everything collectivist and were going their own way. What an opportunity!

Strathairn's government was swift to react. Christina Lloyd, somewhat recovered from her cold but still pink-nosed and a bit stuffy-sounding, spoke before the assembled media of the Empire. Motioning for quiet and brushing the various and questing microphones aside, she spoke.

"We extend our condolences to the people of the Combine, and offer the support of His Majesty's government in this time of instability. We extend our invitation to the local governing councils of the Combine, and promise to give nothing but aid. We won't come as conquerors or crypto-imperialists, just as friends from one nation helping friends from another. We're all human, in the end; that's something we've started to lose sight of in the past few years. As humans, we give you our support."

Support, of course, costs money. Britain was a rich nation, to be sure, but its current expenditures saw the treasury drained in three years, assuming that spending remained constant. And spending was going up. The Exchequer was blaming the Admiralty, the Admiralty was blaming Horse Guards, Horse Guards was blaming the MoD, MoD was blaming NATO's committments, and NATO had nothing to say on the matter except, 'Britain's financial situation is not a matter for this Alliance's defense council'. In other words, there wasn't enough money to go around.

Government offices of all sorts advertised war bonds with slogans like: 'use that pound for King and Country, buy war bonds!' or 'Sink the Reds, Buy Bonds Here!'. People bought, but it wasn't enough. The Empire had been chugging along quite comfortably until now, its industries geared towards the production of consumer goods and the manufacture of high-tech devices. Turning around and repurposing industry to produce tanks, guns, missiles and warships was draining the treasury, and the Exchequer was guarding its wartime reserve with every legal trick in the book. Without a declared war, the massive financial reserve was closed.

No. 10 Downing St.

Strathairn put down his biography of Winston Churchill and sipped his tea. He was having a quiet evening, one of the few that he could snatch here and there. Christina was asleep beside him on the couch, her own novel propped open on her nose. Andrew suppressed a laugh and closed it before laying the book on the table. They'd been having long days recently, with little time to spend in quiet companionship. With not a lot of interest devoted to their relationship's scandal-value, the two had essentially stopped all pretenses of being co-workers. No. 10 Downing St. wasn't a bachelor's pad anymore.

Andrew rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully, and reached for a poker with his other hand to prod the fire into a semblance of life. With his past credentials as Chancellor of the Exchequer for both Britain and Australasia, Strathairn knew what the numbers meant as well as anyone in Treasury. The Empire, despite its far-flung trade lanes, was slowly choking on its own rearmament scheme. Funds for new production were drying up, the Type 212s purchased from Germany were suddenly in doubt, and Project Avalon faced a mountain of opposition from the Tories and New Labour alike. At least nobody was seriously calling for the evacuation of British troops from Africa, not yet. Give them a taste of rationing though, he thought sourly, and they will.

Needs couldn't be met, not at their current standard. Petrol prices were through the roof, although the strategic reserve was still growing steadily as subsidized Hudecian oil was brought in by the tanker-load. Trains were popular in the Empire, so people had yet to revolt like they might in the automobile-fixated United States. Rubber and steel, brought in from South America or mined and refined in the Home Islands respectively, were still in plentiful supply. Things could be worse on the resource front. The real problem was cash and supplies, neither of which the Empire had in sufficient amounts. Strathairn glanced at his book, smiling at the iconic picture of Churchill. That ugly man, with his face like a squashed prune that awful gash of a mouth, his titanic belly and undeniably Freudian cigar, would that he were alive today. He'd know exactly what to do. Would probably have declared war already, sent the fleets to sit off of Soviet India's harbours and shell anything that came out. None of this dilly-dallying about.

But that was a strategy for the 1940s, when news of precipitous military action could be controlled, spun and twisted into a heroic thing. It was harder today. There was no room for a Churchill, who would damn the media and the public and simply order his beloved navy to crush the enemy. Now it was all in the subtlety, in the game. Strathairn didn't like it. He glanced at Christina, curled up against his shoulder. She looked peaceful like that. This was her kind of politics, he thought ruefully. She was the one who could smile and shake the other guy's hand, all the while positioning to knife him in the side. It wasn't his sort of politics. Strathairn preferred to talk straight and let the other man see his sword, no obfuscation and no showboating. Plain, straight talk.

