Oykokouan Civil War

Oykokouan Civil War
Date 1 October 1972 – 4 August 1978 (5 years, 10 months and 3 days) Location Petite-Corne Result Coalition victory Zunu Genocide Comeur Refugee Crisis Establishment of the Republic of Petite-Corne
Belligerents
Kingdom of Oykokou Anti-MSR Coalition Heja Glytter Gaullica	Mzebi Social Republic Mzebi Liberation Army Supported by Kaxakh Template:Country data Songguo Songguo
Strength
25,000	35,000
Casualties and losses
5,000 killed	5,000 killed
2 million civilians killed

The Oykokouan Civil War was a civil war fought in the former Kingdom of Oykokou, today the Federal Republic of Petite-Corne. The war was fought between the Mzebi Liberation Army, largely supported by the country's ethnic majority of Mzebis, and supported by Kaxakh and Songguo due to its opposition to the ruling regime, which was a parliamentary constitutional monarchy dominated by ethnic Zunus.

History

The war is traditionally divided into three phases; it is debatable whether all three phases may be considered civil war but they are generally lumped together for convenience.

Uprising phase

The Mzebi Liberation Army had been clandestinely organising for some years, as the Oykokouan government's slow decrease in funding and other support from DITO (because of Oykokouan strategic unimportance, decolonisation and regionally declining interventionism) reduced its ability to maintain power. Influence from the People's Republic of East Bahia, where there had been a successful revolution, and Kaxakh and Songguo which saw funding the MLA as a way to combat DITO influence, was also present. In 1972, various incidents spiralled out of control into a full rebellion. The MLA quickly mobilised and largely destroyed the government's forces in the ethnic Mzebi north in brutal fighting, launching its first coordinated offensive southwards in June 1973 (June Offensive).

War phase

In the succeeding years, the MLA made considerable gains, but by 1976, King Omara II (head of state and commander in chief of Oykokou) had found foreign support and had international mercenaries fighting on his side, repelling attacks and even gaining ground in the south of the country. The mercenaries attracted considerable criticism for brutality against Mzebis, including mass rape and murder. Although there is little evidence to suggest the policy was coordinated and thus it did not comprise a genocide, the Oykokouan government was revealed to have known about the atrocities and done little to prevent them. However, on King Omara II's way back from lobbying the President of Gaullica for help his plane was shot down, later revealed to be an MLA-planned assassination. A new MLA offensive put the capital in the southwest, Sainte-Anne-Marie, under threat, and the government and national bullion reserves were moved to ancestral capital Oykokou in the southeast in 1977 by the Queen Dowager, mother of Crown Prince Omara who was at a university in Roeselle.

Taoiseach of Glytter Michael Moss began organising an evacuation of Euclean citizens in 1977, and also dispatched peacekeepers to protect the royal family and attempted to negotiate a ceasefire with little success; this was done with access through Heja. On the 21st of March, 1977, the MLA launched a surprise attack, killing the Premier and other members of the legislature, and surrounded the Royal Palace in Oykokou and ten Glytteronian peacekeepers protecting the Queen Dowager surrendered; they were tortured and killed. As a result, Glytter temporarily abandoned peacekeeping operations, with all Glytteronian peacekeepers and remnants of the Oykokouan armed forces falling back into a few far southern parts of the country or northern Heja, which hosted them as well as increasing communities of refugees from the war.

Genocide phase

The MLA declared the Mzebi Social Republic the day after the capture of Oykokou, with its capital in Sainte-Anne-Marie, subsequently renamed Mzebi Town; the MSR was only recognised by a few mostly CSS but also QTO countries. Revenge killings on Zunus began almost immediately, encouraged by the Mzebi government; angry mobs of Mzebis formed across the country and chased Zunus into the rainforests, hunting them down, or herding them into places like Solarian Sotirian churches (associated with the Zunus due to their largely Solarian Sotirian religion) and schools and burning the buildings down. The victorious MLA also joined in the killing. Violence also occurred against remaining foreigners and other ethnic groups, as well as within the Mzebi; Heja found itself with nearly two million refugees after the genocide had begun. Glytter paid for temporary towns to be built in rainforest northern Heja, which the Hejan government approved, and the Community of Nations mandated Operation Cross, an intervention against the MSR, after the QTO and then the CSS disavowed them as the news of the genocide spread. It is estimated 1.5 million were killed in the genocide alone, out of a population of 7 million, representing around two thirds of the Zunu population who were the vast majority of the victims.

Intervention phase

The Hejan government approved joining the international coalition and thus their forces were significant, along with Glytteronian, Gaullican and reorganised, retrained, rearmed Zunu forces, in occupying the MSR with the goal of destroying the new regime. The MSR was soon pushed back into the north, many of its leadership and the MLA, but also Mzebi civilians fearing reprisals, fled into the People's Republic of East Bahia. The remainder of the MLA leadership agreed to talks in Gayneva in 1978, defeated.

Aftermath

A relatively ineffective war crimes tribunal was established, based in Gayneva, for bringing those responsible for the genocide to justice. The Republic of Petite-Corne was established, the name coming from a colonial Gaullican name for the region (meaning "Little Horn" referring to a bend in the Comeur River along its southern border), with a presidential republic established. The MLA reorganised into the National Democratic Party which continued promoting Mzebi nationalism and communism, while Zunu established their own party, the centrist Union for Peace and Prosperity. The remaining members of the royal family of Oykokou went into exile in Gaullica, the Queen Dowager leading an unrecognised government-in-exile until her death in 1981. Petite-Corne was recognised by almost all countries and established normalised relations internationally. Refugees began trickling back into Petite-Corne but many moved overseas or stayed in the CN and Glytter maintained towns in northern Heja. The death toll totalled around 2 million for within the war; 1.5 million from the genocide, 0.5 million from the war and its non-genocide-related side effects. Births that were not the result of rape were reduced by another million to a million and a half, and hundreds of rape victims thousands aborted fetuses or abandoned babies after the war, and further hundreds of thousands died after the war but in deaths related to it, from causes including but not limited to suicide induced by PTSD, revenge killings, STDs transmitted by war rape, death from childbirth of pregnancies from rape, famine, disease, unremoved landmines, unexploded shells, and botched abortions of pregnancies resulting from rape.

The NDP dominated the first elections in late 1978, and again in 1980, due to the Mzebi forming a significant majority. The ethnically Mzebi president started the Comeur War in 1980, ostensibly to punish "terrorist communities" of refugees still living in northern Heja, but also to shore his regime up with military success as he believed he could win against a Heja on the brink of a military coup. While Heja decisively won the Comeur War with international support, many considered the outbreak of war only two years after the end of an intervention to be evidence that it failed; this perception influenced much harsher terms after the Comeur War, which produced a stable multiparty democracy with chief responsibility for this attributed to Heja and the Community of Nations.