Austerian Counterrevolution
| Austerian Counterrevolution | |||||||
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 Clockwise from top left: Austerian T-55 tank and crew in Salopek; Galeneic Front insurgents in central Austeria; Monument to the Defenders of Irfan; NRF insurgents near Kilsa; A detachment of the Austerian Army near Hëna, 1985 | |||||||
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Total deaths: c. 50,000 Displaced: c. 500,000 | |||||||
The Austerian Counterrevolution was a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts and insurgencies that took place in the Austerian People's Republic from 1975 to 1988. These conflicts are widely considered to be examples of "irregular wars" or "low-level wars" instead of featuring conventional warfare between factions. It resulted in an estimated 50,000 fatalities and led to the collapse of single-party rule by the Austerian Liberation Front to the establishment of a socialist democracy. The term "Counterrevolution" was used by the Austerian government to characterise the conflicts as anti-socialist in nature instead of an ethnic or sectarian one for propaganda purposes.
The geographic distribution of Austeria's diverse population played a notable role in the lead-up to and during the conflict; Sotirian and Irfanic Tethians comprised the majority in the coastal cities and western Austeria; Ezekielans were primarily based throughout the southern coast, Montesurians and Daksar Piraeans populated the country's eastern region; Novalians were concentrated next toAusteria's border with Etruria. At the time, the Austerian government was a one-party state under the rule of the Equalist Austerian Liberation Front. While the party was dominated by the Tethian ethnic group, the Front supported Austerism, a form of socialist patriotism which emphasized a collective, inclusive, and pluralistic national identity. However ethnic and sectarian tensions still arose within the population, especially between at the local and regional level. The Front faced increasing levels of opposition from Galeneists, Montesurians, and a number of ethnic and sectarian groups. The deaths of the original leadership of the Austerian Liberation Front in the late 1970s had further deleterious effect on party cohesion and societal divisions in the country.
The conflict is generally divided into three or four distinct conflicts with numerous participants whose allegiances shifted rapidly and unpredictably. Fighting started in 1977 between Tethian Sotiriran and Irfanic militas in the western regions of the country, driven by organized crime and land disputes. Violence spread south and east into the coastal cities, especially Kartha, and Daksar and Montesuria. In the coastal cities, conflict between militias and criminal groups in the cities took the form of gang wars. The fighting between Daksar Pireaean and Montesurian militias was characterized bitter fighting. Violence significantly escalated in 1983, when the Novalian Revolutionary Front launched an independence war against the Austerian government and non-Novalian groups. Austerian security forces initially undertook policing, before the military was deployed to begin an intense counterinsurgency campaign against all participants. The Counterrevolution was characterised by its violence against civilians including kidnappings, mass shootings, forced expulsion, destruction of property, and incidents of mass rape. Several incidents in the conflict perpetrated by militias have been labeled as ethnic cleansing and genocide.
By the mid-1980s the Austerian military was successful in reducing the violence, although many groups remained active. In 1987, Sotir Godo was elected First Secretary of the Austerian Liberation Front and began pushing for a political settlement to end the conflicts. The signing of the Yndyk Agreement began a period of reform which marked the beginning of the end of the fighting. The single-party state was dismantled in favor of a socialist democracy that centered around power sharing between ethnic and sectarian groups. In May 1988, all of the armed militias that were operating in Austeria were disarmed. Although an amnesty law was passed in 1990 that pardoned all political crimes committed, a truth commission was later established to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by militias forces. The report published in 1994, led to the Commission Trials resulting in several convictions. Religious and ethnic tensions persisted across Austeria since the formal end of the hostilities in 1988, leading to the Years of Blood after the Olive Revolution in 2005.