Muttay
| Charnean Revolution Muttay | |
|---|---|
| ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ | |
| Date | 22 March 2023 – 4 April 2023 |
| Location | |
| Caused by |
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| Methods |
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| Resulted in |
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| Casualties | |
| Death(s) | 487 |
| Injuries | 3,107 |
| Arrested | 14,200 demonstrators (later released) 2,129 AKE officials, state security officers, and others taken into custody by the mutineers. |
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The Muttay (Tamashek: ⵎⵓⵜⵜⴰⵢ, lit. "The Change"), also known as the Charnean Revolution, was a civil and military uprising which took place over 13 days in March and April of 2023, resulting in the overthrow of the Imperial government and the establishment of the Charnean Republic. It consisted mainly of demonstrations and protests staged by thousands of active and retired Charnean Army personnel and their families, which escalated into violent clashes between state security forces and armed elements within the protest movement. These clashes culminated in a widespread mutiny within the Army which resulted in the defeat of state security forces, the capture of government buildings and the success of a military coup staged by the mutineers. Unrest within the Charnean Army had been rising for years with complaints of low pay, corruption of superior officers, and systemic discrimination against the Kel Ajama ethnic sub-group which had become a majority of the Army's manpower. The proximate cause of the protests in March of 2023 were the arrests of Army Colonels Amastan Elmoctar, Hrakhel Kabte and the killing of Colonel Chekkadh Amanrassa who had resisted arrest. All of these officers, as well as many others subject to arrest, were members of the Cobalt Square, a faction within the military opposing the perceived corruption of the Army's leadership as well as a litany of injustices and accusations the group leveled at the Imperial government. The majority were also ethnic Ajamites and influential figures in the Charnean veteran communities well known as advocates for increased compensation and benefits for Ajamite veterans.
State security agencies alleged that the demonstrations were being coordinated by Colonel Khyar Aziouel, the fourth leader of the Cobalt Square who evaded capture by military police who attempted to arrest him in an Army encampment outside of Azut in Adjer province. In reality, much of the mobilization of the marchers was spontaneous in nature and motivated primarily by the arrests and crackdowns as well as years of ignored demands from the Army veterans. The later mutiny and coup, however, was linked to the Cobalt Square and its wide reaching influence. A force of several thousand mutineers armed with Army issue equipment descended on the capital in the morning of the 3rd of April following an escalation of violence between police and protestors in the preceding days, while tens of thousands of active duty ICA soldiers deserted their posts, seized bases and arrested officers and political chiefs on their own initiative all across Charnea. These soldiers, labeled mutineers by the Army high command, were for the most part not directly connected to the Cobalt Square but belonged to like minded groups across several of the Army services. Many were motivated by self-preservation, believing that the ongoing purge of the Cobalt Square would inevitably expand to a general cleansing of the armed forces of various officers and groups considered to be dissidents or malcontents.
The fall of the Imperial government of Charnea on the morning of April 4th was met with declarations of victory by the demonstrators and an official announcement by the Cobalt Square broadcast through state media. The Cobalt Square announced the formal abolition of the Empire of Charnea, the dissolution of the Agraw Imgharan state assembly and the establishment of a Republic under the stewardship of the Charnean Army. An interim ruling council was convened on the 4th and 5th, representing the Square and many of the other groups that had turned out for the demonstrations was established pending a general election to be held within the ranks of the Army on May 14th once proper electoral infrastructure could be put in place. Having successfully accomplished its stated goals of purging the corrupt elements of the Imperial government and establishing a military democracy, the Cobalt Square officially disbanded on April 17th. The Republic of Charnea, formally declared on the April 4th, would take shape more concretely following the May elections which established the new Agraw Allolan popular assembly and voted Khyar Aziouel the first chief of state of the new Republic. In this first month following the revolution, many would be freed from custody including all imprisoned members of the Cobalt Square, the thousands of protestors which had been arrested over the course of the demonstrations, and further scores of dissidents and political prisoners interned in the Charnean prison system many of whom were unrelated who the military uprising and the Cobalt Square movement. Many records and classified documents of the previous regime were made public by the Aziouel government as part of a concerted effort to garner support and legitimacy for the new regime by revealing the crimes of the old, including many disappearances and extrajudicial killings of protestors involved in the Muttay at the hands of state security forces.
Background
Discontent in the Army
The unrest within the Charnean Army which ultimately boiled over in the Muttay had been brewing under the surface for decades. Since the movement towards and urban and industrialized modern society and economy in the early 20th century, a divide had been created within the Tenerian majority of Charnea between those who moved to the growing cities and those who remained in the desert and preserved elements of their ancestral way of life. The former, known as the Kel Aɣrem or derisively as "Townies" by the rural Charneans, benefitted disproportionately from the fruits of modernization and the rising standards of living in Charnea which resulted from its aggressively Developmentalist economic development. Kel Aɣrem staffed the major state corporations and private conglomerates operating out of the great cities of Charnea, and through these positions gained influence over the ministries and offices of the Charnean government and the dominant AKE party. For the most part, Aɣremite inhabitants of the major cities like Agnannet could access necessary resources to deal with everyday problems and have their complaints addressed through the system of patronage and clan connections with high ranking Aɣremite officials and businessmen who could utilize their connections to redress any major grievances.
