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Assaif offensive

Main article: Assaif offensive

The outbreak of violence across Charnea on the 7th of June, 2012, shocked the country and set in motion its future political destabilization. The Assaif offensive, carried out by the militant Azdarist group Amaa, was the largest single insurgent action carried out in Charnea since the end of the Ninvite War and involved dozens of bombings and attacks by gunmen on the same day. Breaking with the pattern of most historical insurgent offensives in Charnea, the Assaif Offensive primarily targeted non-strategic civilian targets with only a handful of strikes hitting critical infrastructure or military targets. The attacks represented a change in the strategy of the Amaa and other insurgent organizations in Charnea away from the model of asymmetric military-style operations primarily targetting the Charnean Army and its supporting infrastructure, exampled by the Hatha during the Ninvite War, towards a strategy of terrorism targeting civilians, especially foreign tourists and businesspeople, in an effort to weaken Charnea by damaging its international reputation and impacting its economy. Along with the change in doctrine came a change in tactics. In the past, the common tactic of insurgent forces was to attack an outpost or strategic position occupied by Charnean soldiers with groups of two or more heavily armed fighters carrying ammunition and explosives as well as water and rations to last for several days. The aim of such attacks was usually to hold out for as long as possible while engaging the Charnean Army in a protracted and bloody combat action that would favor the insurgents. Against the softer targets presented by financial institutions, Combine headquarters and tourist attractions, armed groups could inflict greater casualties in a short time and would often attack multiple targets with a combination of explosives and automatic weapons before being apprehended or, in most cases, killed by security forces. The group also attempted to seize a broadcasting station in the Charnean capital to transmit a call to arms for other anti-state or anti-Charnean groups to take action, but this was foiled when the station's equipment was destroyed by its operators before it could be seized.

Between 450 and 1240 were killed in the attacks of the Assaif offensive, at least 100 of them foreign nationals. In at least two cases, the attackers took hostages and engaged security forces in a protracted siege, incurring further casualties and media attention. Besides being the bloodiest single terror attack in Charnean history, it was also by far the most publicized internationally. The international and domestic fallout of the attacks created intense political pressure on the Charnean government, as well as broad condemnation not only of the Amaa but also of the Charnean intelligence and security apparatus that had been mostly blind to the extensive preparations for such a large and widely dispersed campaign of attacks. The fallout would later intensify when it came to light several months later than many military intelligence units had in fact raised the alarm over what they suspected to be preparations being made for a large scale attack, reports that were ignored or downplayed by elements of the hierarchy.

Since most of the those directly involved in the attacks had already been killed in the process of carrying them out, the Charnean military response was targeted against possible training grounds or command nodes of the Amaa network believed to be embedded in communities and secret locations across eastern Charnea. Although state sources would make a number of claims as to the destruction of alleged terrorist compounds during this Charnean counteroffensive, as it would come to be called, these claims were broadly dismissed by both the international media and much of the Charnean public. Charnean military operations against the Amaa in the summer and early autumn of 2012 suffered greatly from a lack of preparation and intelligence gathering, leading to Army units being ordered to blindly search wide areas suspected of hosting Amaa bases leading to a series of costly ambushes on Charnean troops as well as a high non-combatant casualty rate. A number of figures in the military would later say that their units had been rushed to the east to produce what could be passed off as enemy casualties because of the political need for the regime to save face following the disastrous attacks.

ag Haqar legitimacy crisis

The incumbent Premier of Charnea during the Assaif offensive and its aftermath was Marus Ibiza ag Haqar, a lifelong AKE party member and Madounist who had emerged victorious in the power struggle to succeed long-time dictator of Charnea Pazir Madoun as paramount leader of the AKE following his death in 2002. Premier ag Haqar had spent a great deal of his decade in power up to that point establishing as much direct control over military and civilian institutions as he could and was well known to be intimately involved in military and security operations. Because of this, he became an easy target for anger of the Charnean populace and the international community for his mismanagement of the Assaif offensive, both in the intelligence failure to foresee and prevent the attacks as well as in botching the military response. This pressure manifested in the form of mass demonstrations in Agnannet and, more pressingly for the Premier, political attacks by Charnea's minority opposition parties.

Marus Ibiza, a scion of the Charnean civilian intelligence apparatus with many connections to the SET state security agency, attempted to shift the blame to the military for the failures of the Assaif counteroffensive, which only served to anger much of the military hierarchy.

Demonstrations turn to riots, opposition arms itself...

Emergency Government

On September 3rd, 2013, a coup was launched by Major General Othman Dey against the ag Haqar regime. Othman Dey, the son of renowned Ninvite War-era General Imran Dey, was well respected and had the support of key figures in the officer corps as well as civilian support from important Charnean Combines. With broad military support, the coup itself was swift and bloodless, with the Carnelian Honor Guard surrendering Premier ag Haqar to military custody by the end of the 3rd. Dey then moved to occupy the legislative complex, dissolving the assembly without much incident and subsequently declaring an Emergency Government with himself as acting Premier and a military council under his leadership acting as his cabinet. The coup had been carried out in the hopes that removing ag Haqar would quell the growing dissention and prevent the outbreak of widespread disorder and civil violence. Instead, the seizure of military power and the immediate crackdowns instead backfired as the riots continued in Agnannet and other cities, this time exploding into bloody confrontations as demonstrators faced soldiers with live rounds instead of municipal riot police. The Tahusket Square Massacre on 8 September 2013 was the largest such clash, provoking a major international backlash immediately on the heels of the coup. The bloodshed of the massacre and similar incidents in the first week of of the Emergency Government provoked armed retaliation by what were at first small groups of armed citizens, but would quickly develop into a network of urban militias coordinated by an organization calling itself the Charnean Revolutionary Government in Achra or CRGA.

