Yanuban

Yanuban is a rapidly modernizing nation in southwestern Audonia on the coastal confluence of the Bay of Oduniyye and the Pukhtun Sea. It was massively urbanized in the 1980s and 90s and has a very high population for its landmass. Its executive is a president for life, but it does hold democratic elections for its legislative branch and local offices.

It is a member of many international organizations like the League of Nations, the, Red Crescent International, etc. and

It is a market economy focused on exports, under the watchful eye of Burgundie, whose companies have a massive stake in the country's economic activity. It specializes in the assembly of microprocessors and cellphones, as well as the cultivation of tropical hard woods, fishing, and rubber, which also constitutes its major exports. As of May of 2023, it is currently undergoing a coup fueled by anti-Burgoignesc sentiment.

The people of Yanuban are predominantly culturally Arab, speak Arabic, and most practice.

Golden Age
Main article: Oduniyyad Caliphate

Denoted as starting with the Muhammadian conquest of Muqadas and Al-Aqdis in 624 and ending at the fall of the Oduniyyad Caliphate in 1517, the Golden Age of Audonia had a sweeping effect on the area of modern Yanuban. When it was conquered by the Oduniyyad Caliphate in the 800s the area was generally unorganized, pagan, and had very little industry. It became the province of al-Janub, meaning the south in, because of its location in relation to the rest of the empire. It was famed for its ancient trees which were used to make boats, most notably for the invasion of Alshar and Sarpedon. Its inhabitants were also skilled horsemen how performed bravely in the Alsharite steppe against the Mongolic Khatiri and Kharani horsemen. The area was host to a holy site at the Musrumi Mosque, built on a well said to be connected to Muqadas and an academy. The locals adopted as their religion,  as their language, and became loyal citizens of the Oduniyyad Caliphate.

Bergendii contact
Main article: Bergendii Corsairs

Near the end of the Second Wave of Bladerunners several ships arrived on the eastern shore of al-Janub in 1351. These Bergendii seafarers were unlike anything most of the Janubi had seen before. They established three small kingdoms: Sante Micel, Madone, and Bethel. These Christian fiefdoms swore fealty to the ]Oduniyyad Caliphate and are notable for doing so during the times of the Crusades. Despite their good relations the kingdoms were dissolved in 1362 as local support for the Bergendii waned in light of news of Christian atrocities being committed by crusaders in northern and western Audonia. Some Bladerunners remained as advisors and treated a small but thriving community in the religiously tolerant Caliphate, but most moved on to Alshar or returned to Levantia.

Early modern era
Starting with the fall of the Oduniyyad Caliphate in 1517 and lasting until the expulsion of the Marialanii Ularien Trading Company in 1836, the early modern era in Yanuban was characterized by low-scale tribal warfare as various sheikhs jockeyed for power followed by massive levels of colonization. After the collapse, the Oduniyyad magistrate continued to rule as a local king until 1553. Following his death the sheikhs and emirs of the area fell upon each other each claiming the thrown. Their form of tribal warfare was more ceremonial than fatal but still kept the peoples from uniting when faced with western colonial efforts.

Colonization
The Ularien Trading Company first arrived in the area in 1635 and established a series of timber factories along the coast. In 1653 the Colony of Majanub was formed and the Ghafiri Protectorate was established with the al-Ghafir family. By 1657 the Ularien Trading Company had supplanted all of the other nation’s colonies in the area and helped the Ghafiris to conquer much of the southern part of the modern country. Through the the Marialanii Ularien Trading Company assumed direct control over the Ghafiri Protectorate in 1763 and as part of the Presidency Act of 1771 made the whole of its claims in the area into the Majanub Presidency.

Company rule
Main article: Marialanii Ularien Trading Company

Divided into 17 tribal states primarily under the Majanub Presidency, the modern area of Yanuban was a minor possession of the Marialanii Ularien Trading Company. This means that it was not subjected to the same level of cultural colonization and proselytizing as other parts of the Marialanii Ularien Trading Empire. The small administrative class of Levantine Protestants where happy to focus their rule in the few moderately sized cities that they built for themselves. This laissez-faire approach maintained much of the traditional values and practices of the area with the colonial administrators only getting involved in tax collection disputes.

Many Yanubanis barely knew they were even under colonial rule as the tax collecting was subcontracted out to tribal leaders so as to diminish the need for a large costly colonial government. Due to its resource potential being mostly timber-based with some fishing, and rubber cultivation, Majanub was primarily focused on supplying the hotter less densely wooded colonies in the north. The few international exports it did have were routed through the Legatation of Ankivara before being either sold in Sarpedon or forwarded to Crona and Levantia.

