Rogue Generals: A Different Post-EDSA Uno Philippines TL

Chapter Ten: Divided Lines



MARCOS LOYALIST FORCES PUSH SOUTH TOWARDS BATANGAS AND BICOL REGION, TADIAR-ALIGNED FORCES CAPTURE BOHOL, CEBU PROVINCES, AQUINO LOYALIST FORCES SECURE WESTERN LUZON AND PALAWAN
Manila Times
February 22, 1987


Kabankalan, NEGROS – While the Philippines marks the first anniversary of the EDSA Revolution that toppled the restored dictator Ferdinand Marcos, loyalist soldiers aligned with him have pushed southwards from Manila, capturing the rest of Cavite and are pushing towards Batangas while troops loyal to Brigadier General Artemio Tadiar had not only took control of the entirety of Negros Island, but has also captured the islands of Panay, Cebu, Bohol and Masbate as naval units aligned with the controversial general has been reported to have blockaded Mindoro and the 15th Strike Wing has been spotted launching bombing sorties against pro-Marcos force holed up in Samar and Leyte. At the same time, the remaining forces loyal to current President Corazon Aquino have secured the entirety of Western Luzon, except for the provinces of Ilocos Norte and Sur, Abra, Cagayan, Batanes, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino, which have also fallen under pro-Marcos control.

In addition, former Ilocos Norte governor Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, had been freed by troops serving his father after a daring raid in which seven pro-Tadiar troops guarding him were killed, with thirteen others being forced to surrender, only to be summarily executed. The growing instability inside the Philippines has caused alarm with the rest of SE Asia, especially Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. While Vietnam’s communist government has ordered its military to be ready at a moment’s notice through its deployment of its naval vessels in the South China Sea, its ground forces are also in the middle of a war with neighboring Democratic Kampuchea, and some of its troops are on their northern border with Red China. Malaysia’s military held a snap military exercise on their eastern regions in the event that the crisis would spill into its maritime border. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s newly elected President Prabowo Subianto had given orders for the Indonesian Navy to increase its patrols.

“We are deeply worried about the growing instability within our neighbor in the north, and we also condemn the act made by the former Defense Minister of the Philippines in restoring the previous dictator,” says President-elect Subianto after being asked about the Philippine crisis. “We have just deposed our own dictator in Suharto, and to see the resurrection of the previous dictatorship in the Philippines is deeply unacceptable. We are offering our capital city as a potential spot for negotiations for a ceasefire between the three armed factions.”

The worsening situation in the Philippines has also captured the hearts and minds of the American political elite, as next year will be election year to see who would succeed President Reagan. After this year and the next year, President Reagan will no longer be eligible to run for another term, having reached the limits of his second term. It is hard to predict who would emerge as the Republican frontrunner for next year’s election, with both incumbent Vice President George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole emerging as favorites, while Democrat candidate Jesse Jackson has emerged as a surprise candidate. Already, the US embassy in Manila has seen a slight increase in young Filipinos seeking political asylum due to their staunch loyalty to President Aquino, and General Ver’s increasing autocracy as he emerges as the true ruler of the pro-Marcos faction within the Philippines, though Ferdinand Marcos by this point is reduced to a mere figurehead.

Meanwhile, elements of the Chinese communist government held discussions within the National People’s Congress as to what to do with the crisis within the Philippines. Some in the military pointed out the current conflict between Kampuchea and Vietnam and proposed to re-ignite the war against communist Vietnam, while naval officers proposed to launch an attack on one of the Spratly Island chains currently owned by Vietnam. A third party, consisting of intelligence officers from the Ministry of State Security, proposed to restore military aid to the New People’s Army in order to distract the Philippine military from their planned seizure of the rest of the Spratly Island chain owned by the Philippines. Hu Yaobang on the other hand, had advised the communist government on a wait-and-see approach to see if the political situation would worsen. Moreover, Filipino overseas workers working in Hong Kong and Macau are being urged by the British and Portuguese authorities in those islands to return to the Philippines or to seek asylum in any Consulate-General or Commission (for Commonwealth countries) if they do not wish to return to their home countries.


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INDONESIA’S FIRST FREE ELECTIONS SINCE 1965 WON BY SUBIANTO, FORMER PRESIDENT SUHARTO PLACED UNDER ARREST FOR CORRUPTION CHARGES
Jakarta Post
January 7, 1987


Jakarta, SPECIAL CAPITAL REGION – Indonesia’s first free elections since former President Suharto seized power from his predecessor Sukarno in 1965 was uneventful in that there was little time for the two candidates to spend time on their political campaign, but it looks like Prabowo Subianto is poised to win the presidency and the legal right to succeed his former boss. Subianto met his supporters and fellow campaign managers after he casted his vote in the election and while the atmosphere can be compared to a birthday party, even he is skeptical of his own chances of victory as B.J. Habibie was predicted to win the election. By the time the ballot count had ended, it appears that Subianto won with a 52.4% vote, as opposed to a 47.6% vote won by Habibie. By the time Subianto learned of his victory, he was shocked and speechless.

