Khuumehkhweh

The Confederal Republic of Khuumehkhweh ǁXaub ǃAǁaub ǂnū ǃnǁe !Kʰùm-ma-*kʰe-
Flag
Motto:  "Where all goods things do converge"
Anthem: "The Striped Banner"
Capital	ǃNukha-tsetan
Official languages	Mehkhweh
Ethnic groups	62% Mehkhweh 30% Komontu 5% Coyotl 3% Bambibidi
Demonym(s)	Khuukhweh
Government	Confederation of semi-sovereign liberal democratic states and subnational tribal monarchies
• President	Tecli Naeg!xoma
• Vice President of Khuumehkhweh	Lemba ǃNagamâb
Legislature	Congress
• Upper house	Senate
• Lower house	House of Representatives
Formation
• Charter of Confederation signed	11 November 1973
Area
• Total
• Water (%)	0.380
Population
• January 2015 estimate	39,032,612
• Density
GDP (nominal)	2017 estimate
• Total	$741,619,628,000
• Per capita	$19,000 (???)
Gini (2017)	70.1 very high (???)
HDI (2017)	0.710 high (???)
Currency	gil (ǁG)
Time zone	UTC+1 (???)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+1 (not observed)
Driving side	right
Calling code	+411
Internet TLD	.km

Khuumehkhweh (Mehkhweh: !Kʰùm-ma-*kʰe-), officially known as the Confederal Republic of Khuumehkhweh, is a sovereign country in southern Malaio bordering Phansi Uhlanga to the north, Pulacan to the east, and the Vespanian ocean to the south. As of 2024, Khuumehkhweh has a population of just over 39 million, making it the Xth most populous country in the world. Its capital ǃNukha-tsetan is also its largest and most economically important city, housing the largest national port by volume of goods as well as being traditional home of the Khuukhweh film industry. Mehkhweh is the official and most common language in the country as well as the predominant ethnicity, with Lozi, Tswana, Nahua, and Bakonji being large minorities. The nation was founded in 1973 in the wake of the Third Uhlangan Civil War and the Cuipampan Civil War, the latter of which saw the collapse of the Cuhonhicah successor state of Cuipampa and Khuumehkhweh’s direct founding. Since then it has maintained close relations with Zacapican, which provided major assistance to the Khomaist militias that founded the nation.

Its national origin lies with the Khomaist movement of the late 19th century, which sought to create a new homeland for ethnic Mehkhweh people, the majority of which by that time no longer lived among the plateaus and valleys surrounding Mount Khomai. Most Mehkhweh lived abroad in the greater Ozeros area, Scipia, and across the Angatahuacan empire. During the waning years of Angatahuacan colonialism, Khomaist groups like the Mehkhweh National Trust, as well as prominent Khomaist figures like Chimalhuac ǃGomxab, convinced significant numbers of Mehkhweh to move to what was then Cuipampa as settlers. Between 1850 and 1900, about 1.3 million people moved to the Cuipampan countryside from around the world and set up businesses, cultural centers, temples, and schools among oftentimes majority komontu villages. After Cuipampa was annexed into Cuhonhico in 1900, many of these disconnected enclaves were combined into a non-contiguous Mehkhweh reservation known as “Mehonhicaweh” that lasted until 1967. During the Third Uhlangan Civil War, the Olochtist Party in Cuhonhico enacted the Hasanya (“Calamity”), a policy of industrial genocide waged against various indigenous groups, such as the Mehkhweh, who it believed were “false converts” responsible for sabotaging the war effort. 13 million people, including 5 million Mehkhweh, were systematically exterminated as a result of this policy which ended with the collapse of Cuhonhico, the eventual collapse of secessionist Cuipampa, and the founding of Khuumehkhweh.

Today Khuumehkhweh is a wealthy country with a developed, albeit aging, manufacturing base, a large mining sector, and some of the largest proven natural gas reserves in the world. It is one of the least equal countries in the world, with more than 53% of the country in poverty and more than 35% accounting for just 1.3% of total GDP. Major economic sectors include mining, energy, healthcare, construction, agriculture and food processing, finance, shipping, and light industry. Many of these industries are critically reliant on what amounts to unfree labor in the form of debt peonage and convict leasing. The latter is especially prevalent among many low skill, low value-added industries taking advantage of the country’s 2.3 million prison population. Many international human rights organizations have condemned this system as authoritarian and exploitative of the indigenous komontu population, which constitutes the overwhelming majority of its unfree laborers. By far however its largest and most important industry is natural gas extraction and processing, which constitutes almost 70% of gross GDP.

