Soyuz-80: the 1980 Soviet Invasion of Poland
- Thread starter Onkel Willie
- Start date
Chapter XI: Peace in Russia and the War on Terror, 2008-2012.
And the story continues 
Chapter XI: Peace in Russia and the War on Terror, 2008-2012.
While the Second Korean War began and ended, the Second Russian Civil War continued. By 2009, it looked like the exhausted government army had finally won through, with opposition groups on the retreat everywhere. The battlefield victory, however, came at the cost of illness, a shrinking economy, poverty and enormous loss of life. The Second Russian Civil War had cost the lives of 3.5 million people by 2009. Taking into consideration this death toll and the number of ten million refugees that had left the Soviet Union, it was indeed the worst humanitarian crisis since WW II. Infrastructure, including access to education and medical care, had collapsed in large parts of the country, which led to the return of illiteracy and illnesses thought to be defeated like typhoid and cholera. Basic amenities like running water, electricity and heating were only available in the cities and even there often intermittently. The economic situation was compounded by the West’s near total embargo, which they said would remain in place until Zhirinovsky was removed. He made it worse by advocating the removal of all Chinese and Japanese from the Russian Far East, which caused Beijing (and Tokyo) to turn against him.
Zhirinovsky, at this point, was regarded as a bad choice by Russian military leaders. He was making extreme statements that the entire Middle East should become part of Russia, which would “cause some suffering to Turks and Persians, but leave everybody else better off.” His anti-Semitism ensured him of Israeli hostility, which was only compounded by his declaration that “the Christian world should reunify in Jerusalem.” Further public statements that Russia should regain its pre-WW I borders (which would include the annexation of Finland and a lot of Polish territory), that it should retake Alaska from the United States (and dump the Ukrainians there) only served to enhance Russia’s pariah status. Zhirinovsky ran into protests like his predecessor Putin, demanding democratic elections and negotiations for peace.
Rather than allowing him to endlessly continue the conflict or allowing another charismatic radical to bring about a temporary upsurge of support and also continue the war, the army leadership decided to call it quits. The central government was in a strong negotiating position and now it was just a matter of placing an acceptable leader in the Kremlin. A notable democratic politician in Russia was Boris Nemtsov and he reluctantly accepted the army’s blessing. He’d rather have been elected than being thrust into the country’s leading office by a palace coup by the military, but he consoled himself with the fact that at least now he had an opportunity to carry out reforms. Russia was now going to become a democracy, though only as long as the democratic experiment had the army’s blessing. Zhirinovsky, in the meantime, was forced to retire for “health reasons,” and withdrew to a dacha which was under constant KGB surveillance.
On Tuesday May 5th 2009, Nemtsov announced an immediate and unilateral ceasefire and invited opposition groups and separatist forces to negotiations. The guns fell silent. He requested the UN to mediate in negotiations since – despite the change in leadership – there was a lot of distrust between Moscow and its former opponents. The Byelorussian, Azerbaijan, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik and Kyrgyz SSRs remained a part of the Soviet Union. The Donbass region and the Crimea were attached to the Russian SFSR, Abkhazia and South Ossetia became autonomous oblasts of the RSFSR, and referendums were held in majority Russian areas of the Baltic States, and the latter subsequently ceded these areas to Moscow. The Baltic States, Ukraine, Moldova, Transnistria, Georgia and Armenia won their independence, but remained part of the “near abroad” where Russia could still exert influence by virtue of its sheer size (though Nemtsov was in no mood to be throwing that weight around a lot). The country was subsequently renamed the Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics and more power was devolved to the republics, making it a true federation.
Nemtsov wanted to start with a clean slate and he agreed to a UN trial to be held in The Hague where Zhirinovsky and his most important henchmen (which included some of Putin’s henchmen) would be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The first multiparty elections for a State Duma in Russia in a century were held in 2010 and a new Russia emerged. With help from the US, Europe and primarily China the new, democratic USSR began rebuilding and experienced 8-11% growth rates as it moved from a planned economy to a mixed economy like China’s. Politically, the country became a parliamentary republic in which the Prime Minister became the de facto most important political figure as the head of the executive branch (the presidency was a symbolic office in the new constitution).
The Sino-Russian partnership was re-established and this time China decisively became the dominant partner because of all its investments into developing Siberia’s mineral wealth. Some see the increased Chinese presence in as some sort of quiet colonization, but others point out Beijing can’t push its luck with the Russians. The Soviet Army is still fairly advanced and huge, its leaders are professional and Moscow still controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal; new investments into the army have begun replacing older communist era equipment. It isn’t a superpower anymore, but the USSR is still a tough great power with significant power projection capabilities, including eight Typhoon-class submarines and three Ulyanovsk-class super carriers.
Of course Russia’s foreign interests remained roughly similar regardless of the government in charge in Moscow and it maintained low-key support for its foreign allies. At this point they often ended up co-managing them with China, with somebody like Saddam Hussein being opportunistic enough to play Beijing and Moscow against each other to gain the most support. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Angola, Ethiopia and a few other countries revolve around a “Moscow-Beijing axis” (as it’s called by those analysts anticipating a new Cold War).
That didn’t mean that Moscow’s interests couldn’t align with Washington’s, and this occurred in 2011. Gore’s second term had already seen two terrorist attacks, namely the bombing of the US embassy in Somalia in 2007 and the bombing of the New York marathon in 2009, which killed 187 and 45 people respectively. Both were claimed by Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, and several more attacks were prevented by the CIA, FBI and NSA. Its leader, Saudi Arabian billionaire Osama bin Laden, hated the United States because American forces were stationed in Saudi Arabia to deter Iraq. He regarded them as infidels on holy soil and vowed to punish the Americans. On Monday October 10th 2011, a DC-9 airliner on a domestic passenger flight from Boston to Philadelphia was hijacked by Al-Qaeda and crashed into the Empire State Building, which was heavily damaged but remained standing. The burning Empire State Building has become the symbol of the 10/10 attacks, which also hit the Capitol Building and the Pentagon. While the world was still reeling, on October 13th the Moscow subway was hit by a sarin attack by Chechen terrorists and hundreds were killed. The KGB quickly discovered that the terrorists adhered to a militant Islam and had ties with Al-Qaeda.
Sudan was known to harbour Osama bin Laden and also had an Islamist regime. President John McCain (who had defeated Bill Clinton in 2008) demanded that President Omar al-Bashir’s regime handed over Bin Laden and expelled Al Qaeda. Bin Laden was already wanted by the UN for his prior 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre and because of the 1998 US embassy bombings. The government in Khartoum refused to hand him over until the US provided convincing evidence of his involvement in the 10/10 attacks. This was dismissed as a meaningless delaying tactic by the US. Meanwhile, Sudan ignored US demands to shut down terrorist bases and hand over terrorist suspects, even when Moscow put pressure on them as well.
On October 31st, President McCain decided on a military response and by late October two carrier groups centred on USS Nimitz and USS George Washington were already present in the Red Sea just in case this would happen. B-2s and B-52s obliterated the two main air force bases of Sudan: Khartoum Air Force Base and Wadi Sayyidna near Omdurman. Soviet aircraft carrier Ulyanovsk arrived and helped defeat the Sudanese Air Force and Sudanese Navy, which were destroyed in days and hours respectively. Sudan’s air force mostly consisted of 1960s and 70s Soviet and Chinese aircraft and some more modern MiG-29s, some of which were grounded due to lack of spare parts. They were no match for US Navy F/A-18s and modern Soviet Su-33s and MiG-29s. Sudan’s navy only had some patrol boats and these were easy pickings for an odd Akula-class submarine or a US destroyer.
