Belhavian Democratic Liberation Front
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The Belhavian Democratic Liberation Front (Yiddish: Belhavyan Demokratish Liberatyon) is a violent political resistance and militant group opposed to the Imperial Belhavian government and its core institutions and ideologies, including the Imperial monarchy, its explicit declaration of a Jewish nation-state as a core national identity, its state-sponsored social conservatism, traditions, and sociocultural ways of life, and its free market economy with minimal government intervention.
Operating since 1982, the group has launched a number of coordinated terrorist attacks, assassinations, hijackings, and kidnappings against Belhavian authorities, persons, property, interests, and institutions. In addition, firstly to fund its operations and later normalized as an end in itself since the early 2000s, the BDLF operates an extensive global criminal syndicate that engages in a number of local and transnational crime.
History
Introduction and founding
The origins of the BDLF date back to the haphazard enforcement of the White Terror laws in the post-Galarian years and the rise of the New Left and post-modernity globally since the 1960s. Following the heavy-handed use of the White Terror laws during the Galarian Autocracy, after its fall the restored constitutional government suspended enforcement from 1945 until 1953, when the Cold War emerged as the global Communist bloc formed and Communism spread across the world in violent revolutions.
The election of President Vern Callan in 1968 ushered in the most left-wing political climate in Belhavian history, and he enthusiastically supported and encouraged the budding post-modern ideologies and groups, including feminism and gay lifestyle movements, as well as existing-but-banned groups such as Marxists, socialists, social democrats, and republicans under the White Terror regime.
Callan, supported by supermajorities in the Imperial Senate, ceased enforcement of the White Terror laws between 1969 and 1981, allowing these groups - although still considered largely fringe and alienated from general society - to openly present their views in the public domain.
With the election of Julian Settas as president and his resulting Settas Revolution in 1981, the White Terror legal regime was enforced again rigorously and the 12-year Callan-Levine-era social liberal experiment was ended with the so-called "New White Terror Purges of 1981."
The BDLF's cofounders, feminist activist Jessica Black, Communist agitator and trade unionist advocate Martin Greenberg, and ethnic Anikatian and gay movement activist Kwang Yong met in Loweport, Arthurista in 1982 amid an émigré community that was settling there after the 1981 Purges and established the group. A year later, they had recruited enough supporters among Belhavian White Terror exiles, secured arms, and were organized enough to launch their first attack, the 1983 HIMS Spirit of Dakos hijacking.
1980s
The BDLF launched three high-profile attacks in the decade of the 1980s: the 1983 HIMS Spirit of Dakos hijacking, the 1985 Belhavian embassy in Arthurista bombing, and 1989 Hijacking and crash of ICA Flight 664.
The BDLF's Taverian cells also partook extensively in the 5-year Urban Enclave Crisis, where it launched several dozen car bombs, thousands of attacks on Belhavian police, security, and paramilitary forces, assaulted government facilities, trafficked in illegal drugs, weapons, and sexual slaves, and performed numerous other criminal and insurgent acts.
However, the terrorist group's influence and actions within Belhavia waned to irrelevance after the July 1987 Imperial Home Guard multi-city pacification campaign, which brought the urban crisis to a close and arrested and sentenced over 4,000 persons, including several hundred BDLF operatives and associates.
1990s
2000s
2010s
Current activities
Organization
Leadership
The BDLF's leadership is centered around its three cofounders, Jessica Black, Martin Greenberg, and Kwang Yong, who form the "National Liberation Council". Any of the three are expected to speak for the NLC when they pass orders and instructions to their subordinates, and since 2000 have purposefully been separated around the world to deny Belhavian forces an opportunity to kill or capture all three leaders simultaneously.
Their senior lieutenants are called "Revolutionary Captains", and these "captains" control their BDLF cells and territories, and direct all illicit and black market activities as well as communicate to and with the NLC. Only the captains are allowed to communicate with the NLC.
The lowest-ranking militants are called "Solidarity Freedom Fighters", usually "fighters" for short. They rarely congregate except for an attack or black-market activity, and they communicate through their local captain's right-hand man and only rarely with the captain him- or herself.
Black market involvement
- Illegal arms sales and weapons smuggling.
- Prostitution and pimping.
- Kidnapping and ransom.
- Theft and fraud.
- Financial crimes and bank fraud.
- Loan sharking.
- Illegal drug smuggling and sales.
