Muttay

The Muttay
ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ
Date	7 - 23 June 2023
Location	Charnea
Caused by	Arrest of Cobalt Square leaders Attempted military purge
Resulted in	Abolition of the Charnean monarchy End of one-party rule Establishment of the provisional military government (PMG)
Parties to the civil conflict
Charnean Empire AKE Party Army Loyalists Veterans Movement Free Charnea Society
Lead figures
Marus Ibiza ag Haqar Derim Elwafil Kazbar Mohmed Khyar Aziouel Hrakhel Kabte
Number
60,000 loyalist soldiers (nominal) 40,000 police Several hundred SET officers ~100,000 armed mutineers (est.)
Casualties
Death(s)	487
Injuries	3,107
Arrested	12,476

The Muttay (Tamashek: ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ, lit. "The Change"), also known as the Charnean Revolution or simply the June days, was a period of mutiny and unrest within the Charnean Army which resulted in the collapse of the incumbent AKE Government, the ouster of chief of state Marus Ibiza ag Haqar, and the abolition of the Charnean monarchy. The military uprising took place over the course of the month of June in 2023 and was described as a "severe and prolonged lapse in discipline" that saw active duty soldiers together with military retirees number in the tens of thousands mobilize against the Charnean government and the military high command. The mutiny was ultimately successful in toppling the government, creating a powerful vacuum into which stepped a number of notable junior officers and figures of the Veterans Movement in the form of the Provisional Military Government, the precursor of the Republic of Charnea. The uprising was catalyzed by the death of Regent Matruf Lamine the month prior, which triggered a reshuffling of government ministries and a purge of Lamine loyalists by the incoming ag Haqar regime.

The fallout of the Muttay has had immense consequences for Charnea. In the immediate term, the Muttay precipitated what has become known as the Summer of Crisis, the three-pronged disaster of political collapse, disorder, and economic meltdown. The mission of the Provisional Military Government was to curtail the Charnean collapse, an effort which was met with mixed results. The establishment of the Republic was successful in remediating the lack of political leadership following the fall of the national government in the Muttay, while the military crackdowns in most major Charnean cities succeeded in restoring security of the country's most important urban centers. Post-Muttay economic policies failed to restore the national economy to its pre-crisis state, although the rates of GDP contraction and currency inflation were successfully curtailed by mid October. Taken as a whole, the events of the Muttay represent a sudden and unexpected departure from the political legacy of the Charnean Modernists of the 1920s who established the underpinnings of the Charnean state, as well as a severing of the link to the 700 year legacy of the Charnean Empire. Views on the Muttay are extremely mixed within the Charnean population, where celebrations over the fall of the unpopular and corrupt Imperial regime are tempered by the sobering economic reality of the revolution.

Background

The post-war economy pushed many formerly middle-class Charneans into slums on the outskirts of cities.

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. 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 as the esoteric mysticism of his ideology laid out in the Book of the Desert lacked popular appeal and was only particularly effective in winning over Ajamite demographics which already supported him. Without offering a serious alternative to the AKE in the eyes of the people, Lamine's regime proved to be a boon to Marus Ibiza ag Haqar who was able to grow his power base without the opposition the Reformers had once posed. Marus Ibiza was the original political heir of Pazir Madoun and the inheritor of his post-war legacy, but he would not become the uncontested paramount leader of the AKE until Lamine's regency. 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 to oppose ag Haqar's centralization of power, emboldened by the Charnean Army's deeply entrenched culture of officer autonomy. When Martuf Lamine died in May of 2023, however, this delicate balance was destroyed and Marus Ibiza quickly moved to eliminate dissident embers from the civilian government as well as the military establishment. 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.

Azut mutiny

The Desert Rangers were the first element of the Charnean Army to mutiny, although it is not certain whether this directly set off the rest of the Muttay mutinies or was simply an early sign of what was to come. The Ranger mutiny began in response to the June 7th order which demanded that Colonel Khyar Aziouel resign from command of the Ranger Corps and immediately retire, alongside other orders pertaining to the formation's chain of command. Colonel Aziouel responded to the order by directing a column of between one and two thousand Rangers under his command to leave Akenasret Barracks in Azut and secure the nearby Army Depot, alongside a second detachment of around 400 men led by Aziouel himself which moved on Senusret Military Academy. Both installations were entirely unaware a mutiny was taking place and had simply allowed the uniformed Rangers to gain entry without resistance, although they would have time to unwittingly inform the Ministry of Defense in Agnannet of the mutiny when they sent messages to the high command questioning the unscheduled movement of Ranger forces.

Colonel Aziouel and his rogue Rangers aimed not only to paralyze the Charnean Army's nerve center in Azut but also to spread their movement and foment further mutiny through other units based in the area. The Military Academy offered a large number of potential recruits to the cause, which Aziouel courted personally, while the Depot in Azut provided a large stockpile of equipment far beyond the modest supplies at the Rangers' Akenasret Barracks as well as the opportunity to turn important logistics units based there. The Rangers were soon at the head of a mixed force made up of non-commissioned instructors, retired lecturers of the Military Academy, a small number of student officers and most of the logistics units at the Depot. The latter group proved to be the most decisive in the days to come, as the defection of the Azut logistics hub to Aziouel had the effect of cutting loyalist forces in half, physically isolating the bulk of the Army in the Charnean Far East and the Fahrani border region from the capital and the Army high command. Of those who refused to join the mutiny, the majority were allowed to go home and were released as private citizens, while a small number of high-ranking Military Academy staff were taken back to Ranger headquarters at Akenasret Barracks and interned. Of these prisoners, most would be dismissed from their posts and discharged by the Provisional Military Government after the Muttay.