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United Arab Republic, Spring 1919 - The Arab Brothers War
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Jerusalem was kept in Palestine's hands, thus joining the United Arab Republic. There was much grumbling but Egypt would not bulge on the subject and the subject was dropped. Many delegates were in fact surprised at the spine Hakim was showing during the conference. They'd expected him to cave on issues in the name of compromise, but he held firm and so did his allies.
On the matter of trade, it passed without much fanfare. All were in agreement that the Arab world needed to be tied closer together economically. Several were hopeful of finding new markets for products and sources of modern imports. It would favour the larger, more developed members of the Arab League, but that was inevitable given the different scales of economy involved. If nothing else there was a sense of equality in spirit and an expectation of fairness baked into the agreements.
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Status of Levant Prisoners of War and Settlers
Roughly 250,000 Southern Italians remain in Palestine. They fled the farms they had stolen and the cities they had leveled to find themselves trapped in fortresses they considered invincible. The final defiant victory and bloody vengeance the leadership fantasized about did not happen. The end of days were not unleashed, blood did not flood the war, and the army of god shattered like the mortal men they were. There was no struggle to the last man, woman, and child, even if some soldiers didn't get the memo they'd lost. In the wake of ten years of brutal occupation were thousands of settlers that had fled Southern Italian to seek a new home in the holy lands. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a regime built by theft and spread by the sword, and now it was broken.
Which left Alexandria with the uncomfortable task of figuring out what to do with the bulk of the settler population that
didn't die or flee during the war. Most were confined to Jaffa and Acre. Their forts turned into open air prisoners manned by Egyptian soldiers. They were all disarmed and well fed. There was the question on what to do with them. They would not be keeping their land or compensated for it, as it was stolen from Palestinians in the first place. While difficult to poll, among those asked and those who weren't but expressed their opinion anyway, a majority of them wished to leave the country. They had no ties there, didn't think they'd be safe, and had committed crimes that they wished to escape from.
The military wished to pick out war criminals, officers, high ranking officials, and a select number of the worst offenders from the detained population for trial. While several impromptu trials had been held during the initial liberation of Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Acre that saw garrison commanders executed, several in the general staff felt it was not enough. Khouri himself believed some needed to be tried as a show of justice so they couldn't hide. The world had to see the damage caused by Aragon's fanaticism. It did not require keeping the Southern Italians in Palestine any longer, as only several dozen to a hundred or so individuals would be picked out.
The easiest answer was buying them a ticket to somewhere else for cheap and letting them scatter to the wind. They'd become refugees and immigrants in whatever country would take them, removing them from Palestine without much issue. The longer they were held the higher the cost of housing them in temporary quarters became, as did the risk of disease popping up or reprisal killings against them.
A surprising offer came from Granda. Their ambassador traveled from Greece down to Alexandria to present the offer as quickly as possible, as the country did not have an embassy in Egypt. They wanted to take in the settlers, all of them, and even promised to pay for their housing until transportation could be arranged. The Southern Italians would fit in among the very conservative, Christian country. The downside though would be Granada potentially recruiting those veterans into its own army and police force. It'd be cheaper than Egypt handling itself, even if Hakim felt uneasy at the prospect. Especially when it felt like he was selling people.
Meanwhile, Anthony had another, more radical proposal: arm them. The Sicilian Partisans were networking among the Southern Italians, quickly becoming an informal representative helping to organize things among the POWs. They worked to prevent surviving Crusader officers and chaplains from reasserting control over the soldiers, which helped keep the peace. The Partisans were most popular among the newest settlers and those that came from Sicily. Above all they wanted a land they could call home. The call to retake Sicily from the French Italians seemed appealing to many.
Anthony had networks to smuggle people in and out of the country. The worst offenders of the regime could die, but he'd take the rank and file, re-arm them, and ship them into Sicily. However it'd still leave a significant amount of Southern Italians left in Palestine. The Sicilian Partisans could only transport so many people at a time. Moving over two hundred thousand people was out of the question. They'd either have to remain in Palestine or leave and return to Sicily some other way, if they cared too.
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Hold military tribunals?
[ ][MIL] Yes
[ ][MIL] No
Accept Anthony's proposal? Egypt will allow select Sicilian Partisans to re-arm select soldiers and begin smuggling them into Sicily to launch an insurgency.
[ ][ANT] Yes
[ ][ANT] No
Accept Granada's offer? Accepting is mutually exclusive with either Expulsion option. Accepting is also not mutually exclusive with holding military tribunals or accepting Anthony's proposal.
[ ][GRA] Yes, Gain +1 Budget (Current Government Budget -4)
[ ][GRA] No
Expel Southern Italian settlers? Those that want to stay will be allowed to. The rest will be given a ticket to whoever will take them. Families won't be broken up. There's probably other ideas on how to handle them. Below is the write in option to do just that.
[ ][EXP] Yes
[ ][EXP] No
[ ][EXP] Write In:
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The conference ending a few days early wasn't a surprise to anyone involved. The attempted assassination was seen as a valid reason for it. Many gave their well wishes and prayed for a speedy recovery for Khouri. The conference had already covered much of the agenda by that point and it was clear to everyone involved that the lines in the sand were already drawn. That's not to say nothing was accomplished. Among those that attended, the sense of Arab solidarity had never been higher. The United Arab Republic had been formed, if only in name at the moment.