Late modern era
The late modern era in Yanuban officially started with the end of company rule in 1836 and lasted until the outbreak of the Second Great War in 1934. It was a generally peaceful time in which the various tribes minded their own business and the as-Samadh family emerged as the strongest political entity eventually uniting the tribes under their monarchy. The as-Samadh family ruled from 1884 until 1977.

During the late modern period the area was not engaged in international politicking as its location was not relevant and its resources were not in demand. Aside from some tribal conflicts and a war with Battganuur over fishing rights, the nation had no significant issues during this time.

Contemporary era
Like the rest of the world the contemporary era in Yanuban spanned from the outbreak of the Second Great War in 1934 through the present day. It was a time of unprecedented unrest in the country and forced modernization. It spelled the end of the traditional lifestyles of the Yanuban farmer and nomadic herder, the creation of a deep divide in the nation that spans socioeconomic class, geographical distribution, and cultural outlook.

Samadhi Civil War
To many in Audonia and Alshar, the Second Great War demonstrated the fallibility of democratized capitalism of the Occidental world. While the political climate in Audonia was more democratic than Alshar, the mainstay of most political systems was the monarchy and this was no different in the Samadh Sultanate. In the century since its independence from the Marialanii Ularien Trading Empire, now the Burgoignesc Kandahar-Kandara Trading Company, the Yanubani had turned to strong leaders and found solace in the paternalism of the state. In the 1930s and 40s a series of education reforms were undertaken and peasant farmers and nomadic herders were required to attend school at least through the 8th grade. This decidedly bourgeois policy was resented by the farmers, many of whom could only cultivate enough food to sustain themselves. It was doubly offensive to the nomads as it formed them into permanent camps for the school year, many of which became permanent as the government tried to end nomadism all together.

These peoples were happy to hear out communist and socialist thinkers who traveled with impunity from village to encampment fomenting ill will. In the 1949 election to the representative council 4 communists were voted in. The votes were suppressed and the sheikhs who had held the mostly ceremonial position were welcomed back into the council. When the results were discovered in 1953 resentment turned to violence. Farmers and herders in a number of provinces attacked their magistrates and the offices of the sheikhs. This led to a revolt in the navy, were sailors who long resented their appointed officers, captured two of the country’s 8 naval bases. The army was used to suppress these actions and ill-will towards the army and the monarchy became widespread. In this environment the Yanuban National Liberation Army-Navy (YNLAN) was formed of anti-monarchist groups.

In 1955, the Samadh Sultanate fractured into a civil war. Suspected communists, anarchists, syndicalists, and anti-monarchists were rounded up and killed. The government began a Strategic Hamlet Program forcing farmers and nomadic herders into areas they could control. The theory was that the government would be able to control the Yanuban National Liberation Army-Navy (YNLAN) by denying them access to manpower. The resulting difficulties with getting farmers to and from their disparate fields resulted in the hamlets adopting communal practices completely back firing on the programs objectives. By 1958 the hamlet program had completely failed and had become the backbone of the communist movement and YNLAN recruitment. In 1961 the Samadhi monarchy asked Burgundie for help. The Burgoignesc Department of War was happy to offload their equipment that had been made obsolete by the Second Great War and sold hundreds of millions of dollars of materiel, tanks, ships, and planes to the Samadhi government. Foreign aid only further divided the nation between the monarchy, the middle and upper classes, and the army versus the working people with a sizable contingent of the navy. The war was characterized by intense guerrilla warfare taking place entirely in the countryside leaving cities untouched. Because of the hilly and densely forested terrain in much of the country the Samadhi government used napalm and defoliants consistently. This deprived farmers of their livelihood and herders of their ranges leading to a critical food shortage and one of the worst man-made famines of the 20th century. The urban areas began importing their food from other nations and inflation skyrocketed. By 1965 the urban areas had stabilized with a steady supply of food and goods being brought in on O’Shea Container Shipping ships, but it changed the diets of the urban population drastically. In order to cut costs the Samadhi government bought grain which instead of rice, they replaced lamb with beef, and generally made publicly available food more densely caloric. Meanwhile, the cities also invested in fishing to supplement the foreign exports and a thriving industry developed. Urban industrialized fishing fleets were given dispensation to carry weapons and chase suspected communist (rural) fishermen from the country’s national waters. The monarchy’s loyal navy used the opportunity to “protect” the fishing fleets and shell insurgent positions. A method was developed by the fishermen where they would station themselves about three nautical miles further out from the naval flotillas and let the sounds of the bombardments drive the fish into their nets. The method was wildly successful but lead to extensive over-fishing of the areas in which it was practiced.