“I would like to congratulate B.J. Habibie for a hard-fought campaign, though I am surprised as to how I won it, since I thought my opponent was going to win,” Subianto said, though with a lighthearted tone. “At the same time, I look forward to working with my new cabinet, and to fulfill my election promise.”

Not wasting any time, Subianto had given an order for former President Suharto’s arrest on charges of corruption and incitement to riot, for his connection to the infamous anti-Chinese riots that had wracked Pekanbaru and other parts of Indonesia with significant Chinese Indonesian population. In addition, Subianto had tripled the number of troops guarding the former president in order to keep him well enough to stand trial, a bold move in comparison to the sloppy job that Filipino troops ordered by Artemio Tadiar had done in guarding the former dictator who is restored to power. However, the growing crisis in the Philippines had grabbed most of President-elect Subianto’s attention and he often found himself discussing with his military leaders on what to do when the crisis spills outside the country. So far, several hundred Filipino Muslims seeking to get away from the fighting in Mindanao have sought asylum in Indonesian territory, though refugee camps in North Sulawesi’s town of Manado, which is emerging as the new center of the refugees fleeing from the violence there. Moreover, the Indonesian military is also holding snap drills for such emergencies as its naval vessels are guarding their portion of the Spratly islands against possible Chinese aggression.

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EXCERPTS FROM THE DOCUMENTARY “FROM IRAN-CONTRA TO TADIARGATE: TWO SCANDALS EQUAL POLITICAL DEMISE”
ABC Documentary (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), released in 2016


While the anti-Sadinista rebels were being given arms to rebel against the socialist government of Nicaragua, several key players within the US government were shocked to find that one of their staunch allies in the fight against international communism had not only become a major political liability, but a national embarrassment as well. The Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos had been hit by a major political crisis when back in 1983 one of Marcos’s biggest political opponents, Benigno Aquino, was assassinated while returning home to the Philippines from his political exile in the United States. The EDSA Revolution, which was supposed to be one of the most notable non-violent revolutions in the world, had suddenly become violent with the massacre against the protesters in one area of Manila under the command of Artemio Tadiar, who was a Colonel back then. The future military dictator had also been under intense scrutiny for failing to kill the former Defense Minister, Fabian Ver, while he and several Philippine Marine Corps soldiers under his command had arrested and incarcerated President Marcos, allowing Corazon Aquino to claim the presidency. Yet within months of the Aquino administration, the shaky alliance between the Aquino administration and the controversial future military dictator had been broken by the targeted assassination of Jose Maria Sison, one of the leaders of the communist rebellion in the Philippines. The Aquino administration had rightly accused Tadiar of undermining national reconciliation in the name of fighting communism, comparing his murder of Sison to Marcos’s murder of her late husband. However, it was this deep division that allowed Fabian Ver to seize control of the Philippine government in order to restore the former dictator to power, though the “Second Marcos Dictatorship” would be shorter than the first dictatorship, primarily because of an unintentional suggestion by one of the key actors of what would become the Iran-Contra Scandal.

Back in October of 1986, Eugene Hasenfus and the Corporate Air Services HPF821 was supposed to deliver arms to anti-Sadinista rebels, labeled as Contras, but an engine trouble occurred before the plane can take off. Moreover, some of the weapons that were being shipped to the Contras had developed mechanical problems and had to be taken out. Thus, the planned shipment of weapons to the Contras had developed an unexpected problem. Fearing a potential exposure of their involvement in the Contras’ fight against the Sadinista government of Nicaragua, Hasenfus returned to the United States and was ordered to report to the CIA, where Oliver North took an interest in the Philippine situation. There, North and Hasenfus would instead deploy a dummy aircraft that contained fake humanitarian parcels to fool the Sadinistas into thinking that the aircraft was shipping weapons to the Contras, while the actual weapons would be shipped to a new client: Colonel (then-Brigadier General) Tadiar.