Various resistance groups carried out attacks across Charnea, but these were relatively isolated and small in size. The largest of the these was the armed wing of the Ekelhoc protest movement, which was boxed in and destroyed in its base area of the Tafaset slum in the Ekelhoc outskirts within one week of the outbreak of armed resistance. By the time the CRGA had coalesced, virtually all resistance groups aligned with the now-disbanded Charnean opposition movement outside of Achra had been contained and was destroyed or in the process of being destroyed. Inside Achra however, resistance groups had managed to seize many neighborhoods in the south of the Greater Agnannet agglomeration as well as in the city of Atafala to the south. Much of the Iza delta was now dangerous to government troops as ambushes by resistance fighters became common. The CRGA attracted the interest of a number of Kiso-aligned nations as a potential revolutionary democratic alternative to the repressive Charnean regime reviled by most left-leaning states. However, the CRGA's position holding ground deep in Charnean territory and inside the dense air defenses of its capital region made it unfeasible to supply material aid to the group without taking measures that would amount to an invasion of Charnea. Open war with Charnea being a non-starter for the neighboring Rubric Coast states, support for the CRGA was limited to international pressure on the Charnean Emergency Government in the form of condemnations and the threat of diplomatic sanctions. Many Charnean businesses operating internationally also began to be affected by boycott movements as the military campaign in Achra unfolded.

Achra insurgency

The insurgency of the CRGA militia groups quickly developed into the protracted siege of resistance strongholds in Achra by the Charnean military. Army units, already in a state of high alert from the 3 September Coup, deployed quickly in response to reports of resistance actions across the region. The initially softened posture of the military, involving checkpoints and the limited travel of civilians across their lines, rapidly hardened in response to insurgent attacks and led to region-wide lockdowns and the increasing use of armored vehicles as Army units prepared for hard fighting inside the capital and the surrounding region. The Army moved to cut off lines of communication and divide areas of resistance activity into manageable pockets, most importantly separating resistance-held neighborhoods in Agnannet and Atafala from each other and from the semi-clandestine resistance network in the Iza delta. Charnean troops, experienced in counterinsurgency operations, were aiming to halt the enemy's ability to move freely and box them into restrictive areas of operation where they could be attacked and destroyed. However, the application of this well tested tactic in the highly urbanized environment of the capital region led to hundreds of thousands of non-combatants being trapped for weeks in their homes as the Army laid siege to their neighborhoods.

The battle against the CRGA would take months as the Army cleared the neighborhoods it had locked down in grueling door-to-door operations. Clearing of the resistance began in the south Agnannet slums, which were considered the first priority, before units moved south to root out fighters in the Iza delta and lay siege to resistance-controlled Atafala. Thanks to the proliferation of small-arms in private ownership in Charnea, resistance fighters had no shortage of firearms but suffered from a lack of automatic weapons, heavy equipment like machine-guns and anti-armor weapons, as well as explosives that could be used in IEDs aimed at destroying Army troop transports. The ad hoc nature of the CRGA's organization facilitated the flexibility of command for local militias affiliated with the CRGA but hampered what little inter-unit coordination was still possible through the military's blockade. Additionally, most militia units lacked any capacity to provide medical care for wounded fighters, leading to wounded resistance fighters often being left to be captured by the enemy knowing their chances of survival were better even as prisoners of government troops. Because of their material advantages, government troops lost one soldier KIA for 14 armed resistance fighters dead.

Othman Dey commended the officers on the ground for what he considered to be a laudable effort to reduce collateral damage and civilian deaths. Independent assessments concluded that for every five armed resistance fighters KIA (distinct from suspected resistance fighters who were unarmed), 1.4 civilians would be killed or severely wounded. While this was condemned by the international community, the Emergency Government internally considered these figures to represent a major success, as they were considerably lower than the ratio of collateral casualties of a typical Charnean counterinsurgency style operation. The reduction of casualties in the Achra campaign was largely attributed to the ban on air strikes and heavy weapons, a measure that in many cases slowed the Army's progress as it cleared obstacles and entrenched positions, but which undoubtably reduced non-combatant deaths and physical damage to buildings and infrastructure.

After December of 2013, the conflict decreased in intensity significantly as the last major CRGA militias were dispersed, suffering casualties and losing much of their equipment in the destruction of their bases of operation by the military. However, small scale attacks would continue in southwestern Achra for years to come, mainly targeting military personnel. The most recent attack was in 2020, in which a member of the CRGA underground resistance attacked a troop transport with an improvised grenade-launcher in northern Atafala killing 6 and wounding 21, all soldiers.