User:Char/sandbox2
| The Muttay | |||
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| ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ | |||
Clockwise from top left: Raid on a Cobalt Square safehouse, pacification mission in Azut, fire in outer Agnannet during Operation Autumn, military street patrol in Ekelhoc. | |||
| Date | 7 June 2023 – 1 October 2023 | ||
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| Death(s) | 487 | ||
| Injuries | 3,107 | ||
The Muttay (Tamashek: ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ, lit. "The Change"), also known as the Charnean Revolution, was a period of civil unrest, mutiny and political revolution which took place during the summer of 2023, resulting in the overthrow of the Imperial government and the establishment of the Charnean Republic. The driving force of the upheaval was a general military uprising from within the ranks of the Charnean Army catalyzed by the death of Regent Martuf Lamine and the subsequent attempts of the civilian government to assert dominance over the Army's unruly junior officers. The Muttay has been called the "Revolution with a Cause" because of the absence of a clear movement driving the overthrow of the status quo and the creation of a new regime, a process instead governed by a constellation of different cliques and political currents within the Army. Exactly what timespan constitutes the period of the Muttay is still debated, although it is generally agreed to have ended on October 1st 2023 with the formalization of the Republic. The two common start dates are the June 7th purge of the Rangers or the June 23rd fall of Agnannet to the mutineer-revolutionaries.
The course of the Muttay can be divided into three distinct phases, consisting of the initial uprising, the ensuing collapse of the government and its institutions, followed by the eventual stabilization. The first stage was the most violent, in which Charnea flirted with outright civil war before the fall of the incumbent regime. The fallout reverberated for months, manifesting in an economic and security crisis which the Provisional Military Government (PMG) struggled to control whilst in the grips of its own internal power struggle. Crisis would be averted when the Agraw Allolan was convened in late August, beginning a final phase of intense but non-violent political struggle over the shape of the new regime which would ultimately culminate in the end of the PMG and the birth of the Republic. Although initially taking the appearance of another military coup, the second in just 10 years, the Muttay quickly evolved into a much more significant event in the course of Charnean history. The foundation of the Republic marks a seismic shift in Charnean domestic policy not seen since the rise of the Modernist movement in the 1920s.
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. For the civilian economy, the 1990s were a wake-up call that the mid-century halcyon days that had seen Charnea prosper before the outbreak of hostilities were not coming back. 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.