Muttay
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| The Muttay | |||
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| ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ | |||
| Date | 7 - 23 June 2023 | ||
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| Resulted in |
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| Parties to the civil conflict | |||
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| Casualties | |||
| Death(s) | 487 | ||
| Injuries | 3,107 | ||
The Muttay (Tamashek: ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ, lit. "The Change"), also known as the Charnean Revolution or simply the June days, was a period of mutiny and unrest within the Charnean Army which resulted in the collapse of the incumbent AKE Government, chief of state Marus Ibiza ag Haqar, and abolition of the Charnean monarchy. The military uprising took place over the course of the month of June in 2023 and was described as a "severe and prolonged lapse in discipline" that saw active duty soldiers together with military retirees number in the tens of thousands mobilize against the Charnean government and the military high command. The mutiny was ultimately successful in toppling the government, creating a powerful vacuum into which stepped a number of notable junior officers and figures of the Veterans Movement in the form of the Provisional Military Government, the precursor of the Republic of Charnea. The uprising was catalyzed by the death of Regent Matruf Lamine the month prior, which triggered a reshuffling of government ministries and a purge of Lamine loyalists by the incoming ag Haqar regime.
The fallout of the Muttay has had immense consequences for Charnea. In the immediate term, the Muttay precipitated what has become known as the Summer of Crisis, the three-pronged disaster of political collapse, disorder, and economic meltdown. The mission of the Provisional Military Government was to curtail the Charnean collapse, an effort which was met with mixed results. The establishment of the Republic was successful in remediating the lack of political leadership following the fall of the national government in the Muttay, while the military crackdowns in most major Charnean cities succeeded in restoring security of the country's most important urban centers. Post-Muttay economic policies failed to restore the national economy to its pre-crisis state, although the rates of GDP contraction and currency inflation were successfully curtailed by mid October. Taken as a whole, the events of the Muttay represent a sudden and unexpected departure from the political legacy of the Charnean Modernists of the 1920s who established the underpinnings of the Charnean state, as well as a severing of the link to the 700 year legacy of the Charnean Empire. Views on the Muttay are extremely mixed within the Charnean population, where celebrations over the fall of the unpopular ag Haqar regime are tempered by the sobering economic reality of the revolution.
Background
The end of the Ninvite War in 1986 marked the beginning of a new era in the modern history of Charnea. The new post-war paradigm across Charnea was the final nail in the coffin of the midcentury halcyon days of meteoric growth and optimism for the future of the desert nation. The war was to many a shattering revelation of Charnean weakness, tempered only by the eventual victory of the Charnean forces after decades of attrition. Many in the military considered the Ninvite War a pyrrhic victory for the Army, one which should never be repeated, although such views were never permitted within the circles of the high command. Economic stagnation combined with the renewed military pressure in the east from the brief but demoralizing September War in 2004 saw the beginnings of opposition against the status quo from within the government itself. These reformers voiced the concerns that the military establishment could not, proposing a change in course for the nation's domestic policy - including a move away from the exploitative extraction economy which was thought to contribute to eastern unrest. The conflict within the state came to a head in 2013 with the Seven Day Coup, in which a fringe faction of the Madounist status quo resorted to extra-legal measures and political violence to eliminate the reformist threat to the established power, only to fail in securing legitimacy for their coup and falling swiftly to a military counter-coup led by Martuf Lamine.
The regency under Lamine laid the groundwork for the events of the Muttay. While the Regent secured his power through a puppet child-monarch in the form of Queen Amina N'Okha, he failed to present a viable political alternative to the Madounists and in so doing allowed the status quo party to re-consolidate its power around Marus Ibiza ag Haqar. Marus Ibiza was the original political heir of Pazir Madoun and the inheritor of his post-war legacy. He sought above all to centralize power around himself and to establish the same system of political clients and subordinates that Madoun had held during his three decade Premiership. In order to advance this aim, Marus Ibiza spent the late 2010s stacking the deck in his favor, quietly placing loyalists in the military high command and at the top of civilian institutions. Regent Lamine counter-balanced this by encouraging lower military officers, emboldened by the Charnean Army's deeply entrenched culture of officer autonomy, the most organized being the Cobalt Square. When Martuf Lamine died in May of 2023, however, this delicate balance was destroyed and Marus Ibiza quickly moved to consolidate his personal power. He saw the military factions Lamine had encouraged as a vestige of the Regency and a direct obstacle to the centralization of power under himself. However, his aims to purge disobedient junior officers flew in the face of the Army's culture and inadvertently broadened the opposition to him and his high command loyalists within the military, a failure likely due to Marus Ibiza's civilian background as a career politician.