Officially, the Reagan administration was going to claim neutrality while attempting to mediate between the Aquino presidency and General Ver, but in secret, elements of the CIA who feared a potential leak in their dealings with both Iran and Nicaragua had decided to divert the world’s attention to the growing Philippine crisis. Some of the weapons that were supposed to be delivered to the Aquino-aligned forces were instead paradropped into Negros and Panay Islands, where Tadiar’s troops took control of them. In addition to anti-air weapons, the CIA would ‘mistakenly’ send anti-tank and heavy artillery pieces to Tadiar’s troops while claiming that they have dropped off at a wrong location. Even so, there were some shipment of weapons that were indeed arriving at the hands of the pro-Aquino forces, but General Ver’s troops also got their hands on it, courtesy of either pro-Aquino or pro-Tadiar troops who surrendered to them and were summarily executed after their weapons were confiscated. Even worse, the CIA now began to plan an extension of Operation: Condor, now labeled Operation: Falcon, to mainly focus on SE Asia. This was the CIA’s first attempt at extending their operation into SE Asia since 1965, when it played a role in the overthrow of former President Sukarno. Operation: Falcon also gained support from Malaysia under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (who was interested in gaining American support in the Spratly Islands dispute with China) and Indonesia under President Prabowo Subianto (who was also interested in gaining American support for the same reason as PM Mohamad of Malaysia, but with an additional reason as well, and that was to gain American assistance in trying former President Suharto on charges of corruption). However, the focus was covert American support for Brigadier General Tadiar since they saw him as a better candidate to stabilize the Philippines than Corazon Aquino.

The discovery of the operation was not discovered until late September of 1987 when a whistleblower had delivered the documents that Oliver North had forgot to destroy or alter to an undercover reporter working for the Swiss media in Geneva, Switzerland. There, the whistleblower revealed that under North’s orders, in addition to the 1,900 assault rifles that were to be delivered to Tadiar’s forces, but several hundred kilograms of mustard gas and depleted uranium were to be shipped to his forces as well. To compound on the discovery and exposure of the scandal, the whistleblower also revealed that leading military figures also went to the infamous School of the Americas to learn advanced interrogation techniques that will sadly be applied to their captives. Former Majors Saulito Aromin and Edgardo Doromal were among the graduates of the School of the Americas, as was Tadiar himself, before the UN had imposed a travel ban on the three coup leaders in 1990 (though the ban was applied only three months after Tadiar traveled to Chile in order to restore the Philippines’ diplomatic relations with the Pinochet regime). Moreover, the three coup leaders then taught what they have learned to their junior subordinates in all branches of the Philippine military and the Philippine Constabulary, as well as the National Bureau of Investigation. By far the worst legacy of the now dubbed “Iran-Contra-Tadiargate” scandal was the Tadiar dictatorship’s establishment of interrogation camps where captured communist fighters and student activists opposing the military junta were incarcerated and interrogated. The Tadiar dictatorship’s interrogation camps looked more like the bastard child of a Japanese POW camp and Auschwitz rolled into one. The Tadiargate Scandal was discovered in October of 1988 when a recorded conversation between Major Aromin and North was leaked by a different whistleblower.

Aromin: President Aquino is a pathetic excuse of a leader. It is sad that she was not killed back in 1983.

North: (laughs nervously) We cannot win them all, Major. What is important is that the right candidate to lead the Philippines is installed. The Americas have a communist problem, and we are here to provide the solutions. I think our colleagues in Chile will be happy to assist you upon our recommendation, and that we can be the intermediaries between the two governments.

Aromin: About that. (pauses) We must travel to Chile in order to restore our relationship with General Pinochet. Unfortunately, your predecessors had discouraged Pinochet from visiting us here.

North: (grumbles) Do not remind me, Major. Even though it was mainly Ronnie’s fault, you cannot blame him for having to resort to that method. However, I understand what the old General had to go through with that incident in Fiji.

Aromin: I can understand, Oliver. Perhaps we can be of great assistance in getting the Cowboy elected. You have idiots vying to succeed ‘Ronnie’, and there is no way I will negotiate with that damned Red Jackson.

North: Do not worry about that tidbit, Saul. We will work our magic to ensure that Jesse Jackson does not become president. America is not yet ready for a black president anyways. (laughs)


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“Although the Iran-Contra Scandal had been a minor affair, it was merely a symptom of a larger political disease found in the American political elite. It was the notorious Tadiargate that sunk not only the presidential ambitions of George H.W. Bush, but also the political career of Ronald Reagan. Though Reagan narrowly avoided impeachment by cooperating with the judges and law enforcement on the whole scandal, and the documents and tapes given by former President Reagan had shocked the nation. In one of the tapes given to the Supreme Court, there was that conversation recorded between former Major (now Colonel) Saulito Aromin, who is currently facing three charges of crimes against humanity and violations of military law with regards to the treatment of leftist militants, and Oliver North, who is facing charges of giving false testimony, perjury and failing to disclose his work with a foreign power, even if it was an ally and former colony. With Tadiargate becoming the dominant topic of the 1988 US Presidential election, it was down to Bob Dole who is on the Republican ticket with Jack Kemp as his running mate, and Jesse Jackson representing the Democratic ticket with Richard “Dick” Gephardt as his running mate. Jesse Jackson campaigned on a stronger platform of accountability, and his courting of the Filipino American community throughout the United States, many of whom have family ties to recent arrivals fleeing the Tadiar military dictatorship. In addition, Dukakis fared poorly with the same Filipino American community by mixing up the names of the coup leaders during one presidential debate in July of 1988, naming Edgardo Doromal as the coup leader by mistake instead of Artemio Tadiar.” Alex Jones, from the documentary “Corporate America’s Political Dirty Little Secret”, sponsored by “The American Cause”.

