Salamati-Khirmanian tensions

The Salamati-Khirmanian tensions occurred during the 1980s, a period marked by the regime of Jalil Al Kharrabi in Salamat.

The rise of the tensions between the two countries

The tensions gradually rose between the two countries after the speech of Jalil Al Kharrabi on April 13 1982 during the 4th Salamati Revolutionary Youth meeting, criticising Khirmanis of the demolition of mosques during the 1950s-1960s in Khirmania. The young Salamati marshal reitered this accusation 4 more times during the year 1982, and fifteen times in the first half of 1983. On June 11 1983, the Khirmanian monarch King Agbayu sent a telegram to Jalil Al Kharrabi, requesting the leader to stop giving false accusations and to stop defiling the image of Khirmania, which the Salamati leader ignored, by making another hateful speech on August 23 1983, accusing the Khirmanians to be behind the international trade embargo against Salamat, and accusing the citizens of Khirmania to steal the jobs of Salamatis, during a time where unemployment and economic stagnation were growing due to the failed economic policies of Al Kharrabi and the embargo caused by the murder of Majid Muhammad in Jabiyah, in March 1981.
On February 17 1984, Jalil Al Kharrabi made his first claim on sovereign Khirmanian territory, reclaiming a 3,600 km² strip of land, optimal for cotton farming. The monarch of Khirmania officially declined the claim, which arose tensions even more and started border skirmishes 3 weeks later, resulting in a total of 531 deaths between March 7 1984 and April 25 1984, date when Al Kharrabi ordered the troops to stop firing at Khirmanian soldiers due to a lack of ammunition. The Salamati military then started to violate the Khirmanian airspace around November 1984 for intel purposes, resulting in the loss of three Il-76 aircraft and a protest in Dar Al Hamma, which was repressed immediately on December 4 1984.
These incursions in the Khirmanian airspace caused the expulsion of Salamati diplomats in the Embassy of Salamat in Mukarda the day after the protests, and three days later, on December 8, the Khirmanian diplomats were expulsed from Dar Al Hamma and the Embassy of Khirmania was set on fire. This marked the interruption of diplomatic ties between the two countries and the start of the peak of the tensions.

Maximal tensions

In early 1985, the marshal and leader of Salamat Jalil Al Kharrabi passed a secret order aiming at funding and supporting islamic fundamentalism, rebel groups and the opposition in Khirmania. He also ordered the jamming of Khirmanian radio and TV channels, by implementing jamming towers along the border. The radio stations jammed were Mukarda Broadcasting (549 kHz) and Radio Khirmania (808 and 11750 kHz). On April 10 1985, a plane, from Mukarda in destination to Mansujah, crashed into a Salamati MiG-25 fighter. Al Kharrabi accused Khirmania to be behind the plane crash by ordering the pilots to find a plane to crash into. The head of the Salamati Secret Services at that time acknowleged that this accusation was a casus belli. Salamat banned every Khirmanian product from importation in early May 1985 and the Salamati government started overtaxing Khirmanians and closing Khirmanian businesses in May 1985, leading to the Mukarda Beach Bar protests on May 19 1985 in Dar Al Hamma, where 13 000 Salamatis and Khirmanians protested together against the closing of this popular bar.
At dawn on July 3 1985, Salamat launched an invasion of Khirmania which lasted 2 weeks until Khirmania launched a counter-invasion which led to an armistice in Mukada. This war made Al Kharrabi more unpopular in Salamat, although the war was an attempt to consolidate his power. The war, although being short, had a big impact on the economy of Salamat, with the country experiencing economic regression for the first time in 1986.

Return to normal relations

After the signature of the appeasement paper on December 27 1989, tensions considerably decreased. Khirmanian products became available to sale again on March 1st 1990, the general discrimination regime against Khirmanians, ended on July 16 1990 and Khirmanian businesses were reopened in November of the same year. Khirmanian diplomats, expulsed in 1984, were allowed to come again to Salamat on September 23 1991, although the original embassy was burned down by the authorities, they were given a residential building for temporary housing. People which were expulsed from their homes by the authorities during the process blamed the Khirmanians, accentuating hatred and causing a major protest in Dar Al Hamma on September 29 1991, resulting in the death of 1203 protestors and 201 Khirmanis assasinated by the protestors. This created a temporary rise of tensions between the two countries, but it calmed down after a while. The last jammer at the Salamati-Khirmanian border was desactivated on January 15 1992, allowing citizens of Salamat to enjoy Khirmanian broadcasting. Experts say that the end of the jamming was caused by the extremely tense situation in Salamat, and that the normalization of the relations of the two countries engaged by Al Kharrabi was an attempt to stop the internal strife and the international embargo which had a part of responsability in it. With Al Kharrabi overthrown on February 3 1992, the relations were formally normalized and the tensions decreased to an all time low, before slowly increasing due to the islamist insurgency in the 1990s.