He looked at Churchill's biography again. One thing, he thought, might do with some straight talking. Britain was running out of money, and the United States had a prime minister with not much of an international reputation and little upon which to hang her hat. Vanessa Moerike, he'd heard, was having a rough time of it before the Bishops. It'd be worth a phone call, at least.

(OOC: That's only because nobody's done anything else involving dead nations, though, eh? NA's only gone from Anarchy to anarchy, with Soviet forces trying to protect petrochemical interests, and the UAR's broken up but was left with established leadership in each state so we knew what was there. Is Royce gone for ever? We talked at some length about non-aggression while he's away, and I've been assuming that Q's talk about Roycelandian activity isn't going to go much further than it has.)

Soviet India

Truth be told, even Portmeirion and Calcutta had little intelligence on the western Combine, and only knew enough to conclude that petrochemical wealth and public works had established modern infrastructure and a powerful military force. The movement of people from North Sienna gave more information -and likely as much misinformation- on that vast enclave, enough to indicate that intervention seemed both necessary and possible, and that Siennan defences were in many ways limited, but it didn't tell the Soviets what western Armand might do in response to any Soviet meddling.

Still, with Geletians dominating the Supreme War Soviet, the course of action was relatively predictable once accepted.

Of course there was still plenty of room for foreign intelligence workers to lose their jobs over India. No doubt in several nations there were men and women drafting reports on why the Commonwealth wouldn't attack North Sienna. It's a backwater and they're having trouble developing Bihar as fast as was promised, West Bengal still needs some work, they're more interested in coaxing Bangladesh into unification, all the oil's in the west and not the eastern enclave, historical grievances would make ethnic integration difficult, the Combine in whatever state it may be is more use as an awkward bedfellow than an open enemy, the Combine's oil exports make it vitally important to the capitalists and likely to draw their involvement, and North Sienna's just too damn big.

Then why are 90% of the Commonwealth's all-India-bound Hathi battle tanks moving north?

North Sienna, Armandian Combine

The Combine's Indian territory might seem distant from its Persian heartland, separated from the lands of Armand and under British rule for centuries before re-entering the fold after the end of that empire's hold on the subcontinent. The communal culture of the Higher One, and the race which had birthed it, had only come to these lands in the 11th century, and the population still presented an appearance of mixed ethnicity, less cohesive than that of Armand proper. Weak and isolated, they might look to some... oppressed and yearning for freedom to others.

But while the Combine's cultural roots might lie to the West, North Sienna was not a forgotten periphery: it was its ideological heart. It was the people of North Sienna who birthed the Revolution of the Black Flag, who led the final charge against the disease that whas the individual and who pulled their Persian brethren out from the corruption of the Higher One into the form now known as the Unified Combine. For over a half century, the people of this land had thrown themselves willingly into the Combine's great struggle to purge the idea of Self in favour of the Whole... a quest to which the anarcho-socialism of Igo stood as much antithesis as the bulky, boisterous Geletians did to the small and collected Armandians.

So long as the interests of the Combine ran in parallel with those of the Commonwealth, there would be no remarks, no threats... the League of Feudalists was a shared enemy which ought be struck down from its imperial ventures. But if Sopworth Igo and his War Soviet had decided to let loose their Geletian thirst for blood, they would find that even the largest beast might fall to a swarm of ants.

---

Combine diplomats in Mumbai move to pressure the Commonwealth's closest ally... in response to Soviet provocation, it is said troops preparing for departure to the Western Sahara and Eritrea would now have to be diverted back to reinforce North Sienna, a blow to the greater Progressive effort against the French which, now that the Geletians seemed to have abandoned it, would leave Hindustan alone opposing League colonies now taking hold in West Africa. The Combine has so far been most pleased to see peace and ever-warming relations between itself and the rest of India, but current actions remind of Bedgellen agression under their Principality (and the Hindustanis, more than anyone, ought recognize such a rebirth).

The Combines allies within the Shining Sphere are under perhaps more pressure than the Hindustanis, bound as they are both by alliance and their suckling at the teat of Armandian crude. The Strainist Party and the CPRD are both informed that they will oppose any agression on the part of the Commonwealth, or they will find themselves without their current supplies of subsidized petroleum. Given that skyrocketing demand has spiked market prices, this is a serious threat indeed, perhaps a greater motivation that the existence of agreements requiring mutual defense and support.