June days
On the 7th of June the office of Premier Marus Ibiza issued a comprehensive order to the military to demote or remove from service a laundry list of officers who had spoken out against the government or the ruling party in the past. The order especially targeted the leaders and members of the Cobalt Square faction, mandating the removal Colonel Khyar Aziouel from the command of the Ranger Corps and discharging many of his associates outright. This is used as the start date of the Muttay uprising, as military disobedience began on this first day with widespread refusals by the lower officers to step down or otherwise carry out the discharge of those under their command. A split within the Army formed on the 7th, one which would be exacerbated by both the Cobalt Square and the high command as the latter began to mobilize loyal units in an attempt to strongarm the disobedient ones back into compliance while the former used this to agitate uncommitted mid-level leaders against the high command. This power struggle within the military would continue until further escalation on the 17th, with a raid on known Cobalt Square members in Azut which killed Chekkadh Amanrassa and saw Amastan Elmoctar and Hrakhel Kabte taken to a military prison. Khyar Aziouel, former head of the Rangers, evaded capture and led rogue Ranger units in retaliatory actions against forces loyal to the high command, including the June 21st attempted assassination of Marus Ibiza himself using a mortar carrier to attack a train the Premier was in, which was later connected to a Ranger unit.
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Within just two weeks, the situation had escalated to the brink of civil war without the public being made aware. There was no media coverage or official statements regarding the rapid escalation, which made what would come at the end of June all the more shocking to the public. The failed assassination attempt on Marus Ibiza had only been the precursor to what was internally known as Operation Autumn, a move by the Cobalt Square and their allies to move on Agnannet itself and remove their opponents from power directly. Operation Autumn consisted of an initial wave of attacks on various targets in Agnannet carried out by Ranger special operations units loyal to Aziouel in the early hours of the morning of the 23rd, including the headquarters of the SET and the AKE Party in the city. These attacks were diversionary, intended to provoke the high command to deploy its loyalist forces into the city. This cleared the way for the second phase, which saw rebel officers in league with Aziouel advance on the ground with their own vehicles as well as an aerial insertion launched from Azut airport late the night of the 22nd jointly converge on key positions in Agnannet and wider Achra region while the government's forces were dispersed. By the end of the day, the mutineer forces had secured Tamat N'Ifri international airport and the smaller Ageldan airport inside the capital, parts of the Palace district and the three broadcasting towers which serve the greater Achra region.
Operation Autumn was a shock to the public and led to an almost immediate breakdown. Many officials as well as members of the public feared that Autumn signaled the beginning of a civil war, causing panic to set in. Marus Ibiza was not in the city at the time and disappeared from the public eye after the fall of Agnannet to Aziouel's mutiny. It would be revealed more than a month later that he was killed alongside several high ranking AKE and ICA high command officers by one of the ICA's own air defense systems when an Air Corps transport was shot down over the Erg Awakar while flying north to Tyreseia. Who gave the order or why that battery targeted a Charnean aircraft was targeted in such a manner was never revealed. Every member of Marus Ibiza's cabinet resigned on the 24th, the day after the fall of the capital, dissolving the government. Hundreds of members of the Agraw Imgharan, the AKE Party, and a number of military officials promptly fled the capital, while many attempted to escape the country with many meeting success thanks to the general disarray of state security forces and border patrols. Operation Autumn resulted in the onset of immediate military chaos, with forces stationed all over Charnea pulling back to the core regions or else engaging in unannounced maneuvers for various purposes, many anticipating the outbreak of a civil war. Instead, the forces that had remained loyal to the high command reported in to Agnannet and the mutineers one by one, spurred on by the collapse of the government and disappearance of many of the high command as they attempted to flee. Civil war was narrowly avoided and a new junta established on the 27th of June to re-establish order in the military and head an emergency government.