In their first collaboration since WW II, the 1st Marine Division landed on Sudan’s coast near Port Sudan on November 7th with almost no opposition while the Soviets were allowed to deploy their forces on the soil of Ethiopia, a longstanding ally of Moscow. They had been flying in troops via Ethiopian Air Force bases and deploying troops by naval transport through the port of Asmara. The same day the Americans landed and secured a beachhead near Port Sudan, Soviet spetznaz commandos and KGB operatives infiltrated and caused as much chaos as possible behind enemy lines, destroying military targets and securing key infrastructural targets on the invasion routes. Some 60.000 Ethiopian and 20.000 Soviet troops invaded the day thereafter on November 8th. For as far as the Sudanese army wasn’t pulverized from the air, Sudanese T-62s and T-54/55s proved no match for more modern Ethiopian T-72s and Soviet T-90s. Soviet MiG-29s and Su-33s and Ethiopian Su-27s as well as Mil Mi 24 helicopter gunships from both countries had air superiority and crippled the Sudanese capacity for counterattack. Soviet-Ethiopian forces advanced north along the highway from Ad-Damazin to the capital of Khartoum. Meanwhile, after capturing Port Sudan, the American presence swelled from 22.000 to 100.000 and they began their thrust toward Khartoum too. The Soviet had a starting point closer to the enemy capital and had the additional advantage of being allowed to use Ethiopian Air Force bases Bahir Dar Airport and Mek’ele Airport by Mengistu. The Soviets and Ethiopians reached the outskirts of the capital on November 12th and US forces reached Omdurman the following day. Al-Bashir’s regime collapsed and Osama bin Laden was killed in a gunfight trying to cross the border into Egypt by US Special Forces. Critics argue Osama could have been taken alive, but the McCain administration didn’t want to risk a trial that Bin Laden could then use as a pulpit to spout his vitriolic Islamic extremist, anti-Western ideology. Meanwhile, Sudan organized democratic elections and a special autonomous status was granted to Darfur and southern Sudan.
The latest international crisis that the world would face, however, had its origins in the Middle East. After Saddam Hussein had annexed Kuwait in 1990, he had used the increased oil revenue to repair the remaining damage from the Iran-Iraq War. Schools, hospitals, mosques, highways, roads, dams, irrigation projects were rebuilt or newly constructed in the 1990s, which many consider a second golden age for Iraq (the first being the 1970s). Its generous system of social services was rebuilt too. Economic development was indeed significant. These highly propagandized successes served Saddam’s cult of personality, which only became more pervasive as time passed. His face was in office buildings, schools, airports and shops as well as on Iraqi money. Statues, murals, posters and portraits were everywhere and anything important was named after him, such as Kuwait City becoming Saddam City as the most grandiose example. The construction of a large gubernatorial palace there in the early 90s with a fifty foot tall statue of Saddam in front of it symbolized his power. All of the regime’s successes were attributed to the genius of Saddam, while opponents of the regime were tortured and killed or simply left to rot in hellholes like Abu Ghraib prison. The security apparatus was almost omnipresent and practically omnipotent, licensed to take any measure deemed necessary to suppress dissent. While people willing to accept dictatorship and turn a blind eye to its crimes in return for stability, security and a prospering economy lived in comfort, others were having their nails pulled out, their teeth pulled, kneecaps broken, electrodes attached to various parts of the body, bones broken or worse. Iraq was in fact a totalitarian regime and it wasn’t going to be overthrown from the inside anytime soon, not after the example of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
Meanwhile, a lot of oil money had been invested in improving the Iraqi army in a very ambitious military expansion program. Older MiG-21s, MiG-23s and Su-22s, were phased out in favour of MiG-29s and Su-27s while air defences were upgraded with the advanced Buk and Tor medium range surface-to-air missile systems and later also the S-300 long range SAM system. Ground forces replaced the obsolete T-54/55, Type 59 and Type 69 tanks with newer T-72Bs while the Republican Guard was outfitted solely with the modern T-90 main battle tank. Iraq’s ballistic missile program developed further with an Iraqi version of the Rodong-1 known as the Al Hussein-2 with a range of 1.500 kilometres and a one tonne warhead, which could be conventional but also chemical or biological. It was a major improvement over Iraq’s Al Hussein-1, which was an Iraqi improvement of the Scud with a range of only 650 kilometres. Iraq did a number of missile tests by launching Al Hussein-2 missiles into the Persian Gulf, a move condemned by the US, Europe and Iran. Finally, the navy was expanded with additional diesel electric Kilo-class submarines and one nuclear-powered Alfa-class attack submarine. By the early 2000s, Saddam was considered the most powerful Arab leader and other Arab powers supported Ba’ath Iraq as a shield against Iran and a champion of the Arab cause against the Zionists. They, however, were also wary of Saddam after his annexation of Kuwait.
A notable exception among the Arab states was Syria, which had poor relations with Iraq ever since the late 1970s. Saddam Hussein had sabotaged plans to unify the two countries for fear of losing his power by overthrowing his predecessor Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr. Unity talks did continue for a while after Saddam took power in July 1979, but Assad rejected plans for an immediate merger and the deployment of Iraqi troops for fear of Iraqi domination. All talks were suspended indefinitely after an alleged discovery of a Syrian plot to overthrow Saddam Hussein in November 1979 and all hopes of rapprochement ended because of the Iran-Iraq War and Assad’s growing closeness to Iran. In January 1982 the borders between the two countries were closed and sealed and all trade and movement of citizens was stopped. In 1990, Syria was the only Arab state to condemn Saddam’s subjugation of Kuwait, a fellow Arab state. Saddam remembered all the slights of the Syrians, despite the fact that he was growing slightly senile in his 70s. Initially, he started to doze off at meetings, he began to forget things people had just told him and he had to write everything down so he’d remember. Later, he also sometimes thought he was in wartime meetings in the Iran-Iraq War and talked about people he had long since eliminated as if they were still alive. His cronies dealt with it and approached him during his moments of clarity while ignoring his bouts of dementia since Saddam got angry when confronted by the conditions brought on by his age.
Meanwhile, despite his age, Saddam had enough clarity to take advantage of certain events going on in Syria. In many Arab countries there was dissatisfaction about authoritarianism, human rights violations, political corruption, kleptocracy, inflation, sectarianism and unemployment. In June 2011, a police officer assaulted a man in public and arrested him for no apparent reason in Damascus (it later turned out the police officer was having an affair with the man’s wife and wanted to get rid of him on some trumped up charges). Protestors called for the release of the man, but instead more arrests took place when people were caught writing anti-government graffiti on the walls and these people were beaten and tortured in jail. Protests erupted in cities like Damascus, Homs, Daraa, al-Hasakah, and Deir es-Zor and they all demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, but the regime responded with military clampdowns that cost the lives of hundreds of people. The regime seemed to be gaining the upper hand over the armed Syrian opposition by end of the year, but after weighing the risks Saddam decided to assist the Syrian opposition. Syria was the exact opposite of Iraq. Iraq was majority Shia and governed by a Sunni minority. In Syria the regime was predominantly Alawite while Sunni Arabs made up 60% the population and Sunnis in general 74%; Alawites are a branch of Shia Islam, and Shias are only 13% of the population. Needless to say, Baghdad began supporting various secular Sunni Arab rebel groups with arms, finances, fuel and training against the government as well as the Kurds. It was the beginning of the worst conflict in recent Middle Eastern history.
Chapter XI: Peace in Russia and the War on Terror, 2008-2012.
While the Second Korean War began and ended, the Second Russian Civil War continued. By 2009, it looked like the exhausted government army had finally won through, with opposition groups on the retreat everywhere. The battlefield victory, however, came at the cost of illness, a shrinking economy, poverty and enormous loss of life. The Second Russian Civil War had cost the lives of 3.5 million people by 2009. Taking into consideration this death toll and the number of ten million refugees that had left the Soviet Union, it was indeed the worst humanitarian crisis since WW II. Infrastructure, including access to education and medical care, had collapsed in large parts of the country, which led to the return of illiteracy and illnesses thought to be defeated like typhoid and cholera. Basic amenities like running water, electricity and heating were only available in the cities and even there often intermittently. The economic situation was compounded by the West’s near total embargo, which they said would remain in place until Zhirinovsky was removed. He made it worse by advocating the removal of all Chinese and Japanese from the Russian Far East, which caused Beijing (and Tokyo) to turn against him.