That market price currently sees the Combine riding high, in economic terms... North American production monopolized by the endless thirst of Washington and Port Royal, Russian pipelines pouring their contents to support an isolated League, and Neo-Anarchan supplies likewise sucked dry by the Soviets, leaves precious little supply for a demand pushed ever higher by the prospect of global strife. Chinese appetites alone are significant, not to mention those smaller players without the muscle to hold captive sources of fossil fuels. With currency exchange less reliable each day, trade occurs mostly in goods rather than cash, and the need for shipping sees Combine contracts pushing fos space in Hindustani drydocks as its own shipyards churn out frigates and diesel submarines to defend the flow of cargo... though having expected to face League raiders rather than South Indians, the Combine crews of Coastal Protection need little effort to change their focus: a threat to the whole is a threat to the whole, no matter what its source. British overtures would find welcome in Constance, the United Kingdom having a need for oil and useful goods for the exchange, though there would be words exchanged on other matters as well... the CPRD and Western Sahara high on the list.

---

The two combine intelligence officers surveyed the scene, their role distinguishable from the bureaucrat beside them only by the blue tint to their sunglasses.

"We are still unclear on as to how we permitted these events to unfold..."

"...but we are certain we can provide proper solutions in due time."

"We are confident that we will provide everything we need in the course of our investigation."

The concrete apartment blocks and grain silos of Settlement VC102 jutted out from the surrounding rice fields, black flags still fluttering on the wind. VC102 was in some ways typical of agricultural settlements here near Sienna's eastern frontier, producers of rice and other grains, as well as woven lotus leaves when there was time between harvests. VC102 had been home to almost 5000, mostly agricultural workers and those tasked with providing vital services. But VC102 had one major difference from most of Sienna‘s agricultural settlements: it had been made up of Biharis.

Foreigners were not a common sight in the Combine… Nazis, Igovians, Strainists, Lutherans, all might have their collectivist aspect, but ultimately their philosophies conceded in some fashion to the idea of the individual. The mindset of the Armandians made no such concessions, and in doing so became alien to what many would consider ‘human’.
But some had come regardless, over past decades, braving wire and landmines to flee the poverty of Patel’s Maoist Bihar in search of the prosperity which flowed into the Combine from its veins of black gold. To the desperate, the idea of order had some appeal, and the guarantee of full bellies a draw of its own. It was only after arrival that the true price exacted by the Combine would become clear, and by then it was too late to turn back: no one left the Combine.

Only now, they had. Drought on the subcontinent seemed to have been far less than expected, but lighter rains had reduced the yield of rice gathered from VC102. A disappointment, but not a major one… a slight reduction in allotted rations still left them with a more-than-sufficient diet. However, this event came at a time when the Maoists no longer held Bihar in their grasp, when Soviet development aid was said to be pouring in. The sacrifices required by the Combine, in that light, were far less attractive, particularly to those who had spent only a few years in Sienna.

Departure had occurred suddenly and en masse… a small but vocal percentage leading the way and giving focus to the dissatisfaction of others. For many, once some had decided to go, remaining was not an option: Combine collective responsibility would hold all responsible for having failed to prevent the defections. Those who resisted were locked away in an empty warehouse to prevent pursuit… children made up the majority of these, having been moulded more easily than their parents.

Taking what they could, the Bihari population of VC102 had left the way they had come, along old trails and border tracks to reach free Bihar, bringing with them tales of the Combine’s horrors and seeking riches for themselves amongst new development projects. It would not be long before men in blue sunglasses and soldiers in gasmasks followed the trail and closed the gaps, but for these at least there would be freedom.

Of course, freedom is not all it is cracked up to be. Even for those who lived only a short time in the Combine, the psychological impact is significant: Soviet Bihar, whatever its merits, cannot provide the cohesiveness of the Combine, and recovering a sense of self whose elimination was the focus of the mighty Armandian machine is no easy task. For some, the future will be little more than thievery and petty crime, all traces of empathy discarded to revel in the pure selfishness that stands opposite to Combine ideals. For others, separation will be too much to bear… suicide rates amongst the refugees will doubtless exceed the local average by several orders of magnitude.

“We are sorry that we could not prevent the exodus.”

“We understand we gave all we could, and we will not hold ourselves responsible for this outbreak.”

