NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Modern Tech means that if your fighters shoot at Depkazia's from 200km they will tend to miss, if your ship displaces six million tonnes it will crash into Somalia and come off worse, if your tank catches a DU penetrator from a 125mm smoothbore half a mile away it will die, and, if your biological weapons are genetically targeted against Turks or whoever else, they will encounter locally prolific iamrubberious youareglueious microbes and eat your premier's breakfast and/or face.

Turkic People's Republic of Depkazia

Stretched across millions of square kilometres of steppe, desert, and mountains, the Turkic People's Republic had laboured under the domination of its strong-arm ex-Communist Party leader for more than seventeen years since the collapse of some mind-bogglingly huge Soviet Union.

Blending Marxist-Leninist command economics and a pretence at democratic-centralism with a particular take on Hanafite Sunni Islam, the inexplicably-named President Edmund Wolfgang Tchokareff had propped himself up with the revenues generated by his nation's gargantuan natural gas reserves, exporting also smaller quantities of crude oil, gold, hydro-electricity, and uranium in order to maintain the manpower and equipment of the vast Soviet-era Depkazi Front that was reformed as his Turkic People's Army.

With a resource-dependent economy denied its traditional Soviet-bloc trade partners and associated protection, the Turkic People's Republic had been harshly exposed to price fluctuations, suffering terribly when the price of gas dipped, Tchokareff investing little in alternate sources of revenue generation and choosing to make the peasants pay for his lavish lifestyle and rampant nepotism.

Ürümqi

The wide, straight boulevards of Tchokareff's capital sliced the temendous city into blocks centred around his government's many palatial quarters and the innumerable monuments to his glorious misrule that could be found here.

The Turkic People's Republic's showcase city was a friendly place for foreign journalists disinclined to cast Edmund in anything but the most splendid light, which often as not meant those on the payroll of major customers for Depkazi gas and other resources. Today, though, even the most staunch sycophants would struggle to broadcast pieces that failed to capture the calamity of Ürümqi's situation.

Tens of thousands of ordinary citizens were out on these big streets, brazenly challenging the President's kingly authority, ragged peasants converging from the surrounding lands, unkempt students, worn-out old men, grubby labourers, well-groomed domestic servants, and even, heaven forbid, women, all venting their anger verbally and with placards and rocks, while above them a 186-metre gold-plated statue of Tchokareff stood atop a massive pedestal of marble and rotated slowly so as to cast his supposedly benevolent gaze across the whole far-flung city during the course of every twelve hours.

The scale of the demonstrations was terrific as that of the nation, this city, and its monuments, and was perhaps also in proportion to the President's misuse of his power, or so the masses appeared to feel.

The government's response thus far was the equivalent of a bewildered man uselessly flapping his jaw as the economy of the oft-called gas giant ground to a halt.

Three Battlehawk Navy Ships sat, just outside Depkazian waters. They had been sent to investigate reports of civil unrest in a country that sat alongside Battlehawk Trade routes. The Three ship Task Force, had simply sat there for a few hours, monitoring what radio channels it could.

OCC:
ORBAT
2 Argonaugh Class Cruisers
1 Assault Class Amphibious assault ship

OOC: I like you.

IC: There was no getting around it. The Liberation Army had grown too large.

Supreme General Abdul Hassan Bair ben Naggoroth: family man, lover of classic rock, pleasant and personable socialite, and brutal dictator: had never thought he'd be considering that, but it was true. There were too many people signing up for the armed forces to be supported by the limited budget, which had been estimated at just under five trillion florins -- and even that was absolutely massive considering Amadjiah's overall GDP. Recruitment offices were starting to turn people away.

General ben Naggoroth thought about it for a while and decided the problem was unemployment. With it at eleven percent and falling too slowly to keep up with population growth, there just weren't enough jobs, so more people joined the military. Private enterprise was legal, of course, but nobody had enough money to start a business of their own, and thus there was a shortage of workplaces that actually employed people. And with taxes so high, international corporations didn't really want to move into Amadjiah, except for those oil companies who believed the profits from the vast untapped deposits lying under Amadjiah's deserts would outweigh the shortcomings of, well, being in Amadjiah.

There were a variety of ways in which a leader could have solved this problem. But ben Naggoroth was a military man, and he looked at it as a problem of strategy. And, in fact, he saw much less wrong with his position than a diplomat or (especially) an economist would have. He had a large army and a rather poor economy. The solution seemed obvious: use the one to benefit the other; attack another nation until it was defeated, or until it signed a peace treaty favouring Amadjiah. The economic benefits would be both short-term (in terms of jobs created in military industries) and long-term (especially if territory was captured). To the General, at least, it seemed foolproof.

ben Naggoroth had already started by annexing a small nation to Amadjiah's south, adding its mostly empty desert territory to Amadjiah's own and increasing its natural reserves. But a larger target soon presented itself. The Turkic People's Republic was located somewhere to Amadjiah's north, infringing on a range of high inaccessible mountains that separated the two nations. It was large, Communist, and not well developed; the Turks were natural enemies of the Arabs and Amadji who occupied Amadjiah; and while it was also in possession of a large military, there were signs of internal unrest and destabilization, which could be seeded and exploited to Amadjiah's benefit. Depkazia was largely Shiite, as opposed to the mostly Sunni Amadjiah -- an additional point of conflict.

But first the General knew he had to avoid looking like the aggressor. It seemed unlikely that the Depkazi would gain international support, but the world seems to like supporting nations under attack. And that, to put it simply, would not do.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

For too long, burdened by internal problems and divisions, and by a series of corrupt and denegerate Emirs, Amadjiah has failed to take action against the decrepit Communist dystopia of Depkazia.

No more! Now, with my power consolidated, I hereby deliver this ultimatum to Edmund Tchokareff, the infidel worm who sits upon the populist throne of Depkazia. Cease the oppression and the destruction of the rights of the human beings under your rule! Look to the citizens gathering in your streets for proof: end your psychopathic reign, return self-determination to your people, or face your downfall under the might of the Liberation Army of Amadjiah! I call upon the international community to bring down sanctions upon the Depkazi until this ultimatum is fulfilled or until the Turkic government is brought down.

signed,
Abdul Hassan Bair ben Naggoroth
Supreme General of the Amadji Transitional State