Association for the Preservation of the Union

The Association for the Preservation of the Union (Pasdani: جمعیت حفظ محقق اتحاد,Majma'-e barâye Hefz-e Ettehād; Rahelian: رابطة للحفاظ على الاتحاد, Rābitah lil-Hifāz 'alā al-Ittihād) is a Zorasani political faction within the Zorasan Zindebad parliamentary bloc. The APU promotes Zorasani nationalism, Pan-Irfanism and an independent diplomatic and foreign policy path.

The society was formed in 2008 by Vahid Namdar, a prominent right-wing lawmaker. Originally the faction sought to promote a renewed Zorasani focus on ties with Irfanic-majority nations at the expense of the warming ties with Euclea. Overtime, this grew to a rejection of the Rongzhuo-Zahedan Axis, with the Society openly denouncing the “dependency culture” of the Zorasani government and foreign ministry on its relations with the Coian superpower. The Society at the same time began to promote military interventionism and Pan-Irfanism.

Following the 2019 Zorasani federal election, the APU boasts 88 MPs as members from both chambers of the Zorasani parliament, but notably includes several members of the Central Command Council and numerous extra-parliamentary figures, including clerics, businesspeople, military commanders and academics.

History

The society was officially registered with the executive committee of Zorasan Zindebad, the political bloc that organises the military-appointed members of the Supreme Assembly of the Union, in late 2008. The faction was registered by Vahid Namdar a decades-long serving member of the Assembly and a renowned hard-right political thinker. In his registration letter he wrote, “it is vital for the political health of the Union to ensure there is a strong and loud voice for the cause of true independence and the pursuit of a strong Union through ties with our Irfanic family of nations.”

Between 2008 and 2012, the APU was limited in size to a handful of right-wing military lawmakers, mostly focused on pressuring the government to end the policy of “Euclea first” as operated by the Foreign Ministry during the Saffron Era (1990-2005). The APU promoted relations with the wider developing world, claiming Euclea would use its economic advantages over Zorasan to enforce a political agenda “incompatible with the society and culture of the Union.” The same time, the APU promoted patriotism, militarism, and a strong centralised federal government.

In 2012, the APU released its “Zorasan 2372” policy paper to lawmakers and then the public. According to the paper, the APU promoted the notion that Zorasan possessed the means and indicators to become the most powerful state in Coius. And outline regions of the continent where the country should exert as much influence as possible, notably Bahia and Satria. The paper argued that interventionism in defence of the country’s interest and allied governments in Irfanic-majority countries. The paper, however, sparked controversy over its calls for the dismantling of the Rongzhuo-Zahedan Axis, with the faction claiming Zorasan had “sleepwalked into a dependent-subservient relationship” and that for decades, Xiaodong, whilst the country’s most powerful ally, had failed to treat Zorasan as an equal and no longer held “the desire nor revolutionary dream of expelling the Euclean and their lackies from Coius.” The paper further argued that for Zorasan to “achieve the destiny written by God”, it would need to become independent of Xiaodong in all areas.

In defence of his position, Colonel Vahid Namdar said, “for those who gaze at Xiaodong in some romantic view of fraternity, I say more fool you. There is no doubt that should the time come; they would abandon us to the wolves. In Xiaodong there is no commitment to the sovereignty of Coian nations, merely the commitment to money.”

Nasser al-Harrasi, Namdar’s closest associate put it more simply in a news interview, “we’ve been tied to Xiaodong for a long time and much has been achieved, but our future is with the Irfanic World. The road to Zorasan achieving the destiny proscribed by God is through the Irfanic World, we cannot allow that to be jeopardised by fickle trade-obsessed Xiaodongese.”

The “Zorasan 2372” paper though introducing the faction to the general public and the widely held view they constituted a fringe element of Zorasan Zindebad, it served to expand their membership across the party and into extra-parliamentary circles. In 2014, Sadavir Hatami, a senior member of the Central Command Council confessed membership of the group. By 2019, this number had grown to 88 MPs and over 200 other prominent figures in the Irfanic clerical establishment, businesspeople, military officers, and academics. The same year, the faction was described by commentator Shoreh Asfadi as the “most influential Pan-Irfanist element in Zorasani politics today and is coming ever closer to enjoying control over policy if it continues to gain members on the Central Command Council.”

With the outbreak of the Tsabaran Civil War, the APU has emerged as the strongest advocate for military intervention, regularly claiming the conflict was engineered by Euclea in order to install a compliant puppet-government on Zorasan’s northern border.

Platform

The APU sits on the right of Zorasani politics, supporting the Civic-Military system of government, the 2008 constitution and the role of the military in politics and government. It further supports a strong centralised federal government, with limited powers delegated to the Union Republics.

APU’s subscribes to the theory of Heaven’s Anointed, a nationalistic belief that holds God has anointed Zorasan to be ultimate progenitor of his revelations and with that, to be the “vanguard of mankind’s ascension into Heaven.” The theory was introduced during Zorasani unification as a means of propagandising the Zorasani nation. However, the belief was maintained post-unification, fuelled in part by the dramatic speed of economic development during the 1980s onward. The APU is the most frequent reciter of Heaven’s Anointed during parliamentary sessions, accusing those who oppose interventionism of being “enemies of God’s plan for Zorasan.”

Further on foreign policy, the APU promotes a breakage from Xiaodong and the “integration and unification” of the Irfanic World. The APU claims that Zorasan is at risk of being denied its destiny by its ally, where APU members further believe that Xiaodong inhibits Zorasan’s potential or will inevitably abandon and betray Zorasan for its own interest. However, fundamental to their opposition to the Rongzhuo-Zahedan Axis is that Zorasan should chart an independent course, while being as economic self-reliant (in terms of imports) as possible. Some experts have described the APU’s foreign policy as the “Irfanic Third Way”, in which Zorasan rejects both Euclea and Xiaodong and strikes up its own sphere of influence independent of ROSPO.