“They are no great loss, in any event, and the infection has been contained. We will ensure that we are allotted replacement labour before the next planting. Until then, we will do what we can to meet our targets.”

Samarkand fixates on any information about Soviet troop movements threatening North Sienna, engaged as the Caliphate is in a war on the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, generally considered to be a Combine puppet.

Chingiz's government has already returned to a significant propaganda focus on dangerous Azeri-nationalist extremism and Caliphal agents in the Combine (this is an assignment that nobody wants, as infiltrating Armand is an especially difficult and terribly dangerous mission) are focused on inciting that very same particular nationalism within the wider Combine, as well as disseminating Islamic ideas amongst a once-faithful population.

The Caliphate, in any event, is no more surprised than the Soviets to see the Combine running into problems. Depkazis know the shortcomings of command economics, having clung to the title of Soviet Socialist State until long after the rest of the former USSR, but, more to the point so far as the Caliphate is concerned, they recognise that Combine unity and homogeneity really isn't everything it's cracked up to be. Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia all existed independent of Combinism until relatively recently, millions of Combine citizens grew up outside the collective mentality, and millions of them have been persecuted for attempting to maintain cultural and religious facets alien to the Armandian hive.

These nations had only been Armandian again for little more than a decade after more than a hundred and fifty years apart from a then very different nation. Chingiz's despised father, Edmund, had heavily involved Depkazia in the region and meddled especially in Azerbaijan for years prior to and during the Combine's take-over.

Underlying fractures in the Combine structure have long been accepted as fact in the Caliphate's intelligence community, and that they should be present in isolated multi-racial North Sienna, while never confirmed first hand until now, is equally unsurprising to Samarkand.

That none of this makes Armand-proper and less well armed remains a source of the greatest concern for the Caliph as his forces pound the DRA with one eye on the Armandian border. Internationally, however, Samarkand is forward in presenting what it claims are cases of gross human rights offences in Armand, the Caliph even using the G(enocide) word to describe alleged Combine suppression of religious freedom and persecution of Muslims and Christians.

Individuals reported to be refugees from across the Caspian Sea display wounds said to be inflicted by Communist tortures and describe to TV cameras their ordeals and the Combine's deadly policy of conducting medical and military experiments on dissidents, "...though to themselves they present it as random, as if they don't care which individual is killed or made sick because everybody's supposed to be the same, and everybody's supposed to sacrifice for the community. Really they picked us [Muslims] nearly every time."

The Caliph promises to put a stop to oppression of the faith and victimisation of his brothers in the Combine, though of course almost the entirety of his deployable military is bogged down in several concurrent conflicts in Afghanistan. He even appeals to Washington and other western governments to consider the condition of one of the world's oldest Christian nations (Armenia, of course), saying that Christians are suffering along side Muslims and that the scourge of Communism must be removed not only from Afghanistan but from Armand at large.

Chingiz tends to avoid any discussion of the Indian Soviets and their possible campaign, at least until hearing more from Mumbai.

Mutterings in Raipur about a new Muslim menace to India are not reflected in Calcutta, which equals Samarkand in the field of letting Mumbai worry about those guys, for now.

Meanwhile, In Bihar, military Soviets uphold the Geletian-lead tradition of... lively debate.

There are few static gun positions on the Combine frontier, the Guard's infantry mortars and 105mm Indian Field Guns, being its only towed artillery, considered an unwise choice on a border at which Soviet self-propelled heavy guns and rocketry are understood to be vastly superior in range, targetting, and displacement time to anything in isolated North Sienna. Why deploy anything that the Armandians could conceivably shoot back at when we can keep the short-arses at arms length?

Debate in the military Soviets reflected both dry facts of the vast enclave's long-running isolation and of uninspiring Combine military history and the ideals and passions of the Guard's men and women. Many comrades insisted that a hard-hitting invasion of the vast enclave could lead to a grand victory, righting the wrngs of the post-colonial partition, freeing millions from Bolshevism, and finally allowing the Geletians and their comrades to revenge upon the Armandians for historic defeats. Strongest amongst these arguments was audibly the idea that, as in so many parts of the world, the Europeans had sought to divide and rule during their withdrawal from empire, but perhaps inwardly the strongest feelings were of a national and even racial thirst for vengeful vindication.