Zhirinovsky, at this point, was regarded as a bad choice by Russian military leaders. He was making extreme statements that the entire Middle East should become part of Russia, which would “cause some suffering to Turks and Persians, but leave everybody else better off.” His anti-Semitism ensured him of Israeli hostility, which was only compounded by his declaration that “the Christian world should reunify in Jerusalem.” Further public statements that Russia should regain its pre-WW I borders (which would include the annexation of Finland and a lot of Polish territory), that it should retake Alaska from the United States (and dump the Ukrainians there) only served to enhance Russia’s pariah status. Zhirinovsky ran into protests like his predecessor Putin, demanding democratic elections and negotiations for peace.
Rather than allowing him to endlessly continue the conflict or allowing another charismatic radical to bring about a temporary upsurge of support and also continue the war, the army leadership decided to call it quits. The central government was in a strong negotiating position and now it was just a matter of placing an acceptable leader in the Kremlin. A notable democratic politician in Russia was Boris Nemtsov and he reluctantly accepted the army’s blessing. He’d rather have been elected than being thrust into the country’s leading office by a palace coup by the military, but he consoled himself with the fact that at least now he had an opportunity to carry out reforms. Russia was now going to become a democracy, though only as long as the democratic experiment had the army’s blessing. Zhirinovsky, in the meantime, was forced to retire for “health reasons,” and withdrew to a dacha which was under constant KGB surveillance.
On Tuesday May 5th 2009, Nemtsov announced an immediate and unilateral ceasefire and invited opposition groups and separatist forces to negotiations. The guns fell silent. He requested the UN to mediate in negotiations since – despite the change in leadership – there was a lot of distrust between Moscow and its former opponents. The Byelorussian, Azerbaijan, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik and Kyrgyz SSRs remained a part of the Soviet Union. The Donbass region and the Crimea were attached to the Russian SFSR, Abkhazia and South Ossetia became autonomous oblasts of the RSFSR, and referendums were held in majority Russian areas of the Baltic States, and the latter subsequently ceded these areas to Moscow. The Baltic States, Ukraine, Moldova, Transnistria, Georgia and Armenia won their independence, but remained part of the “near abroad” where Russia could still exert influence by virtue of its sheer size (though Nemtsov was in no mood to be throwing that weight around a lot). The country was subsequently renamed the Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics and more power was devolved to the republics, making it a true federation.
Nemtsov wanted to start with a clean slate and he agreed to a UN trial to be held in The Hague where Zhirinovsky and his most important henchmen (which included some of Putin’s henchmen) would be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The first multiparty elections for a State Duma in Russia in a century were held in 2010 and a new Russia emerged. With help from the US, Europe and primarily China the new, democratic USSR began rebuilding and experienced 8-11% growth rates as it moved from a planned economy to a mixed economy like China’s. Politically, the country became a parliamentary republic in which the Prime Minister became the de facto most important political figure as the head of the executive branch (the presidency was a symbolic office in the new constitution).
The Sino-Russian partnership was re-established and this time China decisively became the dominant partner because of all its investments into developing Siberia’s mineral wealth. Some see the increased Chinese presence in as some sort of quiet colonization, but others point out Beijing can’t push its luck with the Russians. The Soviet Army is still fairly advanced and huge, its leaders are professional and Moscow still controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal; new investments into the army have begun replacing older communist era equipment. It isn’t a superpower anymore, but the USSR is still a tough great power with significant power projection capabilities, including eight Typhoon-class submarines and three Ulyanovsk-class super carriers.
Of course Russia’s foreign interests remained roughly similar regardless of the government in charge in Moscow and it maintained low-key support for its foreign allies. At this point they often ended up co-managing them with China, with somebody like Saddam Hussein being opportunistic enough to play Beijing and Moscow against each other to gain the most support. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Angola, Ethiopia and a few other countries revolve around a “Moscow-Beijing axis” (as it’s called by those analysts anticipating a new Cold War).
That didn’t mean that Moscow’s interests couldn’t align with Washington’s, and this occurred in 2011. Gore’s second term had already seen two terrorist attacks, namely the bombing of the US embassy in Somalia in 2007 and the bombing of the New York marathon in 2009, which killed 187 and 45 people respectively. Both were claimed by Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, and several more attacks were prevented by the CIA, FBI and NSA. Its leader, Saudi Arabian billionaire Osama bin Laden, hated the United States because American forces were stationed in Saudi Arabia to deter Iraq. He regarded them as infidels on holy soil and vowed to punish the Americans. On Monday October 10th 2011, a DC-9 airliner on a domestic passenger flight from Boston to Philadelphia was hijacked by Al-Qaeda and crashed into the Empire State Building, which was heavily damaged but remained standing. The burning Empire State Building has become the symbol of the 10/10 attacks, which also hit the Capitol Building and the Pentagon. While the world was still reeling, on October 13th the Moscow subway was hit by a sarin attack by Chechen terrorists and hundreds were killed. The KGB quickly discovered that the terrorists adhered to a militant Islam and had ties with Al-Qaeda.
Sudan was known to harbour Osama bin Laden and also had an Islamist regime. President John McCain (who had defeated Bill Clinton in 2008) demanded that President Omar al-Bashir’s regime handed over Bin Laden and expelled Al Qaeda. Bin Laden was already wanted by the UN for his prior 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre and because of the 1998 US embassy bombings. The government in Khartoum refused to hand him over until the US provided convincing evidence of his involvement in the 10/10 attacks. This was dismissed as a meaningless delaying tactic by the US. Meanwhile, Sudan ignored US demands to shut down terrorist bases and hand over terrorist suspects, even when Moscow put pressure on them as well.
On October 31st, President McCain decided on a military response and by late October two carrier groups centred on USS Nimitz and USS George Washington were already present in the Red Sea just in case this would happen. B-2s and B-52s obliterated the two main air force bases of Sudan: Khartoum Air Force Base and Wadi Sayyidna near Omdurman. Soviet aircraft carrier Ulyanovsk arrived and helped defeat the Sudanese Air Force and Sudanese Navy, which were destroyed in days and hours respectively. Sudan’s air force mostly consisted of 1960s and 70s Soviet and Chinese aircraft and some more modern MiG-29s, some of which were grounded due to lack of spare parts. They were no match for US Navy F/A-18s and modern Soviet Su-33s and MiG-29s. Sudan’s navy only had some patrol boats and these were easy pickings for an odd Akula-class submarine or a US destroyer.
In their first collaboration since WW II, the 1st Marine Division landed on Sudan’s coast near Port Sudan on November 7th with almost no opposition while the Soviets were allowed to deploy their forces on the soil of Ethiopia, a longstanding ally of Moscow. They had been flying in troops via Ethiopian Air Force bases and deploying troops by naval transport through the port of Asmara. The same day the Americans landed and secured a beachhead near Port Sudan, Soviet spetznaz commandos and KGB operatives infiltrated and caused as much chaos as possible behind enemy lines, destroying military targets and securing key infrastructural targets on the invasion routes. Some 60.000 Ethiopian and 20.000 Soviet troops invaded the day thereafter on November 8th. For as far as the Sudanese army wasn’t pulverized from the air, Sudanese T-62s and T-54/55s proved no match for more modern Ethiopian T-72s and Soviet T-90s. Soviet MiG-29s and Su-33s and Ethiopian Su-27s as well as Mil Mi 24 helicopter gunships from both countries had air superiority and crippled the Sudanese capacity for counterattack. Soviet-Ethiopian forces advanced north along the highway from Ad-Damazin to the capital of Khartoum. Meanwhile, after capturing Port Sudan, the American presence swelled from 22.000 to 100.000 and they began their thrust toward Khartoum too. The Soviet had a starting point closer to the enemy capital and had the additional advantage of being allowed to use Ethiopian Air Force bases Bahir Dar Airport and Mek’ele Airport by Mengistu. The Soviets and Ethiopians reached the outskirts of the capital on November 12th and US forces reached Omdurman the following day. Al-Bashir’s regime collapsed and Osama bin Laden was killed in a gunfight trying to cross the border into Egypt by US Special Forces. Critics argue Osama could have been taken alive, but the McCain administration didn’t want to risk a trial that Bin Laden could then use as a pulpit to spout his vitriolic Islamic extremist, anti-Western ideology. Meanwhile, Sudan organized democratic elections and a special autonomous status was granted to Darfur and southern Sudan.