The Khuukhweh government is a nominal confederacy of thirteen sovereign states, each of which is headed by an elected governor. These states appoint members to a confederal senate and a confederal house of representatives who in turn elect a confederal president. The president heads a government which oversees certain affairs defined by the 1973 Charter of Confederation as “affecting the breadth of the states whose nature is beyond their individual capacity”, limited primarily to certain defense, border, law enforcement, and administrative roles. Everything else not explicitly laid out as under confederal authority is left to the individual states, leading to significant variety in local Khuukhweh government policy. Voting rights are generally restricted to citizen landowners with at least 50 acres, certain clergymen, and people with a net worth equaling 1,025,355,820.00 gil (“ǁgil”), equivalent to $1million. Natural citizenship is only afforded to children of citizens, members of the Mehkhweh ethnoreligious community, or people who would have been legally made citizens by the Charter of Confederation. This has been generally interpreted as to exclude the large komontu minority, drawing widespread condemnation by outside observers as a system of racial and religious segregation.

In addition to the thirteen sovereign states, Khuumehkhweh is also made up of eight separate subnational polities which signed the 1973 founding charter. These eight polities are a collection of small constitutional monarchies and clan-based republics, generally confined to individual ethnic groups or tribes. These disparate polities are considered sovereign and separate entities and are their populations as citizens of their own tribal nations. They are collectively referred to as the “Northern Territories” and are home to the vast majority of the komontu and pygmy populations, about 35% of the entire country, but only account for about 11% of the land. The labyrinthine bureaucracy these non-contiguous territories exist within greatly restricts the movement and freedoms of the komontu population as a result. At independence, the Northern Territories accounted for 49% of the country’s total landmass, but this has been slowly annexed into Khuumehkhweh to form 6 individual states, the most recent of which was in 2005 !ʰȕútlan Öno⁄2ot statehood referendum. This has generally followed a policy in which the komontu population has been displaced in favor of Mehkhweh settlers, a process which has been likened to ethnic cleansing.

Etymology

The name “Khuumehkhweh” (!Kʰùm-ma-*kʰe-) derives from the unreformed ǁxwâ||hâi!xu dialect of the Mehkhweh language. It derives from the name for the greater area around Mount Khomai as referred to in the ǀGamiroǀoasa, the central text of the Meǂʼán religion. It literally translates to “mountain-starlight-people” and is poeticized as “the Land of Starlit People”. The name was chosen during the foundation of Khuumehkhweh in 1973 after the end of the Cuipampan Civil War, when the Empire of Cuipampa was formally abolished by mutual agreement of komontu and Mehkhweh rebel groups. It was chosen after several of those Mehkhweh groups, principally the ǂToma Gang, agreed to unite their disparate territorial claims into a single polity; this new polity was then named Khuumehkhweh to tie it to ancient Mehkhweh civilization, a major goal of the Khomaist movement. The demonym “Khuukhweh” therefore translates to “mountain-people”, more commonly taken as “stone-people” instead, and is a wholly modern creation intended as a term not linked to the Mehkhweh ethnicity.

Geography

Khuumehkhweh is located in southern Malaio and is bordered to the north by Phansi Uhlanga, to the east by Pulacan, and to the south by the Vespanian ocean. At X square kilometers it is the X largest nation in Malaio and the X largest nation on earth. It can be split into roughly two geographic regions: the north, comprised of the Khomai mountains in the east which gradually decline into rolling grasslands in the west and ending abruptly at a southern escarpment; and the south, comprised of highland prairies ringed by belts of hills which turns southward into a tropical forested coast. Much of the southern interior exists within a rain shadow cast by Mount Khomai and as a result the north and the south’s seasons are reversed: the south experiences an intense rainy season from January to April while during that period the south is dry, and in between a gradual transition occurs. These wet and dry seasons alternate roughly every four months, however unseasonal droughts are not uncommon in the south. The country is drained by 10 principle rivers, the X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, and X. Many of these rivers are fed by inland lakes and glaciers located high up in the mountains.

