Muttay
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| The Muttay | |
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| ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ | |
| Date | 7 - 13 June 2023 |
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The Muttay (Tamashek: ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ, lit. "The Change") was a major mutiny within the Charnean Army that resulted in the overthrow of incumbent civilian government of Charnea as well as the established military command structure. The mutiny began on June 7th, 2023, in the city of Azut, considered to be the de facto headquarters of the Army, and ended on the 13th of the same month when the mutineers entered the Palace of State in Agnannet. The conclusion of the Muttay ushered in the seven month long rule of the Provisional Military Government (PMG), which in turn would give way to the establishment of the first Republic of Charnea. plane crash in Fahran in May of 2023. Marus Ibiza's crackdown on military dissent and the veterans movement would later be cited by the mutineers as the single primary event which incited their uprising.
Background
Civil-Military tension
Unrest proliferated in the Charnean Army and the wider military community for many months prior to the events of June 2023. Antagonism had been rife between the Ministry of Defense, the high command, and the civilian leadership of the state on one side, and the rank and file of the active service Army as well as the retired veterans and their families on the other ever since the conclusion of the Ninvite War. For the veterans, grievances were varied but generally accused the military and the government of disregarding the well being of the Army's servicemembers, particularly failing with regards to reduced or non-existent disability benefits or family stipends which left many wounded veterans and military widows in dire financial straits after the war. On the other side, the Ninvite War was an inflection point for the attitude of civilian leaders towards the military, as the military culture of the ICA of officer autonomy and on-the-ground decision led to several politically toxic incidents. Some in the ruling AKE party began to criticize the military for lacking cohesion and failing to control its own men. The sentiment of a growing majority of politicians and civil leaders was that the military, or more specifically the officers in the field, had been given a free hand for far too long and that it would be necessary to reign them in before they could do further damage to the image and agenda of the civilian authorities.
Tensions increased during the regime of Martuf Lamine, a ranking member of the Army who conducted a successful counter-coup against an attempted military putsch in 2013. Lamine ruled as the self-appointed regent of puppet monarch Amina N'Okha for a decade, and brought his agenda for radical reform to Agnannet. His vision clashed frequently with the civilian administration he had come to preside over, pushing the military man to fall back on the support of the military community who came out in the hundreds of thousands in support of his government. In practice, this meant focusing all the dissatisfaction of the military community into a politically active veterans movement which Lamine could use to pressure the uncooperative AKE party and the civilian institutions it controlled to further his political projects. Under Lamine, open criticism of the government was tacitly encourage within active military ranks, something which was unprecedented until that time and which was taken by many civilian observers as a serious threat to civilian rule in the country. It was felt that Lamine, who had taken power under the pretext of stabilizing the country following a coup that he helped to put down, was in the process of laying the groundwork for a more permanent military government by undermining the legitimacy of the civilian political institutions. Several influential members of the AKE party would start to openly talk of bringing the military to heel in the name of restoring civilian rule, chief among them the speaker of the legislature, Marus Ibiza ag Haqar.
In an attempt to undermine the Lamine regime, Marus Ibiza introduced a proposal in January of 2023 to the legislature that would greatly expand state subsidies to infrastructure and provide additional funding to education and medical institutions, while cutting specific military benefits such as the ICA family stipend program which had been implemented to help motivate poor Ajamite men from the countryside to sign up. This was a direct shot at Lamine's base of support, as it forced Lamine to come out against a program stuffed full of widely liked and popular policies for the citizenry or else he would loose credibility in the eyes of his veteran supporters. Lamine pre-empted the political backlash he would face from coming out against the proposal by calling on the veteran movement to begin demonstrations in the capital protesting the proposal to cut military benefits. Tens of thousands of retired ICA and their families came to Agnannet in protests that would last for months, sustained in part by a "war chest" Lamine had been amassing which he now used to pay some of the expenses of his supporters so they could sustain their assemblies. The actions of the veterans movement successfully stalled out Marus Ibiza's proposal in the legislature, who opted to wait for a more opportune time to vote the proposal through, when it would do much more damage to Lamine's public image without his supporters rallying in the streets in his defense.
Death of Martuf Lamine
On the 3rd of May, 2023, Martuf Lamine was killed while visiting the Charnean expeditionary forces active in the then-ongoing Fahrani Civil War. The plane crash which claimed his life would ultimately be blamed on the hostile action of opposing factions in Fahran. Lamine's death had almost no effect on the Charnean position in Fahran, but was of tremendous significance back in Charnea itself. With the support of the legislature, Marus Ibiza stepped into the power vacuum left by Lamine within hours of his death and immediately set about securing his position. He quickly removed Lamine loyalists from prominent positions, particularly those in the high command of the ICA. This included reassigning Lamine's right hand man Rezkhou Goma to a remote posting overseeing the advisory mission to the Amayana Makgato Federation where he could pose no threat to the regime. Ibiza assigned General Aspar Amini, a relatively unknown officer of the ICA reserve forces with close ties to the AKE, to take up the post of Chief of Staff for the Army.
Marus Ibiza now found himself wielding the authority to directly disperse the veterans rallying in the streets of the capital that had caused him significant setbacks in the past months. This would prove to be a difficult task, as the veterans movement was now further motivated to put pressure on the legislature and the civil authorities now that Lamine, whom they viewed as their main advocate in the halls of power, was gone. While the larger crowds and encampments were dispersed by municipal police, some groups armed themselves and opposed police action, leading to tense standoffs and clashes around the capital. In one of the worst incidents on the 14th of May, a gun battle broke out between a group of armed veterans and the police, killing 5 demonstrators, 1 police officer and 2 bystanders. The outbreak of such violence in central Agnannet was deeply corrosive to the legitimacy of the Ibiza government, although its most consequential effect was in galvanizing opposition to Ibiza and his Chief of Staff Amini from within the military itself, with a significant contingent of servicemembers sympathizing with the demonstrators over their own leadership.
Amini's purge
On May 10th, Amini announced he would be launching an investigation into a number of officers in the military for misconduct, going on to declare that open dissent of the kind that had been rampant under Lamine's regime would now be punished as an act of insubordination and would even rise to the level of treason. The Army's NCOs would be the hardest hit, as many in these ranks had garnered a reputation for insubordination and opposition to the military hierarchy both in speech and in action.