The latest international crisis that the world would face, however, had its origins in the Middle East. After Saddam Hussein had annexed Kuwait in 1990, he had used the increased oil revenue to repair the remaining damage from the Iran-Iraq War. Schools, hospitals, mosques, highways, roads, dams, irrigation projects were rebuilt or newly constructed in the 1990s, which many consider a second golden age for Iraq (the first being the 1970s). Its generous system of social services was rebuilt too. Economic development was indeed significant. These highly propagandized successes served Saddam’s cult of personality, which only became more pervasive as time passed. His face was in office buildings, schools, airports and shops as well as on Iraqi money. Statues, murals, posters and portraits were everywhere and anything important was named after him, such as Kuwait City becoming Saddam City as the most grandiose example. The construction of a large gubernatorial palace there in the early 90s with a fifty foot tall statue of Saddam in front of it symbolized his power. All of the regime’s successes were attributed to the genius of Saddam, while opponents of the regime were tortured and killed or simply left to rot in hellholes like Abu Ghraib prison. The security apparatus was almost omnipresent and practically omnipotent, licensed to take any measure deemed necessary to suppress dissent. While people willing to accept dictatorship and turn a blind eye to its crimes in return for stability, security and a prospering economy lived in comfort, others were having their nails pulled out, their teeth pulled, kneecaps broken, electrodes attached to various parts of the body, bones broken or worse. Iraq was in fact a totalitarian regime and it wasn’t going to be overthrown from the inside anytime soon, not after the example of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
Meanwhile, a lot of oil money had been invested in improving the Iraqi army in a very ambitious military expansion program. Older MiG-21s, MiG-23s and Su-22s, were phased out in favour of MiG-29s and Su-27s while air defences were upgraded with the advanced Buk and Tor medium range surface-to-air missile systems and later also the S-300 long range SAM system. Ground forces replaced the obsolete T-54/55, Type 59 and Type 69 tanks with newer T-72Bs while the Republican Guard was outfitted solely with the modern T-90 main battle tank. Iraq’s ballistic missile program developed further with an Iraqi version of the Rodong-1 known as the Al Hussein-2 with a range of 1.500 kilometres and a one tonne warhead, which could be conventional but also chemical or biological. It was a major improvement over Iraq’s Al Hussein-1, which was an Iraqi improvement of the Scud with a range of only 650 kilometres. Iraq did a number of missile tests by launching Al Hussein-2 missiles into the Persian Gulf, a move condemned by the US, Europe and Iran. Finally, the navy was expanded with additional diesel electric Kilo-class submarines and one nuclear-powered Alfa-class attack submarine. By the early 2000s, Saddam was considered the most powerful Arab leader and other Arab powers supported Ba’ath Iraq as a shield against Iran and a champion of the Arab cause against the Zionists. They, however, were also wary of Saddam after his annexation of Kuwait.
A notable exception among the Arab states was Syria, which had poor relations with Iraq ever since the late 1970s. Saddam Hussein had sabotaged plans to unify the two countries for fear of losing his power by overthrowing his predecessor Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr. Unity talks did continue for a while after Saddam took power in July 1979, but Assad rejected plans for an immediate merger and the deployment of Iraqi troops for fear of Iraqi domination. All talks were suspended indefinitely after an alleged discovery of a Syrian plot to overthrow Saddam Hussein in November 1979 and all hopes of rapprochement ended because of the Iran-Iraq War and Assad’s growing closeness to Iran. In January 1982 the borders between the two countries were closed and sealed and all trade and movement of citizens was stopped. In 1990, Syria was the only Arab state to condemn Saddam’s subjugation of Kuwait, a fellow Arab state. Saddam remembered all the slights of the Syrians, despite the fact that he was growing slightly senile in his 70s. Initially, he started to doze off at meetings, he began to forget things people had just told him and he had to write everything down so he’d remember. Later, he also sometimes thought he was in wartime meetings in the Iran-Iraq War and talked about people he had long since eliminated as if they were still alive. His cronies dealt with it and approached him during his moments of clarity while ignoring his bouts of dementia since Saddam got angry when confronted by the conditions brought on by his age.
Meanwhile, despite his age, Saddam had enough clarity to take advantage of certain events going on in Syria. In many Arab countries there was dissatisfaction about authoritarianism, human rights violations, political corruption, kleptocracy, inflation, sectarianism and unemployment. In June 2011, a police officer assaulted a man in public and arrested him for no apparent reason in Damascus (it later turned out the police officer was having an affair with the man’s wife and wanted to get rid of him on some trumped up charges). Protestors called for the release of the man, but instead more arrests took place when people were caught writing anti-government graffiti on the walls and these people were beaten and tortured in jail. Protests erupted in cities like Damascus, Homs, Daraa, al-Hasakah, and Deir es-Zor and they all demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, but the regime responded with military clampdowns that cost the lives of hundreds of people. The regime seemed to be gaining the upper hand over the armed Syrian opposition by end of the year, but after weighing the risks Saddam decided to assist the Syrian opposition. Syria was the exact opposite of Iraq. Iraq was majority Shia and governed by a Sunni minority. In Syria the regime was predominantly Alawite while Sunni Arabs made up 60% the population and Sunnis in general 74%; Alawites are a branch of Shia Islam, and Shias are only 13% of the population. Needless to say, Baghdad began supporting various secular Sunni Arab rebel groups with arms, finances, fuel and training against the government as well as the Kurds. It was the beginning of the worst conflict in recent Middle Eastern history.
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Thank you!
Wham-Episode Confirmed
(Yeah, I read too much Tropes...)
Great, detailed story. I hope that I am not committing a social faux pas by nit picking, but Poland never had the BTR armored vehicles that the ZOMO police used.
Rather cold war Poland and Czechloslovakia developed their own alternative "Skot" vehicle after they found the Soviet BTRs to be unsatisfactory (soldiers had to dismount over the roof, dual gasoline engines had increased fire risk and also had reliability issues). Then again, maybe Polish army would have been reluctant to transfer military vehicles to the ZOMO police so BTRs were brought in from Soviet army stocks?
Once again, the story is good and detail excellent. I"ll be reading.
Rather cold war Poland and Czechloslovakia developed their own alternative "Skot" vehicle after they found the Soviet BTRs to be unsatisfactory (soldiers had to dismount over the roof, dual gasoline engines had increased fire risk and also had reliability issues). Then again, maybe Polish army would have been reluctant to transfer military vehicles to the ZOMO police so BTRs were brought in from Soviet army stocks?
Once again, the story is good and detail excellent. I"ll be reading.
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Allow me to put this link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhamEpisode
And yes, this website (along with some of the major timelines) has a TVTropes page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom
But behold, many spoilers ahead...
Chapter XII: Emergence of the New Cold War, 2012-2017.
The End!
Chapter XII: Emergence of the New Cold War, 2012-2017.
The Iraqis tried to forge the Sunni Arab groups together into a united front with coherent leadership, despite the sometimes divergent interests of these groups. At this point it still included Kurds, Druzes and other groups. In April 2012, they officially proclaimed a rivalling interim government in Aleppo known as the Democratic Republic of Syria. Assad subsequently bombed Aleppo with mustard gas, killing thousands. Saddam, now 75, was no bleeding heart kind of guy, but when the Aleppo government requested his aid against this onslaught, he gave it to them. On May 2nd 2012 about 150.000 Iraqi troops, spearheaded by four elite Iraqi Republican Guard divisions and Iraqi Army Special Forces units equivalent to a full division, with air support from MiG-29s, Su-24s and Su-27s as well as Mil Mi 24 helicopter gunships, crossed the border at the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal. These forces performed well and put their superior equipment to good use (Moscow had prioritized Iraq over Syria since the 1990s, providing the former with the best equipment).