Plenty expected that a few crushing defeats to the warriors of the Red Flag would crack Combinist attitudes especially amongst the region's non-Armandian peoples, and well placed propaganda dealing with the luxuries of Igovian life couldn't make the Commonwealth's way appear soft if it was winning battles.

The problems appeared equally broad in scope.

A few still wanted to believe that the bad things they'd heard about the Combine and even the Armandian history that they'd learned as children were capitalist inventions intended to split the world revolution and were even hangovers from the Principality's domination of Geletian India.

Some were concerned that the inarguably advanced western Combine may use extreme measures to protect or avenge the isolated east, and that Hindustan might not be able or willing to prevent Armand's reinforcement of North Sienna. And then there was talk of cracks in the Chinese unification that represented a dangerous wildcard element. Few wanted to expose the Indian National Union to the brunt of Armandian retaliation arising from a Soviet operation, especially after their losses in the Atlantic.

And then there were those who considered a perceived erosion of the Soviet democracy a more immediate threat and who did not want to reinforce the position of the increasingly controversial Supreme War Soviet as the four office heads there began to appoint commissars to subordinate associate offices.

What, are we to vote on whether or not to carry out operational orders that may or may not arise from Calcutta?

Mumbai

Soviet citizens in Hindustan, including many GSIC contacts made in the small Geletian diaspora that arrived at the end of the Third Commonwealth, face a potentially difficult and certainly controversial task as Calcutta awkwardly squares up to Constance.

Agents, official and amature, must, they are told, seek Igovians, Anarchists, Hindu nationalists, Geletian nationalists, assorted anti-Combinists, and even anti-Armandian racists within the ranks of the Indian National Army and other defence and security organisations. They are to attempt to convince these people that to allow only very recently opened-up North Sienna to under-go significant re-armament would be a threat to peace/the strategic balance/Indian nationhood/Celtic dignity/liberal democracy, or whatever else may tug at the heart-strings of the particular target. There are also attempts to suggest that Armandian troops deployed outside the Combine should be somehow encouraged to go back to Armand-proper rather than North Sienna, or else be held up by some problem or bureaucracy, if they can not be convinced to go and fight somewhere in Africa, which would be ideal from every perspective.

A little more openly but with far less force, or cynicism, Raipur's consuls in Hindustan are able to express more vague and less conforntational concerns along the same lines, but Calcutta has decided that it is the Union's military that is most likely to co-operate with harsh measures to curtail North Siennan strength. Think how strategically disadvantageous it would be to find the Union surrounded by well-armed Armandians, the ravagers of northern India and supporters of Bolshevism in the Russias and even today in Afghanistan!

Even if we don't want to start a war with them in the current global climate, best that isolated, over-populated, and archaically-armed North Sienna remain a ball and chain around the Armandian leg!

Raleigh

Perhaps most dastardly of all, Calcuttan agents in the British Empire attempt to go just as far behind the scenes as their comrades in Mumbai, here to see if the British can't be convinced that the Commonwealth, Hindustan's friend with (greatly trumped-up) influence in Da'Khiem and a competative simulated-market economy, is somehow the moral superior and practical better of the mysterious, centralised, and partially isolated Combine. Every effort is made to portray the Armandians as shifty Bolsheviks in contrast to freedom-fighting Indians and romantic Celtic heroes.

Unlikely to go far, perhaps, but an effort to indicate that the relatively new powers based in Calcutta are on some level willing to deal with the British, despite recent clashes. These incidents themselves are hyped-up, with great focus on Soviet nuclear armament reduction, the low-key response to the WIG incident, and the fact that only one Soviet missile was launched against British assets after a wide-ranging Imperial strike on Commonwealth satellites, despite the quite visible presence of a strong Indian space force. Responses such as that, so goes the insinuation, are for popular show to placate the red masses and are deliberately constrained because the Supreme War Soviet, which has distanced itself from the Popular Soviets by relocating to Calcutta, doesn't consider the Europeans its most immediate rivals.

As something of a sidehow, a number of high-budget Kollywood films dealing directly with Indo-Armandian history and, through allusion and metaphore, with the strangeness of Combinism have been offered for simultaneous release in Britain and Australia along with Soviet and Union India, with hopes that a reputed three quarters of a million Tamils in Britain might at least take an interest.