It was a powerful step in the right direction. The next would be coming up soon. Nagi had made that clear. History was with them, now was the time to strike, and end the charade that they had been forced to play. The Arab armies that had liberated Palestine and Syria did not demobilize. They began to reshuffle as frontlines were drawn metaphorically, then literally. They wanted clear supply lines to avoid getting caught in a knife fight that'd result in fighting in multiple cities at once. Nejd had already begun moving its soldiers back to Aqaba when the conference ended.
It was clear that things were in motion before the first day of the conference had begun and continued weeks after it ended. Entente ships pulled into ports on Arab, disgorging men and material from their holds as company flags were flown high, signaling the transfer of corporate security to Nejd's bloc as mercenaries. They were called advisors, there to train Nejd and Oman's military on anti-partisan tactics with a few live demonstrations. Scandinavian marines marched with Arab liaisons to put possible revolts before they could begin. Iraq received its own share of supplies, the Nordic cross and VoC logo waving proudly as their ships unloaded Indian colonial troops. Italians poured more manpower into Tunisia, bolstering the bey's monarchist forces in the region. Burgundian supplies flowed freely into Funj and Adal by train and sea, and soldiers began to muster in Khourtan, though they did not move towards the border. The newly completed North-South Line meant news from Funj reached the capital quickly.
In Maghreb the government requested that the king officially abolish the monarchy to ensure a peaceful transition of power. He refused, citing the Tunisian bey as an heir, and that a period of national reconstruction was necessary before power could be devolved from the throne. It was an argument that the king's advisors vigorously made on his behalf. The rumbles of unrest grew as the bey began to restore land of displaced nobles in Tunisia by seizing it back from the peasants who had liberated it. It won him even fewer favours when foreign companies flooded into the region to buy up land as well.
Meanwhile the investigation into Khouri's assassination attempt revealed a wider web of Islamist involvement. Salaam had unfortunately disappeared when he learned Khouri lived, shortly after his speech condemning Copts for an attack he had a hand in planning. Orders were sent back to Egypt to remove those with ties to the conspiracy from the government. Several prominent members of the faction were arrested. Many however were busy spreading contradicting lies about the situation. They claimed Copts tried to kill Khouri, they claimed he was a crypto-Christian all along and attacked by a righteous soldier, they claimed he was in the pocket of Paris, they claimed Hakim tried to kill him to seize power, and so on. Anything to muddle the waters, sent out using AENC related newspapers and radios to give legitimacy to their lies. It was a flurry of activity, one which Nadir was clamping down on and correcting as fast as the government and party could.
Spirits were high in Egypt. Victory had been achieved, the conference was seemingly a success, and a new era ushered in by the AENC was upon them. Yet Islamists did not join in the celebrations. They ranted and raved like they had lost the war, calling the work incomplete, and for the government to fulfill its promise by transitioning to an Islamic state. Their paramilitaries made their displeasure known, attacking people they disliked, seemingly at random, fueled by years of petty grievances boiling to the surface. Their workers began stealing from work, funneling military weapons from the factories to their paramilitary's hands, and attempting to take over the syndicates they were involved with by murdering their opposition. There was a wave of violence spreading across Egypt with frightening speed, and it was perpetuated by the Islamists to sow the seeds of chaos.
The Marxists and Ba'athists did not take it lying down. The Peasant Militias and Reservists fought to defend themselves, at first with fists and batons, then with guns as things escalated. With most of the army in Syria and Palestine, Nadir had to rely on them to keep order. Islamists in parliament denounced the rest of the party as foreign puppets, infidels, godless atheists, traitors, and other insults. They fled to strongholds before they could be arrested. Those that disagreed with the Islamist line quickly left the faction, the few Islamist Marxists jumping ship to save themselves.
The spark for the war however doesn't come from Nejd. In the first week of April, in a radio broadcast, President Nagi publicly denounced Nejd, Hejaz, and Oman as foreign backed regimes. He lists a litany of crimes committed by them during their cooperation with Spain and Entente. The bribes they took to sell their own people into slavery, the decadence they lived in as their people starved, the depraved conditions of displaced people in the Persian Gulf under Nejd occupation, and so much more. It would not move anyone in power in any of those states for they're easily discounted, but for the common person hearing the Savior of Mecca say it gives the claims some validity.
More than that though, Nagi outlined the United Arab Republic's historical mission: the liberation of Arabia and Africa. The UAR was unabashedly militant and international in the grand sweeping scope of its revolution. Monarchies had no place in the world. Their existence alone was an inexcusable injustice that the revolution would not tolerate. Words alone wouldn't topple their regimes though, so with the full confidence of Yemen's allies in the United Arab Republic, President Nagi declared war on Nejd, Hejaz, and Oman. Iraq declared war on the UAR a day later.
Maghreb initially declared neutrality, despite its alliance with Yemen. In response Maghreb's government forced the king to abdicate, only for his advisors and heir to declare the government dissolved, which both sides ignored at first. Fighting soon broke out as monarchists and socialists attempted to arrest each other, causing the situation to escalate. Socialists in government invited Morocco to intervene to help them seize control of the situation. At the same time Italian volunteers poured in from Sicily into Tunisia to bolster the bey's meager forces. While in Egypt the Islamists launched their uprising, shooting indiscriminately at any and everyone that crossed their path, met blow for blow by the government's forces. They declared their support for the Caliphate.
The Arab Brothers War had begun.