Iraq effectively invaded Syria, which totally altered the dynamic of its civil war: it changed from regime vs. rebel groups dominated by Sunni Arabs to regime vs. Kurds and non-Sunni rebel groups vs. the Sunni Arab government propped up by Iraq. The latter was effectively a puppet state of Baghdad. Iraqi forces advanced along the highway towards Aleppo and blunted furious attempts by the government army to take the city. Syrian government army pincers were in fact flanked and were under threat of being cut off until President Assad ordered a retreat. Concomitant Kurdish attacks on Aleppo and Raqqa were dispersed by mere spoiling attacks by a few Republican Guard armoured brigades. With Iraqi support, the Sunni government in its provisional capital managed to take control of about two thirds of the country. The government still controlled the governorates of Latakia, Tartus, Damascus, Rif Dimashq, Quneitra, Daraa and Al-Suwayda in the west and southwest of the country.
Most of the world condemned Iraq’s invasion, but there was one exception. Turkey quietly hoped that the Sunni Arab faction in the civil war supported by Saddam would win since they feared the establishment of an independent Kurdish state carved from parts of Syria. Such a state would lay claim on ethnically Kurdish regions in Turkey, would be a safe haven for the separatist PKK and thusly fuel the Kurdish rebellion at home. The Turkish air force even bombed Kurdish positions across the border in northern Syria, effectively aiding Iraqi forces who were also struggling against the Kurds. Israel, on the other hand, ironically supported Assad’s regime, despite it being hostile to them, since they definitely didn’t want Saddam Hussein’s army directly on their border in the Golan Heights. They provided intelligence, weapons and ammunitions to the government army. Iran, a longstanding ally of Syria, provided logistical, technical and financial support as well as training and combat troops. Lebanese Hezbollah fighters backed by Iran entered frontline roles, supported by elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops and paramilitary Basij fighters. The Arab states looked away or quietly supported Assad for fear of what Saddam might do if he annexed Syria. The fear of that happening was strengthened when Iraq’s puppet regime subordinated its forces to Iraqi command. As much as pan-Arabism had been talked about in the past decades, nobody was up for it now, and certainly not if Saddam was to lead a future pan-Arab state. Moscow regarded both Syria and Iraq as important allies and was therefore caught in a bind. Assad lambasted the Russians for lacking support while the latter tried to restrain the Iraqis and prevent a wholesale annexation. At this point Saddam certainly began entertaining demented fantasies of becoming the leader of all Arabs.
Those fantasies, however, couldn’t become true because in January 2013 Saddam Hussein was diagnosed with lung cancer in an advanced stage. He bought himself access to exclusive private clinics in Switzerland for the newest treatments, in addition to regular radiation and chemotherapy. He quit smoking and drinking. Six months later he was informed by his Swiss doctors that the cancer had metastasized to his bones. His condition was terminal and that all they could do was to delay the inevitable. He was put on a regimen of two weeks on chemo and three weeks off and was given morphine for the pain. By late 2013, he had been eaten alive by the cancer and he finally died in January 2014, aged 76, after which a succession struggle erupted between his sons Uday and Qusay Hussein. Qusay was the supervisor of the Republican Guard and head of the Special Security Organization (SSO), which was part secret police, part security detail for Saddam and part umbrella group for his elite military forces. He had been thrust into these important positions because he didn’t display the erratic violence of his brother and because Uday was left with a permanent limp after an assassination attempt in 1996. Uday had been given the minor positions of chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee and of the Iraqi Football Association. Allegations levelled against him included multiple counts of rape, murder and torture, including of Iraqi Olympic athletes and the national football team after failing to perform. Despite his weak position, Uday nonetheless tried to stage a coup d’état against his brother, who had just succeeded their father as President, by bribing a bunch of Iraqi colonels. Uday had amassed a massive personal fortune with which to do so, often by stealing from victims of his father’s regime.
The coup d’état seized control of key buildings in Baghdad and controlled most of the city for several days and Uday declared martial law. Ultimately, however, the Republican Guard retook control of the city and the coup failed, forcing Uday to flee the country, taking with him everything he could carry, to evade arrest and certain torture and execution by his brother (he settled in Tunisia, where he was arrested for rape in 2015 and sentenced to eight years in prison, a sentence that the judge maintained after his appeal in 2016). His co-conspirators were less fortunate: after being subjected to all kinds of torture they were strung up with piano wires, an extremely painful way to die. The short power struggle relaxed the regime’s totalitarian control mechanisms long enough to open up a window for opponents of the regime to vent their dissatisfaction. As Qusay’s Republican Guard and SSO ran roughshod through the city to eliminate remaining supporters of Uday’s plot, they paid less attention to other opposition. Using the mass medium of internet, which wasn’t monitored as much as usually at this time, ordinary Iraqis voiced their criticisms of the government’s violence and demanded that it should stop. More specifically, they protested against authoritarianism, human rights violations, inflation, kleptocracy, Sunni domination of the government and the ongoing involvement in the Syrian Civil War. Large protests took place in the Shia south, particularly in Basra.
Despite Qusay’s violent repression, that cost the lives of thousands, protests continued and turned into an armed insurgency against him. Iran actively supported the Shia insurgency that picked up over the course of 2014 and seriously destabilized Ba’athist Iraq, particularly when the Kurds rose up too. He pulled all Iraqi forces out of Syria, although that came too late to save Assad’s regime, which just wasn’t viable anymore after the beating it got from Iraq. That was one post-mortem fait accompli that Saddam could present to the world, giving the world the finger one last time. After pulling the troops back, he regained some control but he couldn’t end the civil war which Iran was fuelling, not even after he repeated his father’s example of using chemical weapons against his own people (Saddam had bombed the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, using mustard gas and sarin). Qusay continued to use chemical weapons liberally and received international condemnation for it, which didn’t stop the largest sectarian conflict ever seen. Qusay controlled most major cities and the Sunni parts of the country, while the rest was controlled by Shia Arab and Kurdish rebels. As of early 2017 an estimated 400.000 people have died in this conflict.
The West and a resurgent, albeit somewhat democratized, USSR backed by China each had their own agendas in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts, which together formed a war zone stretching from the Levant to the Persian Gulf. China had invested in Iraq in recent years and wanted to see its investments secure by whatever regime came out on top and leaned towards the Ba’ath regime. They feared that a regime sponsored by Iran, never mind that it’d flip a longstanding Sino-Soviet proxy in the Middle East, would prioritize Teheran’s economic interests over Beijing’s. The Chinese government sold weapons and provided funds and military advisors and trainers to Qusay’s regime. Moscow more or less went along with it although the democratically elected Nemtsov (the USSR’s first parliamentary elections took place in 2010) felt uncomfortable by continuing support to what was in fact a brutal dictatorship, even with Soviet interests at stake. Western leaders, headed by President John McCain, were unanimous in their opinion that the Ba’ath regime had reached the end of its lifespan and had to make room for a democratically elected government. They were, also, however, unanimous that undue influence on Iraq by Teheran should be avoided. Due to these conflicting interests, the Iraqi Civil War is still ongoing as of 2017.
The dynamic between China and the USSR in this conflict showed how dramatically the balance of power had shifted in the 2000s. After the Sino-Soviet reconciliation in the late 1980s, Moscow and Beijing had pretty much been equals in a true partnership. The shift to Chinese dominance began as the Soviet Union became mired in the Eastern Bloc Civil Wars, starting in the late 90s. The shift became definitive when the Soviet Union’s communist regime imploded between 2005 and 2007 and underwent a civil war that lasted until 2009, turning Moscow into the junior partner in the relationship. An increasingly assertive, aggressive even, Chinese foreign policy partially replaced the Soviets’ confrontational foreign policy that had lasted until the end of the Cold War (it doesn’t have an official end date, but the 1999-2005 timeframe is regarded as the end, with debates about the actual date still continuing among historians). The main difference is that the Soviets supported anti-Western revolutionary movements worldwide – of which Ethiopia, Angola and Cuba are remaining examples – while China is primarily concerned with its regional pre-eminence in East and Southeast Asia. With greater Russian need, relations between Moscow and Beijing became more tightly knit than ever.