Khomai highlands

The western Khomai grasslands.

The northern two thirds of Khuumehkhweh is dominated by Mount Khomai and the surrounding highlands. In the northeast elevation varies between 1,500 meters at the lowest and 4,500 meters at the highest summit. The tips of some of these mountain ranges are snow capped throughout the year. It is made up of several large granite plateaus broken up by volcanic mountains, the largest of which bear calderas considered sacred to the local peoples. This region contains many of the country’s most famous lakes and aquifers, which supply much of its drinking water. This volcanic aquifer system is capped by ancient glaciers. Lower elevations in the northwest however are characterized by tropical savannas and shrubland, which contain some of the country's most important commercial farming areas.

The Northern Escarpment visible in the distance.

Much of the mountainous terrain is divided up by rift valleys which contain the most populous settlements in northern Khuumehkhweh. These valleys form the primary method through which the northern and southern regions are connected; the seismic activity of the northeast alongside the steep, rocky terrain has left it broadly isolated from the rest of the country. The rift system was once heavily forested, with tree coverage extending into the far southern interior. These northern rift montane forests were important to the ecology of the north but were largely stripped during the colonial era for fuel and shipbuilding in the Angatahuacan harbors to the south. Today only small thickets of forest remain, despite this the rift valleys remain home to some of Khuumehkhweh’s most diverse flora and fauna. The topographical boundary of the Khomai highlands is the Northern Escarpment, a series of extremely steep basalt slopes formed at the edge of the highlands’ southernmost plateau. This escarpment formed a natural border for numerous polities that have inhabited the region for thousands of years.

Southern lowlands

The coast of Khuumehkhweh is dominated by sandy beaches backed by coastal dunes and barrier reefs. Behind these are often brackish lagoons, including river estuaries and salt lakes. Four large rivers empty into the Vespanian ocean here, two of which forming deltas. Elevation rises in an eastward direction, with the southwest being characterized by floodplains, mudflats, and swamp forests and the east tropical rainforests, wet meadows and flooded savannas. The southeast is the most densely populated part of the country, containing the capital as well as most of the country’s largest cities. It is also the most heavily urbanized, with coastline best suited nationally for deepwater ports. The southwestern coast varies between extremely rocky and shallow, with extensive tidal flats.

Floodplains dominate the southern coast.

The southern Khuukhweh interior consists of meadows and grassy velds with sparse clusters of shrub and tree cover. This area, often called the “Khuukhweh breadbasket”, is the most agriculturally productive region of the country. It is fed by three major rivers, as well as a large lake in the west which is the source of the X river. Distributed as sediment from rivers in the Khomai mountains, the rich andisol soils of the southern heartland give rise to the other regional nickname, the “Corn Belt”, owing to the intensive maize cropping throughout. Further into the interior are lowvelds nestled at the foot of the Northern Escarpment, whose hills are the most mineral rich in the nation. A saucer-shaped complex of igneous rock spans much of this lowveld area, rising up as hills bearing rich veins of andalusite, chromium, fluorspar, platinum and vanadium.

Climate

Khuumehkhweh has distinct climate zones in the north and south, with the south being generally more tropical. It has two distinct seasons, with a wet season in the south lasting from January to April and a long dry season lasting from May to December. This is reversed in the north, where the dry season is early and longer with a shorter wet season following. The Khomai mountains cast a large rain shadow over much of the interior that leaves it subject to frequent season droughts, some of which can last years. One such ongoing drought has gone on for seven years and has caused serious damage to the ecology of that region. This causes the velds to vary between hot and dry to hot and wet. The far southern coast is cooled by oceanic currents which give it consistently mild temperatures and frequently overcast skies throughout the year. Annual rainfall varies between 500 to 900 mm with it being generally higher in the south and lower in the north. Average temperatures are fairly mild throughout the year, varying between 13 to 24 °C in February and 22 to 31 °C in August.