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“One of the biggest mistakes Al Gore did while he was in the Super Tuesday primaries was mentioning Willie Horton and using him as a battering ram in his attacks on Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis. That move resulted in Gore being given the negative spotlight and resulted in his huge loss in the Super Tuesday primaries, with the votes that would have gone to him had instead being split among Dukakis and Jackson. Though no one had said it, Gore’s move eventually resulted in the Democrats fielding a candidate that half of the country is hesitant to vote for, and in the end, it was Bob Dole who became the next President of the United States. Yet at the same time, Jackson’s surprisingly strong performance in his campaign and his errors were considered as he learned from his previous mistakes. The 1992 Democratic primaries would pit Jackson against two other Southern candidates in Bill Clinton and Bob Kerrey. However, it was a tougher challenge for Jackson since both Clinton and Kerrey were courted by the Southern Democrats to stop the election of Jesse Jackson, even if they had to put up with Bob Dole once again. Unfortunately, the Rainbow Coalition that Jesse Jackson had built over the years would eventually sink the presidential pretensions of the two Southern candidates, as the younger generation of the Rainbow Coalition had grown up and became more active in their communities. In addition, the Filipino American community became a vocal opposition to the Republican Party because it was under a Republican administration that presided over the downfall of both Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino, and its replacement with the Tadiar military dictatorship, as well as the infamous Tadiargate.” Isaac Feldman, from the documentary “A Cinderella Run into the Presidency: How Jesse Jackson Became America’s First Black President”.

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Excerpts from “From Glasnost to Dissolution: The Violent Last Years of the Soviet Union”
By: Viktor Ivanenko
Molodaya Gvardiya, published 2012

Chapter Six: The Afghan Quagmire

Comrade Gorbachev was not a happy person, even after Boris Nikolayevich’s sudden appearance during the last Party meeting that he attended, and to show up at said party meeting while under the influence of alcohol and arriving late on top of that. The result was that Oleg Baklanov emerged as Yeltsin’s replacement, and he was the opposite of the drunk fool. I was comfortable with Baklanov since he was hardly the type of man to experiment with radical solutions to the growing crisis within the Union. I did not realize that Baklanov was recommended to Comrade Gorbachev by Gennady Yanayev, and the way he promoted Baklanov was nothing short of a coercion. According to Comrade Yanayev, Baklanov was the man who could temper Comrade Gorbachev’s ambitions for glasnost and perestroika. Already, the other Party members were not happy that Gorbachev was preparing to dissolve the Warsaw Pact with the planned dissolution of NATO. I knew that no one in the West was willing to dissolve NATO if the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, for it will give the Americans an excuse to expand the borders of NATO to include potential members from among the Warsaw Pact.

Back in April of 1986, we received a report from one of the nuclear engineers about a faulty section within Reactor 4 in Chernobyl. Though one of the engineers insisted that there was no reason for the reactor to blow up, the head engineer decided to order the shutdown of the reactor in order to assess it further for potential problems. He was right of course: the head engineer reported to Comrade Gorbachev in his detailed report, now dubbed the Mashenko Papers that became famous in the scientific community, highlighting the issues regarding nuclear reactors. Many nuclear scientists have given lectures on the issues that faced the American nuclear powerplant that blew up, called Three Mile Island accident and how we took steps to address the problems facing our own reactors. Starting in May, Aleksandr Mashenko recommended to Comrade Gorbachev that his team should assess all the nuclear power plants throughout the entire Union, even in faraway places like Kazakhstan where the radiation was still present, thanks to our nuclear tests. However, much of our ‘vassals’ in the Warsaw Pact hold no love for us, and so they were looking for an excuse to revolt against our ‘protection’. I was summoned by Comrades Gorbachev and Baklanov to his office in Moscow just one ordinary afternoon in the summer of 1986, but I had no idea what the meeting will be about. Yet when I arrived inside Comrade Gorbachev’s office, there were two additional guests from the Red Army who were not at all happy with what transpired inside his office. The situation inside was a little tense, but I had no idea as to why the Red Army officers are inside. For some reason, they do not seem to be happy with me.