General Secretary Xi Jinping got more backing from Russia when Nemtsov lost support in the Duma since he couldn't deal with the post-war crime wave, corruption, economic problems and Russia’s diminished position in world politics. In 2014 he lost the State Duma elections to newcomer Alexander Lukashenko. After a military career between 1975 and 1982, Lukashenko became deputy chairman of a collective farm in 1982 and director of a state farm and construction materials plant in the Shklov district in 1985. The hard-line political climate in the Soviet Union in the late 80s/early 90s proved good for his budding political career, the seeds of which had been planted when he joined the party in 1979. He seemed to have the “correct” political opinions and in 1988 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia (a branch within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). In 1990, he was made a member of Byelorussia’s politburo at the age of 36, making him the youngest politburo member of the Byelorussian SSR. He assumed a tough anti-crime, anti-corruption stance from the get-go and was considered a dynamic figure in Minsk, the “great white hope” of the Byelorussian party’s hardliners. In 1993, he was appointed head of an anti-corruption sub-committee of Minsk’s politburo, which allowed him to collect dirt on senior party and government officials in Belarus. He combined his popularity, stemming from his youthfulness, with blackmail to become General Secretary and, therefore, de facto leader of the Byelorussian SSR in 1995.
He became close to Putin and was made a politburo member in 2002, but just as easily defected to the Russian nationalists when Putin was assassinated and Soviet communism fell. In the 2014 elections, Lukashenko won the elections by a campaign based on aggressive nationalism, Soviet nostalgia, his reputation as a crime fighter and the promise to make Russia great again. He became the authoritarian strongman many wanted and he maintained their support by indeed weakening corruption and organized crime while the economy took off (in part due to rising oil prices from the Middle Eastern conflict). Moscow took a more aggressive foreign policy stance after his election, for example by bullying the Baltic States into breaking off negotiations to enter the EU (producing major protests in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius). Russia also sought to maintain some influence over the former Warsaw Pact states, and was particularly successful in the cases of Bulgaria, Romania and Czechoslovakia. With its influence over the former two as well as friendly relations with Yugoslavia, Lukashenko has secured traditional Russian interests in the Balkans. He was less successful in Poland and Hungary, which both joined the EU despite Soviet disapproval, but refrained from joining NATO after they’d been spooked by Soviet Army and Soviet Navy exercises. A further example was Lukashenko stepping up support for Qusay Hussein in the ongoing Iraqi Civil War.
Increased tensions in Eastern Europe due to a resurgent Soviet Russia are part of a consolidation of a new bipolar dynamic after a brief power vacuum after the collapse of communism. The Cold War bipolar structure of NATO vs. Warsaw Pact was replaced by NATO vs. the Sino-Soviet bloc. This bloc has associates such as Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela and several African states formerly aligned with the Soviet Union. Whether or not Soviet foreign policy was deliberately coordinated with Chinese moves, this distraction of Western attention was certainly convenient. In 2015, the People’s Republic of China settled the Senkaku Islands Dispute (Diaoyu Islands in China). China claimed the discovery and ownership of the islands from the 14th century, while Japan had ownership of the islands from 1895 until its surrender at the end of World War II. The United States administered the islands as part of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands from 1945 until 1972, when the islands returned to Japanese control under the Okinawa Reversion Agreement between the United States and Japan. In 2014, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAAN) commissioned its first nuclear-powered super aircraft carrier named Han, the first of the eponymous Han-class, heavily drawing from the design of the Soviet Ulyanovsk-class. In her first operation, her carrier group delivered two battalions, which occupied the islands in the name of China and began construction of barracks, a radar station, anti-aircraft defences, an airstrip and a jetty that could handle small ships. Tokyo protested vociferously against what it called an annexation and Sino-Japanese relations reached their deepest low in decades, and still haven’t recovered. These tensions were emphasized by joint naval exercises between the Soviet Pacific Fleet and the PLAN in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, scaring Japan, Taiwan and Korea.
In terms of shifting foreign policy interests, China dialled down its relationship with Pakistan since that country remained unfriendly toward Afghanistan, still supporting the Taliban even though it had practically been made irrelevant. China had cultivated friendly relations with Kabul and had helped build its military because of Chinese interests in Afghan mineral riches such as lithium, crude oil, natural gas, coal, gold, iron ore, copper, lead, zinc and precious and semi-precious stones among others. After Pakistan’s Islamist oriented government couldn’t be reconciled with Kabul’s communist regime, Beijing cut Islamabad loose (and left them to the mercies of the CIA, which had labelled Pakistan a “terrorism sponsoring state”). Relations between China and India improved as a result and Xi Jinping became the first Chinese leader to visit New Delhi, negotiating economic, strategic and military cooperation. In 2012, the Beijing Agreement signed in 1989, which had led a lingering existence since the early 2000s, was transformed into the Beijing Cooperation Association: a political, economic and military organization composed of the USSR, China, Romania, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba and Venezuela. India, Burma and Laos became observers of the organization in the few years that followed. Today, the organization has become the new rival of the West.
Chapter XII: Emergence of the New Cold War, 2012-2017.
The Iraqis tried to forge the Sunni Arab groups together into a united front with coherent leadership, despite the sometimes divergent interests of these groups. At this point it still included Kurds, Druzes and other groups. In April 2012, they officially proclaimed a rivalling interim government in Aleppo known as the Democratic Republic of Syria. Assad subsequently bombed Aleppo with mustard gas, killing thousands. Saddam, now 75, was no bleeding heart kind of guy, but when the Aleppo government requested his aid against this onslaught, he gave it to them. On May 2nd 2012 about 150.000 Iraqi troops, spearheaded by four elite Iraqi Republican Guard divisions and Iraqi Army Special Forces units equivalent to a full division, with air support from MiG-29s, Su-24s and Su-27s as well as Mil Mi 24 helicopter gunships, crossed the border at the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal. These forces performed well and put their superior equipment to good use (Moscow had prioritized Iraq over Syria since the 1990s, providing the former with the best equipment).
Iraq effectively invaded Syria, which totally altered the dynamic of its civil war: it changed from regime vs. rebel groups dominated by Sunni Arabs to regime vs. Kurds and non-Sunni rebel groups vs. the Sunni Arab government propped up by Iraq. The latter was effectively a puppet state of Baghdad. Iraqi forces advanced along the highway towards Aleppo and blunted furious attempts by the government army to take the city. Syrian government army pincers were in fact flanked and were under threat of being cut off until President Assad ordered a retreat. Concomitant Kurdish attacks on Aleppo and Raqqa were dispersed by mere spoiling attacks by a few Republican Guard armoured brigades. With Iraqi support, the Sunni government in its provisional capital managed to take control of about two thirds of the country. The government still controlled the governorates of Latakia, Tartus, Damascus, Rif Dimashq, Quneitra, Daraa and Al-Suwayda in the west and southwest of the country.
Most of the world condemned Iraq’s invasion, but there was one exception. Turkey quietly hoped that the Sunni Arab faction in the civil war supported by Saddam would win since they feared the establishment of an independent Kurdish state carved from parts of Syria. Such a state would lay claim on ethnically Kurdish regions in Turkey, would be a safe haven for the separatist PKK and thusly fuel the Kurdish rebellion at home. The Turkish air force even bombed Kurdish positions across the border in northern Syria, effectively aiding Iraqi forces who were also struggling against the Kurds. Israel, on the other hand, ironically supported Assad’s regime, despite it being hostile to them, since they definitely didn’t want Saddam Hussein’s army directly on their border in the Golan Heights. They provided intelligence, weapons and ammunitions to the government army. Iran, a longstanding ally of Syria, provided logistical, technical and financial support as well as training and combat troops. Lebanese Hezbollah fighters backed by Iran entered frontline roles, supported by elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops and paramilitary Basij fighters. The Arab states looked away or quietly supported Assad for fear of what Saddam might do if he annexed Syria. The fear of that happening was strengthened when Iraq’s puppet regime subordinated its forces to Iraqi command. As much as pan-Arabism had been talked about in the past decades, nobody was up for it now, and certainly not if Saddam was to lead a future pan-Arab state. Moscow regarded both Syria and Iraq as important allies and was therefore caught in a bind. Assad lambasted the Russians for lacking support while the latter tried to restrain the Iraqis and prevent a wholesale annexation. At this point Saddam certainly began entertaining demented fantasies of becoming the leader of all Arabs.