Mumbai

Parliament is not a major fan of the Armandian Combine, having fought a number of short and painful border wars with that northern neighbor, and heavy restrictions are still placed on the type and volume of military equipment allowed into North Sienna. At the same time Unioners recognize that, historically speaking, they don't have much reason to be any more hostile to the Combiners than they are to the Soviets. Indeed, Beth Gellert, in all likelihood, caused the INU the greater share of suffering during that difficult and violent period between the departure of the British and the fall of the Llewellyn Principality. And the return of Sopworth Igo, another figure who caused the INU a great deal of trouble, to political preeminence is also not seen in too positive a light by the majority of Unioners.

Such a sharp increase in military activity on the Armandian-Soviet frontier has Unioners worried, and diplomats from Constance are heard out by a Parliament that is more than usually sympathetic towards its northern neighbor. Parliamentarians promise that they will do their best to dissuade the ISC from any kind of military action against North Sienna, unfounded as it appears to be and, by Parliament's estimation, not likely to succeed in the long run, if occupying Armandian territory is the Supreme War Soviet's intent. Lacking in heavy weaponry though they may be, the Armandians in North Sienna, Unioners believe, are able to compensate for those shortcomings through tenacity and unity of purpose, and the fact that they will not likely stop fighting any invader until that invader has been ousted. The Armandians fared well enough against INA Shermans and Cromwells in the 1960s, anyway, and the Soviets are aware of that history. And besides, say the Unioners, diplomatic pressure on the part of the Spyrians and the Drapoel ought to deter the Soviets anyway, who surely won't want to stir-up such a large amount of trouble over the issue of North Sienna.

Soviet agents in Hindustan will find themselves able to go about their business largely undisturbed, given the fact that citizens from the Commonwealth are generally allowed to travel freely throughout the INU, and they are not likely to be accosted by the Parliamentary Constabulary unless suspected of murder or another crime quite a bit more serious and concrete than what they are actually engaged in. Efforts aimed at gaining the support of UDF officers for any kind of campaign against North Sienna are, however, not usually successful. To some extent they might find that Parliamentary policy is already one step ahead of them, and Union military figures are quite unwilling to dabble in politics. The Hindustani armed forces carry with them a strong tradition of loyalty towards Parliament, seen, more or less correctly, as the mouthpiece of the INU's citizenry, and a tradition of professionalism as well, the likes of which few, if any, high-level officers are about to break with.

There is also the memory of the post-independence coup d'etat, during which much of the British Indian Army's officer corps attempted to overthrow Parliament. Very nearly all the coup plotters were killed in the end, often moments after announcing their support for the uprising, unceremoniously gunned-down by the INA's lower ranks. If nothing else, the threat of being killed by the dissatisfied citizenry helps to keep those nominally holding power on the straight and narrow.

And what about the French? say a great many Unioners. Who, after all, shout expect them to make special trouble for the generally polite Armandians while the dastardly Frogs are still playing like they are a first-rate country? The Soviets, some maintain, have forgotten who it is that they ought to be fighting.

Local customs officials along the border with North Sienna, and quite often border militia units, present a different story. It wasn't so long ago, after all, that they were fighting the Armandians on that same border, and the painful memories resulting from that conflict haven't yet had time to really heal in a climate of peaceful relations and mutual trust. They usually do not require a great deal of prodding before they agree to delay, to the best of their ability, arms shipments heading to North Sienna. They won't go so far as sabotage, but bureaucratic hassle and inefficiency reach record levels at border posts, and lunch breaks frequently last as long as five hours.

Efforts are meanwhile undertaken to try and reconcile Depkazia and the Armandian Combine somewhat, though the major point of contention between those two powers can no longer be effectively influenced by the INU. Depkazi methods in Afghanistan are not exactly commendable, but since the Armandian destruction of Towraghondi most Unioners are not especially inclined to support the DRA either. But as long as the two powers view each other with hostility the INU will be in an awkward and complicated situation, especially when China is taken into account, the likes of which Unioners are eager to make more rational and less contradictory.