“Comrade Ivanenko,” Dmitry Yazov said bluntly. His angry glare was evident of what I am expecting to hear from the two officers. “It seems to us that you’ve made some rather unsavory comments about one of the officers who serves our union. Care to explain why you are making unfounded accusations against Comrade General Lebed?”

“Who told you that!?” I asked angrily. Apparently, no one apart from me and Comrade Gorbachev knew about Lebed and his exemplary record in Afghanistan.

“Do you have anything to say about yourself?” Yazov asked again, but I glared back at him.

“As I explained to Comrade Gorbachev, Comrade Lebed is an excellent officer. He has demonstrated such vigour in his service in Afghanistan,” I tried to explain, but Yazov slammed his fist into Comrade Gorbachev’s desk.


“I do not believe you for a second, Comrade General,” Yazov replied in an angry tone he used earlier. “You must be the worst liar in the world for me to even believe your bullshit.”

I snorted. “Bullshit!? Let me explain things clearly for your idiotic brains to comprehend: the war in Afghanistan is in a quagmire, without any sign of victory. Our troops are coming back in body bags, and we are not doing anything to stop the flow of supplies from the Americans to the Mujahideen through Pakistan! If I were you, I’d give an order to bomb the supply routes in Pakistan to slow them down!”

“If we did that, then we’d give the Americans an excuse to ship in more weapons and we’d see more of their naval activity in the Persian Gulf. Also, if you are going to use the Ho Chi Minh trail as an example, then it would be a terrible one, as it also destabilized Laos and Cambodia. We do not need to destabilize Pakistan, just so the Americans can cause more trouble for us. Moreover, Pakistan is also a Chinese ally, and the last thing we need is for the PLA to cause chaos in the Soviet Far East,” Yazov explained. He also sighed in frustration, to my surprise. “You are right in one area though: we have to stop the supplies from reaching the Mujahideen. Perhaps if we could send more of the Airborne and Spetsnaz troops to cover the ground down there, as well as the retraining of the Afghan Army, we might stand a better chance.”

“Perhaps I could be wrong about my assessment on General Lebed, but if I were you, I’d use him more for those dangerous missions that require his expertise. He is popular with some of the troops down there after all,” I suggested, but Comrade Yazov did not like how I was cheeky about it.

Luckily, it was Comrade Gorbachev who cleared his throat to interrupt us. “Comrade Yazov raises a fine point, Comrade Ivanenko. You need to stop making it a habit to casually badmouth Soviet officers.” He turned to Comrade Yazov as well. “And you need to listen to Comrade Ivanenko’s counsel. The supply route must be interrupted so the Mujahideen cannot supply their militias anymore.

“How about deploying more of our bombers? Carpet bombing some of the hideouts might be doable, but they have those American Stinger missiles. Perhaps we will need to be as mobile as the Mujahids, so tanks might not be feasible against them,” I asked back, but Yazov laughed at me.

“Really? Forego the tanks? With what?” he asked sarcastically.

“Artillery launchers might be good, though helicopters are crucial in the art of rapid deployment. Perhaps you need to tell the rest of the General Staff to get the hell off their asses and start strategizing.” I saluted to Yazov and marched out.

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SOVIET FORCES RISK DRAGGING PAKISTAN INTO WAR IN AFGHANISTAN WITH HEAVY BOMBING RAID IN JAJI
Associated Press
May 27, 1987


Paktia Province, AFGHANISTAN – In one of the major offensives against the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, 1,500 Soviet paratroopers and 300 special forces soldiers, along with several Tupolev Tu-160 bombers based in Andijan, Uzbek SSR, had attacked the Afghan town of Jaji, taking the Mujahideen fighters by surprise and inflicting massive casualties before the local Afghan military units suffered heavy casualties, leaving the Soviet forces alone in the field. At the same time, several Mujahideen bases were struck by Soviet bombers, resulting in significant casualties. Among the fallen Mujahideen fighters, 60 Arab volunteers along with 78 Afghan rebels were killed in the bombing campaign, including a young Arab guerrilla leader by the name of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden’s death had resulted in Abdullah Yusuf Azzam taking command of the surviving Arab volunteer group currently fighting the Soviets. The Soviet push had resulted in its reinforcement of the Siege of Khost, which is currently under a heavy Soviet blockade as Pakistani border troops are alerted to the presence of Soviet forces close to their border.