Those fantasies, however, couldn’t become true because in January 2013 Saddam Hussein was diagnosed with lung cancer in an advanced stage. He bought himself access to exclusive private clinics in Switzerland for the newest treatments, in addition to regular radiation and chemotherapy. He quit smoking and drinking. Six months later he was informed by his Swiss doctors that the cancer had metastasized to his bones. His condition was terminal and that all they could do was to delay the inevitable. He was put on a regimen of two weeks on chemo and three weeks off and was given morphine for the pain. By late 2013, he had been eaten alive by the cancer and he finally died in January 2014, aged 76, after which a succession struggle erupted between his sons Uday and Qusay Hussein. Qusay was the supervisor of the Republican Guard and head of the Special Security Organization (SSO), which was part secret police, part security detail for Saddam and part umbrella group for his elite military forces. He had been thrust into these important positions because he didn’t display the erratic violence of his brother and because Uday was left with a permanent limp after an assassination attempt in 1996. Uday had been given the minor positions of chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee and of the Iraqi Football Association. Allegations levelled against him included multiple counts of rape, murder and torture, including of Iraqi Olympic athletes and the national football team after failing to perform. Despite his weak position, Uday nonetheless tried to stage a coup d’état against his brother, who had just succeeded their father as President, by bribing a bunch of Iraqi colonels. Uday had amassed a massive personal fortune with which to do so, often by stealing from victims of his father’s regime.
The coup d’état seized control of key buildings in Baghdad and controlled most of the city for several days and Uday declared martial law. Ultimately, however, the Republican Guard retook control of the city and the coup failed, forcing Uday to flee the country, taking with him everything he could carry, to evade arrest and certain torture and execution by his brother (he settled in Tunisia, where he was arrested for rape in 2015 and sentenced to eight years in prison, a sentence that the judge maintained after his appeal in 2016). His co-conspirators were less fortunate: after being subjected to all kinds of torture they were strung up with piano wires, an extremely painful way to die. The short power struggle relaxed the regime’s totalitarian control mechanisms long enough to open up a window for opponents of the regime to vent their dissatisfaction. As Qusay’s Republican Guard and SSO ran roughshod through the city to eliminate remaining supporters of Uday’s plot, they paid less attention to other opposition. Using the mass medium of internet, which wasn’t monitored as much as usually at this time, ordinary Iraqis voiced their criticisms of the government’s violence and demanded that it should stop. More specifically, they protested against authoritarianism, human rights violations, inflation, kleptocracy, Sunni domination of the government and the ongoing involvement in the Syrian Civil War. Large protests took place in the Shia south, particularly in Basra.
Despite Qusay’s violent repression, that cost the lives of thousands, protests continued and turned into an armed insurgency against him. Iran actively supported the Shia insurgency that picked up over the course of 2014 and seriously destabilized Ba’athist Iraq, particularly when the Kurds rose up too. He pulled all Iraqi forces out of Syria, although that came too late to save Assad’s regime, which just wasn’t viable anymore after the beating it got from Iraq. That was one post-mortem fait accompli that Saddam could present to the world, giving the world the finger one last time. After pulling the troops back, he regained some control but he couldn’t end the civil war which Iran was fuelling, not even after he repeated his father’s example of using chemical weapons against his own people (Saddam had bombed the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, using mustard gas and sarin). Qusay continued to use chemical weapons liberally and received international condemnation for it, which didn’t stop the largest sectarian conflict ever seen. Qusay controlled most major cities and the Sunni parts of the country, while the rest was controlled by Shia Arab and Kurdish rebels. As of early 2017 an estimated 400.000 people have died in this conflict.
The West and a resurgent, albeit somewhat democratized, USSR backed by China each had their own agendas in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts, which together formed a war zone stretching from the Levant to the Persian Gulf. China had invested in Iraq in recent years and wanted to see its investments secure by whatever regime came out on top and leaned towards the Ba’ath regime. They feared that a regime sponsored by Iran, never mind that it’d flip a longstanding Sino-Soviet proxy in the Middle East, would prioritize Teheran’s economic interests over Beijing’s. The Chinese government sold weapons and provided funds and military advisors and trainers to Qusay’s regime. Moscow more or less went along with it although the democratically elected Nemtsov (the USSR’s first parliamentary elections took place in 2010) felt uncomfortable by continuing support to what was in fact a brutal dictatorship, even with Soviet interests at stake. Western leaders, headed by President John McCain, were unanimous in their opinion that the Ba’ath regime had reached the end of its lifespan and had to make room for a democratically elected government. They were, also, however, unanimous that undue influence on Iraq by Teheran should be avoided. Due to these conflicting interests, the Iraqi Civil War is still ongoing as of 2017.
The dynamic between China and the USSR in this conflict showed how dramatically the balance of power had shifted in the 2000s. After the Sino-Soviet reconciliation in the late 1980s, Moscow and Beijing had pretty much been equals in a true partnership. The shift to Chinese dominance began as the Soviet Union became mired in the Eastern Bloc Civil Wars, starting in the late 90s. The shift became definitive when the Soviet Union’s communist regime imploded between 2005 and 2007 and underwent a civil war that lasted until 2009, turning Moscow into the junior partner in the relationship. An increasingly assertive, aggressive even, Chinese foreign policy partially replaced the Soviets’ confrontational foreign policy that had lasted until the end of the Cold War (it doesn’t have an official end date, but the 1999-2005 timeframe is regarded as the end, with debates about the actual date still continuing among historians). The main difference is that the Soviets supported anti-Western revolutionary movements worldwide – of which Ethiopia, Angola and Cuba are remaining examples – while China is primarily concerned with its regional pre-eminence in East and Southeast Asia. With greater Russian need, relations between Moscow and Beijing became more tightly knit than ever.
General Secretary Xi Jinping got more backing from Russia when Nemtsov lost support in the Duma since he couldn't deal with the post-war crime wave, corruption, economic problems and Russia’s diminished position in world politics. In 2014 he lost the State Duma elections to newcomer Alexander Lukashenko. After a military career between 1975 and 1982, Lukashenko became deputy chairman of a collective farm in 1982 and director of a state farm and construction materials plant in the Shklov district in 1985. The hard-line political climate in the Soviet Union in the late 80s/early 90s proved good for his budding political career, the seeds of which had been planted when he joined the party in 1979. He seemed to have the “correct” political opinions and in 1988 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia (a branch within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). In 1990, he was made a member of Byelorussia’s politburo at the age of 36, making him the youngest politburo member of the Byelorussian SSR. He assumed a tough anti-crime, anti-corruption stance from the get-go and was considered a dynamic figure in Minsk, the “great white hope” of the Byelorussian party’s hardliners. In 1993, he was appointed head of an anti-corruption sub-committee of Minsk’s politburo, which allowed him to collect dirt on senior party and government officials in Belarus. He combined his popularity, stemming from his youthfulness, with blackmail to become General Secretary and, therefore, de facto leader of the Byelorussian SSR in 1995.
