Muttay
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| The Muttay | |
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| ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ | |
| Date | 7 - 10 June 2023 |
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| Resulted in |
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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 10th 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.
Background
Civil-Military tension
Tensions between the lower ranks and the ICA high command and by extension the Charnean government had been building for years prior to the events of June 2023. This internal conflict was rooted in the end of the Ninvite War, which saw many veterans come home to squalid conditions and a homelessness crisis gripping the military community. The loss of fathers and brothers to the war deprived many military families of financial support, driving them into the arms of the meager Charnean social safety net which was already stressed past its limit with some 2.2 million internally displaced refugees. Relief camps and slums became the heart of what would become the modern day Charnean veterans movement, with the apathy of the Madounist regime toward the soldier's plight serving to galvanize the movements opposition to the state and the ICA leadership alike. From the perspective of the administration, 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. This colored the Madounist attitude towards the Ninvite War veterans, influencing the lax approach towards the unfolding crisis in the military community.
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. Amini's team of military judges and investigators assembled to carry out his project under the banner of restoring discipline to the ranks acted with the characteristic swiftness of Charnean military justice, remoting, discharging and detaining more than one hundred servicemembers in the first week. Among these was Colonel Khyar Aziouel, chief of the Desert Rangers training center at Senusret military academy in Azut. Aziouel and many other Ranger leaders were targeted early on in Amini's purge, due in part to the Desert Rangers reputation as a mostly autonomous and semi-covert formation of the ICA known for acting on their own, without or against orders, something which painted them as one of the most prominent threats in the eyes of Ibiza and Amini.
An uprising from within the ranks of the junior offices, NCOs and enlisted of the Army, began to germinate in the city of Azut. As the gateway to the long-contested Charnean east, Azut had long been an important logistical hub for the ICA, becoming its de facto nerve center with many depots, training bases, and other facilities located there. Consequently, many of the units from which key people were being purged were tied to the "military city" of Azut, and the city soon became fertile ground for conspiracies involving those who retained connections to their units. One such figure was Khyar Aziouel, who still commanded the personal loyalty and respect of many officers and soldiers within the Desert Rangers from his years serving as the head of the training school. Through the weeks leading up to the outbreak of the Muttay mutiny, Aziouel connected with many like-minded individuals, both fellow targets of Amini's purge as well as those still serving with their units, all while retaining a connection to the Rangers through his loyal ex-subordinates. Supporters of the Ibiza regime would later blame the Muttay on Amini's relative leniency in not detaining and arresting a majority of purged personnel, which allowed figures such as Aziouel to organize their reprisal relatively freely.
Mutiny
Azut
The mutiny began in the early morning of the 7th of June with the seizure of key installations around the city of Azut by Ranger units following Aziouel's orders, alongside many others who supported or abetted the mutiny, including a number of the logistical units who moved to seize control of the central rail yard critical to the eastern supply operation. The Azut mutiny was made up of the core network of which Aziouel was the highest ranking before the purge, becoming the figurehead of the group. However, as word spread of the events unfolding in Azut, the mutiny began to expand to units not initially involved in the conspiracy. The extent of this ripple effect became clear to all sides as a flurry of orders came down from high command in Agnannet ordering an emergency mobilization of forces to put down the mutiny as quickly as possible and contain its effects. Large formations from regimental to brigade level units suffered from sudden coordination problems from the outset of the mutiny as important elements of the formation began to tacitly or overly refuse orders in sympathy with the Azut uprising. Smaller and more isolated formations, such as the numerous independent Ahoyy companies scattered through the rural desert countryside, joined the mutiny outright, detaining their command staff if these had not themselves declared for the mutiny already. The majority of these incidents of mutiny and insubordination across the wider eastern sector were carried out by personnel not in direct concert with the Azut mutiny, but who spontaneously sided with the mutineers over their commanders.
While the initial movements of the mutineers had gone largely uncontested and saw little violence, resistance soon stiffened as the day progressed. Sporadic firefights took place through the morning as small groups loyal to Amini attempted to dislodge the mutineers from within the occupied installations. An ad-hoc quick reaction force of Ranger mutineers was able to stamp out these attempts, but the mutiny was not able to stop Amini loyalists from slipping out of occupied locations and rallying together as the day went on. The nucleus of these holdouts became Azut Army Depot, a major munitions and equipment storage and maintenance facility adjacent to the rail yard near the center of the city. Forces in the Depot exchanged fire over the Xallalbatan railway itself with mutineers occupying the rail yard complex for several hours. The failure of eastern forces to relieve the Azut holdouts, bogged down as they were by the chaos unfolding in the eastern occupation zone, proved corrosive to the morale of the besieged. By the end of the day, the last of the holdouts had surrender to the mutineers. Through the night of the 7th, the Azut mutineers gathered those detained at Senusret military academy which they converted into an ad-hoc prison, assigning student recruits from the Ranger school to watch the prisoners in at least one documented case. Treatment of captives by the mutineers was lenient by most accounts, despite the fighting and the casualties that had resulted, most likely connected to the mutineers desire to reconcile with the rest of the military after realizing their overall goals. The initial objective of the Azut mutiny had been to force the national leadership to back down and grant total autonomy to the military, specifically the Rangers and the NCO corps, which they aimed to accomplish by paralyzing the military as a show of force. Once it became clear that the seizure of Azut and the chaos in the east would not bring Agnannet to the negotiating table, the mutineers were forced to revise their operation or else risk capture and either imprisonment or execution at the hands of military justice.