Soviet bombers also bombed other roads coming from Pakistan, especially the town of Torkham, where another supply route was used to ferry in weapons and ammunition to the Mujahideen. Various Sunni and Shia militias have also been reported to have ambushed Soviet troops in cities like Maymana and Dawlat Abad, though most militias had also suffered casualties as well. However, Soviet casualties continue to pile up as many more soldiers are arriving back in the USSR in body bags, as well as in transport planes carrying wounded soldiers. Pakistani authorities have also ordered their armies to mobilize at a moment’s notice, and even the Chinese military had been alerted to Soviet military activity in the Soviet Tajik town of Murghab. A minor Soviet officer, Alexander Lebed, was recalled from funeral duty and was assigned as the commander of the 106th Guards Airborne Division. Additional units of the 106th Guards Airborne Division were deployed to Afghanistan, with General Lebed leading the attack on the Mujahideen. Unlike the other Soviet divisions who used conventional methods when dealing with resistance fighters, Lebed had opted to use unconventional methods to isolate and destroy the resistance cells throughout the country.


“We are worried about an increase in Soviet military activity within Afghanistan, and the effects of a possible Soviet victory in even one battle might result in more aggressive activity on their part,” comments National Security Agency adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. “It is more imperative that the United States secures more weapons to the Afghan resistance forces there, in order to make the Soviet occupation costly. The Soviet Army is built on overwhelming the enemy forces and making a dent in their strategy could come a long way.”


Soviet Air Force bombers and fighters have been deployed a lot more often in recent months than the last few years since they first intervened in Afghanistan. During the fall of 1986, approximately 21 Tu-160 and 33 Tu-22M bombers were used for carpet bombing missions throughout Afghanistan, often resulting in the massive civilian casualties and at one point one bomber had accidentally bombed the Pakistani border town of Chaman in November of 1986, resulting in Pakistan’s government filing a diplomatic protest at the UN. The Soviet government had no official comment about the Chaman Bombing Incident, but many Soviet military officials accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye to the supply routes being used by the Mujahideen to transport weapons into their bases. Most importantly, the Soviets became more reliant on massive air power to supplement their ground forces in the fight against Afghan resistance movements.



A Soviet Tu-160 "Blackjack" heavy bomber flies during one of the bombing sorties over the skies of Afghanistan.

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ELITE SOVIET DIVISION MUTINIES DURING SVERDLOVSK PROTEST, FAMOUS OFFICER FROM AFGHAN WAR DISOBEYS ORDER TO FIRE ON PROTESTERS AND JOINS THEM INSTEAD
Melbourne Observer
June 2, 1990


Sverdlovsk, RUSSIAN SFSR – The Soviet Union received the biggest shock of its existence when the famous 106th Guards Airborne Division who were known for their contribution to two of the only Soviet victories of the Soviet-Afghan War in Jaji and the Siege of Khost, led by famous war hero General Alexander Lebed, refused to order his troops to fire on the peaceful protesters. This contrasted with General Pavel Grachev’s eagerness to use lethal force in the suppression of protests throughout the USSR. The Sverdlovsk Protests began with the injured Afghan War veterans protesting the Soviet government’s ineptitude to the handling of the protests in the Caucasus region, as well as the growing opposition from among the Soviet hardliners to the reforms that Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to implement. This was followed by civilian protesters who demanded more freedoms and rights before riot police were deployed to stop the protests from continuing. Finally, the Communist Party apparatchiks had issued an order to the KGB to arrest disgraced former Soviet politician turned factory owner Boris Yeltsin for profiteering, though the true nature of his crime was never revealed.

“I can only think of one reason why the buffoons in the Kremlin would issue an asinine order to arrest Boris Nikolayevich!” shouts one protester while accompanied by OMON police officers after being arrested. “Because he tried to give us a livelihood when the apparatchiks are too busy dunking their heads into the sand to think about the crisis within this country!”

Alexander Lebed’s reputation might have taken a hit as a result of the sudden insubordination, though the real reason for his hesitance to use lethal force was because it is the 28th anniversary of the Novocherkassk Massacre, in which several civilians were killed by Soviet security forces. In addition, Lebed had witnessed the massacre as a boy while watching from a top of the tree, which played into his hesitance to use brute force until it was the last resort, by which he would impose his will upon the two opposing sides. It was this kind of hesitation that would result in his trouble with the Soviet top brass. At the same time, Lebed would secretly enter negotiations for a possible inter-officer alliance with other generals like Seyran Ohanyan, Viktor Nazarenko, and Viktor Ivanenko, who represented the lower levels of the Soviet KGB. However, the mutiny and defection of the 106th Guards Airborne Division would electrify the protesters in Sverdlovsk and encourage more mutinies and defections against the Soviet government.