Violent activities
List of attacks
- 1983 HIMS Spirit of Dakos hijacking
- 1985 Belhavian embassy in Arthurista bombing
- 1989 Hijacking and crash of ICA Flight 664
- 1992 Chaleur suicide bombing
- 1996 Assassination of Dovid Feinstein
- 1997 WCS Liberty Towers Attacks
- 1999 Attempted rebellion in Tel Nafesh
- 2007 Attempted Freeport City harbor bombing
- 2014 Orah Aish movie theater shooting in New Shelvoy
Other violent actions
As early as six months into its creation, the BDLF involved itself in the black market to raise funds and secure weapons. With the escalation of the Taverian Drug War in the mid-1980s, after the passage of the Counter-Narcotics Enforcement Act, Taverian BDLF cells in Belhavia, Estovnia, Tule, and the UTR peddled in the illegal drug trade and the violence surrounding it, using the chaos and anarchy in the northern big cities during the Urban Enclave Crisis to raise millions to fund its worldwide operations.
With the pacification of the afflicted cities by 1987 and the urban crisis dying down, pared with a general and harsh crackdown by Belhavian authorities on BDLF activities within Imperial borders, the terrorist group pivoted its drug-war involvement to the periphery by focusing on drug smuggling and trafficking into Belhavia through bases in Tule, Estovnia, and Ayton-Shelvay, with the actual drug networks inside Belhavia outsourced to the Rodarian Mafia, M6, and other drug-trading criminal elements.
By the late 1990s, the criminal organization had established itself as top-tier drug cartel in the global organized crime world, trafficking and smuggling illegal drugs, intoxicants, and narcotics throughout the world, in between countries with little or no connection to Belhavia, with analysts who studied the terrorist organization positing that it had morphed from a solely violent political group to a full-fledged trans-global criminal enterprise engaging in criminal activities for their own benefit in addition to funding its political terrorism.
External support
Known locales
Current
- Belhavia (underground)
- Arthurista (underground)
- Emmeria (underground)
- Tippercommon (underground)
- Eagleland (underground)
- Austrasia (underground)
- Rodarion (underground)
- Nijdeland (underground)
- Belfras (underground)
- Former Western States (underground)1
- Temuair (underground)
- Tule (underground)
- Anikatia (quasi-openly)2
- Saarland (quasi-openly)
- Goredemabwa (quasi-openly)
- Ankaran Union (openly)
- Estovnia (openly)
- Husseinarti (openly)
Formerly
- Bariya: From 1991 until 2013, the BDLF had a large presence in within the then-Free Collective government where it could operate openly with explicit support from the Bariyan authorities. After the 2013 Rose Revolution and the subsequent anti-leftist reign of terror of Directory government, the BDLF went underground and reportedly evacuated a number of its fighters and personnel to other locales.
Notes:
1. Although the Western Confederacy broke into corporate-run market states and dissolved all formal government in 2014, the corporate governments in all of the former Western states label the BDLF as an "enemy of shareholders and capitalism" and authorize local corporate security forces to actively suppress and prosecute BDLF supporters within their borders.
2. The Anikatian authorities actively suppress and prosecute the BDLF military wing, but permit its purported
"nonviolent political group" to openly partake in the public domain.
Foreign Supporters
Current
- Husseinarti communist regime: The BDLF is tolerated and supported by the Husseinarti authorities, and given safe harbor. This has led to covert and overt Belhavian strikes against BDLF facilities and individuals, from rapid-fire commando raids to precision air strikes.
- Ankaran Union regime: Even though the AU has its own state-sponsored social conservative regime, the BDLF has strategically allied itself with the AU regime, which allows it to operate openly.
- Estovnian Republican regime: The BDLF is allowed to operate openly within Estovnian national territory, with the group having allied with the communist government when the group was founded.
Former
- Otterup Pact: Unacknowledged openly but well-known among governments, the intelligence community, and general public. Supported the BDLF after its first attack in 1983 until OttPact's dissolution in 2001.
- People's Republic of Tule communist regime: Openly supported the terrorist organization until Operation Twilight in 1995-96, after which the moderate and liberal reformer bloc that formed the State of Tule ceased support and had a policy of détente with Belhavia while the Estovnia-backed PRT rump state continued on paper to support the BDLF but in actuality left actual material support to Estovnia. This continued until 2002, after which it ceased as the PRT rump state was merged into the State of Tule.