Some are also beginning to feel a bit of guilt with regards to the arrangement worked-out over Kashmir, which, they think, takes a fatally simplistic view of the Principality's internal politics. More than a few Unioners point-out that Kashmir's Islamic majority is represented by the democratic National Conference, a close cousin to the Indian National Congress party and one that Mumbai has historically encouraged. These same Unioners fear that the Depkazis, once in possession of the Vale of Kashmir, will continue to deprive Kashmiris of self-rule and civil freedoms in the same manner as the Maharaja. Communiques are sent to Samarkand dealing with this subject, and Unioners hope for a positive response from Chingiz Khagan.

Unioners are to a large extent confused and worried over the present state of affairs in South Asia, and the growing Armandian-Soviet rivalry has them especially displeased. Nobody ought to be surprised that Parliament has only a very hazy idea of what to do in light of things, and, as usual, Unioners call for "peace and agreement" while simultaneously attempting to keep themselves clear of concrete obligations.

Indian National Union
The Combine approaches delays in shipping goods into North Sienna with little emotion… if a shipment must wait for hours while customs officers go through paperwork, then the Armandians will practice patience, standing patiently in neat lines outside border posts until permission is granted and the can re-board their vehicles to complete the journey. Still, even if not easily frustrated, they are not above providing encouragement , taking advantage of brimming coffers to try and expedite the process of passage through targeted payments.
Combine money also flows in to Hindustan by more legitimate means, the Armandians choosing to ship goods to Indian ports and use local transport vehicles between ship and border, rather than bringing in their own or moving convoys out from North Sienna. A way to give certain Hindustanis a vested economic interest in the flow of supply to the Combine enclave, and one which keeps the number and state of North Sienna’s own vehicles from being easily known.
Constance even goes so far as to approach Mumbai about the possibility of hosting talks between themselves and the growing Caliphate, in hopes of resolving the situation in Afghanistan… the INU seems to have managed to find a rapport with the young Caliph, and it is in no one’s interest to see continuing wars in Asia when Africa cries out for aid.
Indeed, the Combine already has some forces deployed in Africa… a helicopter squadron amongst the remnants of the SADR in Western Sahara, and a flotilla moving north to join the effort of expelling Morocco and securing Saharawi independence. Given the presence of Indian troops in Senegal, and bloodied Indian ships in the Gulf of Guinea, it would seem advantageous to coordinate efforts in the region.

Propaganda through film presents a problem for Armand, as the Soviets have a significant advantage: the nature of Combine culture renders its approach to such mass media somewhat alien to those of a more individualistic bent, who expect protagonists and heroics at the theatre, rather than the documentaries and faceless mass-line epics produced in Armand. They are forced to turn to the Lyongese, who have significant experience with pop-culture propaganda, and to local writers in the UK or INU who might be sympathetic either to Combine philosophy or Combine money. Still, theirs will be a much less rapid process, and should Kollywood manipulations prove effective, the Combine will be left struggling to catch up.

The Indian National Union

Hindustani customs officials, members of what is probably Parliament's most corrupt department, are certainly not above accepting payments of dubious legality, and Armandians will find that, when they do offer bribes, the process of paperwork and examinations that used to be stretched out for hours can be reliably cut-down to a small fraction of that figure. And though Parliament generally disapproves of such behavior, it is so widespread along the borders that Mumbai could not fairly single-out the Armandians as perpetrators, and few are about to scupper relations with Constance on those grounds anyway.

Increased use of the INU's transport infrastructure by the Armandians is met with widespread approval, and, though roads do not tend to be in the best state of repair, Hindustan's extensive rail network is quite capable of moving Armandian cargoes in a timely fashion. The same can be said about coastal shipping, and it isn't long before a regular ferry link is proposed between Karachi and Armandian ports. Mumbai also agrees to host negotiations between the Combine and the Depkazis, with the aim of rectifying the situation in Afghanistan.

At the same time Armandian propaganda does not have too deep an impact on Union opinions, in no small part due to the strength and diversity of Hindustan's own popular culture. Films intending to showcase Armandian values will have to compete with a wide range of domestic productions, and, though Bollywood filmmakers don't usually have very large budgets, the sheer volume of material output has made it very difficult for foreign films in general to achieve much popularity. For the same reasons Armandian-influenced writers will have trouble circulating their words in a nation swamped with newspapers and pamphlets of every political persuasion and viewpoint.

Still, the general perception of the Armandian Combine is steadily improving, and Mumbai indicates its openness to cooperation with Armandian forces in West Africa.