“It would be an insult to not only my own consciousness to kill innocent civilians who are disappointed by our government’s ineptitude, but an insult to many of our comrades and patriots who gave their lives for the defense of the Motherland. I know that I have reached the point of no return, but if we do not take the courage to stand up for what we believe in, then God himself shall judge us on Judgment Day!” General Lebed says while addressing the Sverdlovsk crowds on top of a T-80 tank that was deployed. “The Soviet Union may survive, or we may kill it. However, in its place, a reborn Russian nation shall redeem itself in the eyes of its people, and in the eyes of God, and the victims of communist crimes. This, I swear, upon the graves of the people whose lives were taken for no good reason. This city was notorious for the deaths of the last Russian tsar and his family. Now it shall become the tomb that holds the Soviet Union!”

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“Our Armenian brothers in Christ have helped us against the Muslim invasion of our lands at the Battle of Kosovo back in 1389 by defecting from the enemy and joining our cause. We have never been able to repay the debt we owed to them, until now. We will now repay our Armenian brothers in Christ by helping them deal with the same Muslim hordes that once sought our subjugation by the sword of Islam, and only by defeating this threat can we consider our blood debt to the Armenians repaid. This, my Serbian brothers-in-arms, is an opportunity to not only defend the holy lands of our Christian brothers, but an opportunity to fight so one day we can return to our Holy Mother Serbia and retake it from the clutches of Serbia’s enemies: the communists, the Albanians, the Bosniaks and the Croats. This, we shall accomplish with such vigour!” – From Vuk Draskovic’s Volgograd Speech (June 28, 1991) made after his followers in the Serbian Renewal Movement had formed the first Serbian volunteer regiment (Chetniks) in the Second Russian Civil War to fight alongside Armenian fedayi units in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.

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Below: the map of the Philippines as of March of 1987 (Yellow denotes Aquino-aligned forces, Light Blue denotes Marcos/Ver-aligned forces, Green denotes MNLF/MILF separatists, Dark Blue denotes Tadiar-aligned forces)

Jesse Jackson eventually becomes President in 1992, since it is already said that Bob Dole would win in 1988. Also, you have a stronger Rainbow Coalition gunning for Jackson because of the presence of a more vocal Filipino American community who would consist of political refugees fleeing from Tadiar’s dictatorship.

Strange proposals might have also been made, especially white phosphate bombs and mustard gas, though it might also go the Iraq route where it can be used as justification for invasion, but thankfully it is shot down.

The main key here in the Iran-Contra scandal ITTL here is that the guy who got captured by Nicaraguan troops IOTL didn’t get captured this time around, but we might not forget about Nicaragua just yet. Also, we may also expect a nastier response to the Zapatista rebellion, but if it happens during a Jackson presidency, he may or may not react to it much, but it will depend on how the rebellion may break out this time around.

So we have the list of presidents so far:
1988-1992: Bob Dole (R)
1992-1996: Jesse Jackson (D)
1996-2000: Jack Kemp (R)

Not exactly, you have Abdullah Yusuf Azzam becoming the leader of what would become Al-Qaeda, though I'm not sure how will he become effective, as opposed to Bin Laden. Yes, the Soviets still lose the Soviet-Afghan War, though the Afghan resistance's victory will be even more costly. It is most likely that Russia would be targeted by Al-Qaeda more than the West, since there is also the First Nagorno-Karabakh War as a factor as well. However, Hezbollah and other Shia militias may also be fighting in the FNKW as well,

Yes, Kemp's victory would be related to the civil war in Russia, and possibly China as well. You may also see Pakistan becoming more openly involved in any future attacks on Russia. This in turn, would deepen Russia's relations with India a lot more. The 9-11 attacks may or may not happen, but security in airports would have been beefed up a lot earlier, as was hinted by the Aum Shinrikyo's terrorist attacks against China.

It might still come into play, though with different actors. Or alternatively, it might have a different terror group planning such a similar operation to it.

Yep, though it could also be possible that the OTL leader of Abu Sayaaf was also killed against the Soviets, or he could have survived.

That is one of the reasons why Tadiar moved the capital to Kabankalan: it is also close to where the MNLF and MILF are fighting, so basically he is forced to pay attention to the situation in Mindanao more than any other OTL Filipino politician.

Add keep in mind that we will also have another possible update regarding Filipino celebrities.