He became close to Putin and was made a politburo member in 2002, but just as easily defected to the Russian nationalists when Putin was assassinated and Soviet communism fell. In the 2014 elections, Lukashenko won the elections by a campaign based on aggressive nationalism, Soviet nostalgia, his reputation as a crime fighter and the promise to make Russia great again. He became the authoritarian strongman many wanted and he maintained their support by indeed weakening corruption and organized crime while the economy took off (in part due to rising oil prices from the Middle Eastern conflict). Moscow took a more aggressive foreign policy stance after his election, for example by bullying the Baltic States into breaking off negotiations to enter the EU (producing major protests in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius). Russia also sought to maintain some influence over the former Warsaw Pact states, and was particularly successful in the cases of Bulgaria, Romania and Czechoslovakia. With its influence over the former two as well as friendly relations with Yugoslavia, Lukashenko has secured traditional Russian interests in the Balkans. He was less successful in Poland and Hungary, which both joined the EU despite Soviet disapproval, but refrained from joining NATO after they’d been spooked by Soviet Army and Soviet Navy exercises. A further example was Lukashenko stepping up support for Qusay Hussein in the ongoing Iraqi Civil War.
Increased tensions in Eastern Europe due to a resurgent Soviet Russia are part of a consolidation of a new bipolar dynamic after a brief power vacuum after the collapse of communism. The Cold War bipolar structure of NATO vs. Warsaw Pact was replaced by NATO vs. the Sino-Soviet bloc. This bloc has associates such as Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela and several African states formerly aligned with the Soviet Union. Whether or not Soviet foreign policy was deliberately coordinated with Chinese moves, this distraction of Western attention was certainly convenient. In 2015, the People’s Republic of China settled the Senkaku Islands Dispute (Diaoyu Islands in China). China claimed the discovery and ownership of the islands from the 14th century, while Japan had ownership of the islands from 1895 until its surrender at the end of World War II. The United States administered the islands as part of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands from 1945 until 1972, when the islands returned to Japanese control under the Okinawa Reversion Agreement between the United States and Japan. In 2014, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAAN) commissioned its first nuclear-powered super aircraft carrier named Han, the first of the eponymous Han-class, heavily drawing from the design of the Soviet Ulyanovsk-class. In her first operation, her carrier group delivered two battalions, which occupied the islands in the name of China and began construction of barracks, a radar station, anti-aircraft defences, an airstrip and a jetty that could handle small ships. Tokyo protested vociferously against what it called an annexation and Sino-Japanese relations reached their deepest low in decades, and still haven’t recovered. These tensions were emphasized by joint naval exercises between the Soviet Pacific Fleet and the PLAN in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, scaring Japan, Taiwan and Korea.
In terms of shifting foreign policy interests, China dialled down its relationship with Pakistan since that country remained unfriendly toward Afghanistan, still supporting the Taliban even though it had practically been made irrelevant. China had cultivated friendly relations with Kabul and had helped build its military because of Chinese interests in Afghan mineral riches such as lithium, crude oil, natural gas, coal, gold, iron ore, copper, lead, zinc and precious and semi-precious stones among others. After Pakistan’s Islamist oriented government couldn’t be reconciled with Kabul’s communist regime, Beijing cut Islamabad loose (and left them to the mercies of the CIA, which had labelled Pakistan a “terrorism sponsoring state”). Relations between China and India improved as a result and Xi Jinping became the first Chinese leader to visit New Delhi, negotiating economic, strategic and military cooperation. In 2012, the Beijing Agreement signed in 1989, which had led a lingering existence since the early 2000s, was transformed into the Beijing Cooperation Association: a political, economic and military organization composed of the USSR, China, Romania, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba and Venezuela. India, Burma and Laos became observers of the organization in the few years that followed. Today, the organization has become the new rival of the West.
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*Cross fingers*
Nuclear armed populist Brazil-Nuclear armed populist Brazil-Nuclear armed populist Brazil
I forgot to mention that indeed. What I had in mind was the Balkanization of South Africa in a Zulu state, an Afrikaner state and a rump South Africa.
Yes, IMHO that seems the most plausible outcome in a SA Civil War scenario. In mathematical terms
:Whites being massively outnumbered + Whites have nukes = Total victory by either side is impossible -> Partition
Hello Willie,
Just catching up with this timeline, which I somehow missed at the time...
It's well researched and written, as is usual for you. I think your broad stroke approach is correct: There was nothing inevitable about the collapse of the East Bloc in 1989 or the USSR in 1991. Both *could* have survived longer - and the key was a willingness to use force to maintain the empire (which Gorbachev was mostly unwilling to do). And since Poland was the fulcrum on which the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact turned in the 80's, it's the key place to start. And you rightly show just how big a price that willingness to use force could have exacted on the Soviets.
Going back to the original POD - the Soviet intervention in Poland - my own sense is that the Soviets would have faced more resistance. It would, in fact, almost certainly have led to, at minimum, a low level insurgency, perhaps closer to the civil war you have erupting in the 90's. Kania in his memoirs stated his belief that this is what would have happened, and warned Brezhnev as much at the time (Zatrzymać konfrontację, p. 91.) Certainly former Solidarity leaders I have spoken with while I lived in Poland seem fairly unanimous on this point: had the tanks rolled, they would have resisted. They were averse to the idea of simply rolling over like the Czechs had. And at that point, defection of major elements of the Polish Army would have been on the table, and then the Soviets find themselves tied down with a very expensive quagmire in Poland (their own internal estimates of how many ground forces to would have taken to secure the country sobered them). And then you wonder if something like the Able Archer could have led to something more dangerous, given the inevitable hostile reaction of the Reagan Administration (or even, as you have it, a nascent Bush Administration). The FY 1982 and 1983 DoD appropriations requests would have been trimmed back less on the Hill.
That too is a counterfectual, of course, and there's no way to really prove it. Memories are never perfect, and too often can be self-serving. But there's something I've sensed in the Polish national character, especially as it then existed, which makes me think there's real truth to it.
As for the Western reaction, I think what you posited there is a minimum baseline to work from, especially if Reagan had remained alive. The public reaction of John Paul II (and how the Polish Church would have channeled that) cannot be ignored, either. More than once he had to be dissuaded from returning to Poland, even at the risk of his life.
All that said: An enjoyable timeline.
Just catching up with this timeline, which I somehow missed at the time...
It's well researched and written, as is usual for you. I think your broad stroke approach is correct: There was nothing inevitable about the collapse of the East Bloc in 1989 or the USSR in 1991. Both *could* have survived longer - and the key was a willingness to use force to maintain the empire (which Gorbachev was mostly unwilling to do). And since Poland was the fulcrum on which the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact turned in the 80's, it's the key place to start. And you rightly show just how big a price that willingness to use force could have exacted on the Soviets.
Going back to the original POD - the Soviet intervention in Poland - my own sense is that the Soviets would have faced more resistance. It would, in fact, almost certainly have led to, at minimum, a low level insurgency, perhaps closer to the civil war you have erupting in the 90's. Kania in his memoirs stated his belief that this is what would have happened, and warned Brezhnev as much at the time (Zatrzymać konfrontację, p. 91.) Certainly former Solidarity leaders I have spoken with while I lived in Poland seem fairly unanimous on this point: had the tanks rolled, they would have resisted. They were averse to the idea of simply rolling over like the Czechs had. And at that point, defection of major elements of the Polish Army would have been on the table, and then the Soviets find themselves tied down with a very expensive quagmire in Poland (their own internal estimates of how many ground forces to would have taken to secure the country sobered them). And then you wonder if something like the Able Archer could have led to something more dangerous, given the inevitable hostile reaction of the Reagan Administration (or even, as you have it, a nascent Bush Administration). The FY 1982 and 1983 DoD appropriations requests would have been trimmed back less on the Hill.
That too is a counterfectual, of course, and there's no way to really prove it. Memories are never perfect, and too often can be self-serving. But there's something I've sensed in the Polish national character, especially as it then existed, which makes me think there's real truth to it.
As for the Western reaction, I think what you posited there is a minimum baseline to work from, especially if Reagan had remained alive. The public reaction of John Paul II (and how the Polish Church would have channeled that) cannot be ignored, either. More than once he had to be dissuaded from returning to Poland, even at the risk of his life.
All that said: An enjoyable timeline.