In 1967 the YNLAN was formally disbanded as their adherents were starving to death. Support collapsed and the farmers begged the government to end the war and stop the deforestation. The YNLAN sued for peace and agreed to disband and hand in their arms. Their leaders were summarily executed and the country tried to find a sense of normalcy. However, having lost 2.3 million of its countrymen and having created a deeply divided nation, normalcy in the Samadh Sultanate was not without tension.

Operation Kipling
Main article: Operation Kipling

Just as the Samadhi Civil War was ending, communist uprisings across Audonia and Alshar erupted. By the mid 1960s a third of those countries were embroiled in anti-communist operations. Following their successful model in the Samadh Sultanate, Burgundie offered to sell its old military equipment to the embattled nations and facilitate any logistical support. In 1966, it was deemed not enough and Army of Burgundie troops started pouring into both continents. The Samadh Sultanate, still strapped for cash from its own civil war agreed to allow Burgundie to build bases, airfields, and ports to support their war effort. In the early 1970s, Burgoignesc wartime logistics constituted 15% of the Sultanate’s economy. The money was largely put back into the revitalization of the countryside with massive public works projects the also rendered unemployment almost null. This led to a resentment among urban populations who wanted to invest in their own improvements. In 1977, they abolished the monarchy and established a constitutional republic with strict voting laws that intentionally excluded the rural citizens. As part of the coup they redistributed the foreign monies coming in and set about urbanizing the nation on a grand scale. Known in the countryside as the second Strategic Hamlet Program, the urbanization was nominally more successful than its predecessor. It led to new urban centers being built, a network of transportation infrastructure, and a collectivization of farming in order to avoid the issues of the first hamlet program. It also included all of the social services that the urban populations deemed necessary and lead to an improvement in the lives of those who lived there, at least on paper.

As Operation Kipling intervention dragged on, the rural populations feared losing their identity to foreign influence and a thriving nativist cultural movement came into being. Nomadic Games were hosted to oppose the westernized Olympics, increasingly extreme interpretations of were adopted, and raising children became as much about maintaining tradition as it did about preparing them for adulthood.

Zege regime
Main article: Zege

Following the conclusion of Operation Kipling and the advent of mass containerization by the Burgoignesc war effort, Audonia became a center of outsourcing. Far more developed than Alshar with much of its own infrastructure and a mature raw mineral extraction industry, Yanuban and the other Audonian nations were spared the spate of recolonization that has become common in the late 20th and early 21st century in Crona. The seaports, airports, roads, and railroads that dot and cross Audonia in general, and Yanuban in particular, were rebuilt by Burgoignesc companies in the 1980s and 90s. As part of the various peace treaties O’Shea Heavy Industries and Lansing Lines were contracted by the government of Burgundie to update and rebuild a vast network of communication and transportation infrastructure that, in Yanuban, were spearheaded by local engineers and workers. The experience was vital to a resurgence in the local economy as they switched from agricultural to heavy manufacturing. By the early 2000s they had become a massive exporter in the microprocessor business as well as in cellphone manufacturing. The GDPPC of the nation climbed from $493 to $1,502 between 1998 and 2026 and bore witness to a small but vocal middle class.

2023 Coup
Following a poor harvest season in the autumn of 2022-23, bread prices skyrocketed in the early winter food riots broke out. The Yanubi government turned to Burgundie for foreign aid in March of 2023 and was granted a large grain concession from nearby Bulkh. These grain shipments were initially rushed by starving locals and the Yanubi Gendarmerie National fired on the crowds in a number of locations killing 4 civilians and injuring 12 more across the country. Burgundie insisted that a detachment of the Umardi Askari or the Burgoignesc Foreign Legion be deployed to ensure the equitable and orderly distribution of the grain on March 3rd and the Yanubi government conceded. On March 4th two Plantoons of the Umardi Askari, and the 8th Platoon of SeaBees of the Grand Eastern Command's Expeditionary Strike Squadron Kandahar Resolve arrived and established a base of operations just outside the capital Muqadas. On March 9th, the 3rd Independent Company of Forward Air Operators, Royal Air Service of Burgundie and a platoon of the Provost Gendarmerie of the III Division Foreign Legion arrived to support the expanding mission. The situation stabilized in late March and early April, but the populace grew agitated at the rapid escalation of Burgoignesc forces close to the capital implying that the Yanubi government was not able to manage its own affairs within the country. Following remarks released on May 15th, 2023 of the Great Prince of Burgundie saying "the nations of the Middle seas region wouldn't exist without Burgundie. Burgaudonie is the gateway of civilization on that continent." protesters started to gather around the base that the Burgoignesc Foreign Legion was operating out of. They demanded that the Legionnaires leave and that the Global Burgieman leave Yanuban and leave its affairs unimpeded. The protest expanded in the first week of June leading to tense negotiations between the Yanubi and Burgoignesc Foreign Minister. After a week of failed negotiations and multiple crowd rushes of the main gate of the base, illustrating failures in the ability of the Yanubi National Gendarmerie.