However, the Kel Ajama who remained in the desert lacked these connections. Largely excluded from the modernization and the growth of the major businesses, the Ajamites not only received very little benefits or standard of living increases during this era but also generally suffered from conditions of unemployment, lack of education and lack of access to healthcare and other public services due to their semi-nomadic lifestyle. The only Kel Ajama which evaded these barriers were a small minority who were connected to the old noble clans and were able to leverage this status to gain standing within the government and establish their own power bases in the great cities. This resulted in a division within the Tenerians, with the Ajamites and their urban cousins diverging into two distinct subcultures of the Tenerian ethnicity. Poor Ajamites with little education and employment opportunities became the backbone of the Army ground forces, especially in the aftermath of the Agala War. In particular, they were considered desirable recruits as they were hardier than the urban Charneans, receiving and accepting smaller food rations, being pre-adapted to navigating the desert and surviving in its hostile conditions, and accepting lower daily wages due to the lack of any viable alternatives. Many minority groups such as the Deshrians would be recruited for similar reasons, but the Ajamites would be preferred as they shared a language and cultural ties with the dominant groups in the Imperial state. The predominance of the Ajamites in the Army would rise to new levels with the mass mobilization which occurred during the Ninvite War in which virtually all able bodied male Ajamites were inducted into the Army to wage war upon Fahran and their Gharib separatist allies in the Charnean far east.
The Ninvite War of the mid 1980s exacerbated earlier conditions within the military. The upper echelons of the command structure were mainly politically connected members of the great clans, either promoted on the basis of loyalty or introduced altogether at the top of the military hierarchy because of outside influence. These officers divided up the body of the ICA into personalist organizations for political reasons, creating many parallel commands and inefficient structures both as a means of furthering the status of specific clans as well as protecting the power concentrated in the autocratic Premier of Charnea. This seriously antagonized the mostly Ajamite junior officers of the Army, who made up the backbone of the combat arms of the ICA and were widely credited as being the most capable component of the organization upon which the decentralized, initiative-based Charnean school of desert warfare depends. These junior officers were frequently passed over for promotion to higher posts in favor of often less competent but loyal and politically connected Aɣremite officers. This anger was also compounded by the continuing conditions of poverty of many of the Ajamite communities in Charnea.
Regime of the Martial
In 2013, the Seven Day Coup resulted in the ouster and death in custody of many government officials by a political-military cabal opposing economic reforms being pushed by the regime at the time. This disruption ended in a counter-coup headed by Martuf Lamine, Martial of Charnea and a veteran of the Ninvite War, which would depose the putschists. The Martial would go about establishing a de facto military dictatorship under his control with the aim of pushing through his own agenda and plans to repair the country's political ills and economic stagnation. To further his goals, Martuf Lamine would install Amina N'Okha (today N'Akall) as a puppet monarch and govern as Regent of the Empire. It was during this period that the Cobalt Square was founded by four Ajamite Colonels of the ICA who were ardent supporters of Martuf and the ideology he espoused but were even more radical in their aims for Charnea than he was. Martial Lamine did not create the Square or take leadership of the group, but would find political use for the organization as a tool for forcing the compliance of uncooperative elements of the state who hated and feared the Ajamite movement and the radical Cobalt Square in particular. He would continue to maintain the loyalty of the four Colonels and their followers to his regime by passing some measures to improve the conditions of the Ajamites in the Army, although these reforms would not be considered adequate and many would find them lacking. The decade of 2013-2023 was a time of rising political tension, during which Martuf's puppet Queen Amina as well as the Martial himself came under threat of assassination multiple times. Armed standoffs between different factions within the Charnean Army began to occur with increasing frequency, alarming the Charnean government and creating an atmosphere of distrust from the regime and the high command towards the Ajamite soldiers that made up most of the military. Because of this distrust, many attempts by Martial Lamine to meet the demands of Ajamite factions in the Army would be blocked on the grounds that they would make the Ajamites too powerful, while at the same time the new restrictions placed on Ajamite members of the Army would only further antagonize them. The Cobalt Square, once a minor clique made of up just 28 junior officers and enlisted leaders, grew in size to a burgeoning 3,300 members with wide reaching influence across the counterinsurgency corps and the border guards of the ICA, making them by far the most influential among the dissident groups in the Army. This also made them the prime targets of a military purge which would unfold in the aftermath of Martuf Lamine's death in Fahran in December of 2022.