NationStates Jolt Archive

Forest birds and the rustling of trees in the wind surrounded two white men in olive drab uniform as one kicked at the ashes of an extinct fire and the other looked about this tiny clearing and into the trees.

"Could be local poachers." "Nah, freh, not any fucking poachers I know kills with automatic." The first man, younger, sighed and kicked at the embers again as he looked out through the forest. "They cross the border, then, is it!" "Yah, I think so, freh."

Lt.Cottee and Cpl.Berkveldt gazed for a moment into the thickening jungle. There lay the Congolese frontier. Cottee seemed relaxed, indifferent to the escape of those blick terrorists that had his comrade seething. The senior soldier struck a black-tipped Kaffirtop match and light up a smoke, his FNC carbine slung casually over one shoulder, and said in his thick Djanvalla accent, "Look, mayt, they're long gone. Time to go home, see!"

Berkveldt kicked at the ashes again, showering the undergrowth with powder and charred bits of bushmeat that recently had been a Gabon talapoin.

"Fuck it!" He hissed. "We can catch them, oi! We got their trail, mate! Why let them go just so they can come back agin?"

"Easy, son!" Said Cottee, raising a hand in a firm but caring gesture. "They over there, but so sixty million other blick bastards will kill you soon as cack! Last thing we need is give Congo Charlie an ixcuse. We ire one million white" he explained, pointing forcefully with his cigarette on each word, "including my kids an' you girlie. With ours and theirs" he went on, pointing first back west and then across the border, "they got seventy million. Lit's go home, ah?" Cottee slapped his mate on the shoulder and began to walk back out of the clearing, waving ahead as he barked orders, in an ugly sort of pidgin French, to a unit of some twenty black riflemen in the uniforms of the Djatini Scouts.

"'e's there all right. Debeve is a good man, 'e acn be trusted." "A good kaffir he may be, but it's our good white boys I'm worried about." "No worries, sir! I'd trust my life on 'is information." "And you shall, Lieutenant!"

Lt.Cottee and IV Company Djatini Scouts had a new mission. The, 'good white boys' mentioned by Major Torres were, as it turned out, no more than Cottee and his Corporal, Berkveldt, who would be backed-up by twenty, 'kaffirs' as Torres called them, in a raid against the reputed forest hide-out of Bungussi African National Union leader Abel Sara.

Sara had already survived poisoning by Republican agents, at least two fire-fights with the Army, and, last month, a glide-bomb attack by the Air Force, which destroyed a farm house and killed two civilians whom Kirchestadt now claims were, 'terrorist administrators'.

Suspected of receiving financial support from India, BANU had the potential to be a dangerous political opponent, but it was the organisation's armed wing, BANLA, the Bungussi African National Liberation Army, that presented a likely threat to this particular operation. If BANLA had received as much Indian weaponry as the government alleged, twenty-two special forces, 'troopies' could find themselves up against it, a fact they knew only too well as their Landrovers pulled out from a base near Makenbury, formerly Brazzaville, Bungussi's regional capital.

Overview

The Republic of Bungussi and Djanvallaland is a nation about the size of France, located in Equatorial West Africa and peopled by some six million souls, one million of them white, five million black. The white minority -including French, English, Dutch, and Spanish, in the main- leads an apartheid government based at Kircherstadt (formerly Libreville), while a much inferior Native Assembly is elected to sit at Makenbury (formerly Brazzaville) and has little power except what it weilds through massive corruption in the economically deprived black-dominated hinterland. In relative terms, Djanvallaland, the coastal region where over 90% of whites reside, is more prosperous than the United States, while Bungussi is in line with Timor Leste or Haiti. The Republic is lead by President Lumboldt Kircher, a national hero to whites and disgusting tyrant in the eyes of many blacks, and a weaker Prime Ministerial post that changes hands quite frequently (always amongst whites).

The Bungussi African National Union (BANU) is an outlawed black lead opposition movement strongest in parts of eastern and southern Bungussi. Lead by young Abel Sara, it advocates majority rule, a united administration rather than the divided Kircherstadt/Makenbury status quo that gives more power to the former. The Bungussi African National Liberation Army (BANLA) is BANU's military wing, and fights government forces with some foreign sponsorship, notably from India. BANLA is believed to hide much of its strength across the border in basketcase DR Congo, and conducts frequent raids against white interests in Bungussi.

The Bungussi African People's Union (BAPU) is the second largest black resistance movement, also illegal, but unlike BANU this organisation advocates a Marxist solution to the nation's problems. The Bungussi People's Revolutionary Army (BUPRA) is in desperate need of the sort of foreign support delivered to the BANLA by Delhi if it is to survive against counter-insurgency operations and competition from its nationalist rival.

(Bump before next installment)

Sara Taken Alive! Terrorists Whipped!

This was one of the more restrained headlines in Djanvallaland's papers the day after Djatini Scouts attacked the headquarters of the BANU Party and captured political leader Abel Sara after a brief firefight with BANLA gunmen, two of whom were killed at the scene.

Sara has reportedly been taken to a lock-up in Makenbury ahead of transfer to Kircherstadt, where he will probably be charged with offences against the state and could, in theory, face hanging if found guilty before a jury bound to be dominated by white faces.

In the wake of the raid, BAPU leaders have apparently fled across the Congolese frontier, risking conflict with local militias and government forces there rather than wait for Kircherstadt to move against them.