Over the night of June 7th a clandestine mission was flown over the capital and a heavy anti-riot truck and a squad of the National Gendarmerie of Burgundie's Mobile Gendarmerie were dropped into the base with support from the 3rd Independent Company of Forward Air Operators. When the Yanubi protesters returned on the morning of the 8th they were immediately repulsed and dispersed by the shocking show of organization and force. The rest of the week was relatively calm around the base but numerous, smaller protests occurred throughout the capital city and other regional capitals. The National Gendarmerie of Burgundie units were preparing to demobilize on Sunday the 13th, but Saturday morning, after a day of prayer wherein imams around the country railed against Burgundie, a crowd of over 1,000 people gathered outside the base. Efforts to disperse them failed, but they were not able to approach the maingate. By noon the crowd had grown to around 2,500 people. The riot truck's water cannon was used to push the crowds back but the group continued to grow. With all eyes on the events unfolding in the quartier with the base no one noticed a small gathering of military vehicles in the rear of the parliament building. At 1304 local time the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the heads of each branch of the military and the National Gendarmerie stormed the parliament, and declared the republic dissolved. They insisted that all Burgoignesc politicians, diplomats, and military personnel leave within 72 hrs.

Over the rest of the day the remainder of the government buildings in the capital were occupied by the military, with no resistance from staff and government personnel. At 1700, the Yanubi National Gendarmerie around the military base with the Burgoignesc Foreign Legion were withdrawn, but not before the National Gendarmerie of Burgundie were ordered back within the confines of the base. The night of June 8th was very tense but no interactions occurred either between the protesters and the Burgoigniacs or the government and the Armed Forces of Yanuban.

The week of June 13th saw a flurry of activity as the military took control of more of the country and the government kept retreating and reforming. By the end of June the country had completely fallen under the control of the military and the government had fled in exile to Bulkh, where it operated out of its embassy to that nation. During this time the base with the Burgoignesc Foreign Legion was largely forgotten. It wasn't until July 1, that the junta turned its attention back to the base. They reissued the ultimatum of 72 hours to Burgoignesc politicians, diplomats, and military personnel. A coalition of regional nations: Battganuur, Bulkh, and Umardwal condemned the coup, while Pursat tacitly supported the coup saying that the country had a right to self-determination and that Burgundie was too aggressively asserting itself in the lives of Audonians.

Using its bases on Chaukhira the Navy of Burgundie's Grand Eastern Command's Rapid Deployment Group 6 established a perimeter off the southwestern coast of the country, just beyond its economic exclusion zone on July 9th. The military junta claimed that Burgundie was establishing an embargo and fanned the flames of anti-Burgoignesc sentiment in the country. No ships were stopped or searched by the Navy of Burgundie's flotilla but the Rapid Deployment Group 6 remained in a posture of high readiness in the event it needed to extricate the Legionnaires under fire. The Burgoignesc Ambassador Plenipotentiary and the junta-declared "Foreign Minister of Yanuban" met for another round of negotiations after the deadline had passed and the Burgoignesc politicians, diplomats, and military personnel had not left. The meetings dragged on for two weeks with no resolution and the populace became agitated with the pace and once again began to gather in front of the base. This time throwing rocks and trash at the perimeter walls.

On July 23rd the soldiers of the Junta joined the protesters to put pressure on Burgundie for a negotiated retreat. For 48 hrs the stand off continued until a Yanubi Sapper team arrived. Seeing the writing on the wall, the Legionnaires and Gendarmes requested permission to return fire if fired up on and fight their way to the coast. At 1700 local time they were given the green light if they could not hold the perimeter to fight to the coast to liaison with teams from Rapid Deployment Group 6. At 2105 the crowd was unleashed on the Legion base and the sappers took the distraction to position themselves near a side entrance they thought was now well guarded. The Legionnaires left the Gendarmes to use the riot truck to hold off the civilians surge until the Yanubi sappers had blown the back gate. Using the water canbom and batons the Gendarmes give enough ground to make the Yanubis feel confident. They signalled their sappers to blow the side gate at 2117. Thinking they had surprised the Burgoigniacs they were terrified when they were met by a coordinated sallying forth by the Legionnaires who gunned down the sappers and the Juntas commander who was with them. The Legionnaires called to the Navy indicating that their fight to the sea had begun. The Legionnaires swept up behind the protesters and Juntas soldiers and assaulted from the rear.