Chapter Twelve: A Flock of Eagles


Wikipedia Article:

Burbulis-Konayev Agreement

In August of 1990, the delegates representing the Kazakh SSR, Dinmukhamed Konayev, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and former Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR, Bayken Ashimov, met the delegates representing the Russian provisional government: Anatoly Sobchak, Aleksander Rutskoy, and Gennady Burbulis, to discuss the future of the Soviet Central Asian Republics. However, the agreement was mainly focused on the Kazakh SSR, which was envisioned to be kept inside the newly proposed creation of the Commonwealth of Sovereign States, an entity that will legally replace the USSR with a looser federation, centered in Sverdlovsk (now Isetgrad, Yekaterinburg Oblast). Another agreement between the Russian provisional government and the delegates from the Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and Tajik SSRs, was also proposed. However, by March of 1991, as the Second Russian Civil War worsened, the Central Asian SSRs opted to remain loyal to the Soviet government in Moscow. By the time, the Second Russian Civil War ended in October of 1995, all five Central Asian SSRs have become separate nations. Eventually, the agreement was sadly rejected by both sides, as the expulsion of the Russian population of the other four Central Asian republics was accomplished in Operation: Batyr.


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MASSACRE IN ALMA-ATA OCCURRED AS KAZAKHS PROTEST DISMISSIAL OF ETHNIC KAZAKH AND REPLACEMENT BY ETHNIC RUSSIAN AS FIRST SECRETARY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF KAZAKH SSR
Sydney Herald
December 20, 1986


Alma-Ata, KAZAKH SSR – Approximately 200 civilians were killed by security forces yesterday, as Kazakhs continue to protest Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s dismissal of Dinmukhamed Konayev as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and his replacement by Gennady Kolbin, a non-Kazakh. Although the protest was peaceful, the response of the local authorities was harsh: security forces used lethal force to suppress the protests, which Soviet news agency TASS claimed was ‘incited by nationalist agitators seeking to destabilize the Union’.

“Premier Gorbachev is a disaster waiting to happen, and the dismissal of Comrade Konayev as our First Secretary and his replacement by a non-Kazakh is a slap in the face of every decent Kazakh who worked hard to preserve this great Union,” says student activist and current army soldier Kayra Ryskulbekov. “If the Soviets think that they can brush this aside, then they are mistaken. If the Soviet government do not treat the Central Asians with the respect they deserve, then it may be time to declare independence.”

In response to the heavy-handed suppression of the protesters, many students throughout universities and colleges within the Kazakh SSR have resorted to hunger strikes to protest the brutal suppression. However, the Soviet authorities there pressured the universities and colleges to coerce the protesters to stop with the hunger strike, lest they be expelled for unsanctioned political activities. Not wanting to wait for the Soviet OMON security troops to physically eject the hunger strikers from campus grounds, thousands of Kazakh students opted to walk out of their campuses. The hunger strike from the Kazakhs had also resulted in a solidarity protest among the students throughout the Kyrgyz and Uzbek SSRs. Nuritdin Mukhitdinov, unexpectedly, supported the solidarity protests the Uzbek students held throughout the Uzbek SSRs, highlighting Soviet insensitivities towards the Central Asian population.

“I am not surprised to hear that many of our countrymen had chosen to stand alongside our Kazakh brothers against the idiotic decision of Comrade Gorbachev to replace Comrade Konayev as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR. However, I would advise the students to conduct their protests in a peaceful manner,” says Mukhitdinov from his apartment suite in Tashkent.


Soviet internal security officers are seen attempting to suppress the riots in Alma-Ata, in response to the protests being held because of Dinmukhamed Konayev's dismissal by Premier Gorbachev.

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INCUMBENT VP BUSH DROPS OUT OF REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES, CITING TADIARGATE, IRAN-CONTRA SCANDAL AS REASON
Los Angeles Times
June 15, 1988


Los Angeles, CALIFORNIA – In a shocking revelation that junior aides of the Central Intelligence Agency had conspired with Oliver North to divert military aid from the anti-communist Contras of Nicaragua to the controversial mastermind of the EDSA massacre that resulted in the violent overthrow of the former/restored dictator of the Philippines, George H.W. Bush today had announced his withdrawal from his candidacy as possible President of the United States. The scandal, known today as ‘Tadiargate’, was a political blunder in which the incumbent Vice President was implicated in the plot to not only subvert the Filipino administration of Corazon Aquino, but to set up Artemio Tadiar to become the new strongman in power in the Philippines. In return, the emerging Council for National Sovereignty, the formal name of the emerging Philippine military junta, had offered their assistance to prevent the rise of Democratic Party presidential nominee Jesse Jackson, from taking place, in order to ensure another Republican victory.

“It is with my great regret that I wish to withdraw my name from the Presidency. I know that the recent political events have distracted me from fulfilling my wish to succeed President Reagan,” Vice President Bush said with tears in his eyes. “With the looming impeachment coming for our administration, I felt that it would be better for our administration to focus on that before the elections commence.”

In addition, the whistleblowers’ revelation that the Reagan administration had been negotiating with the Iranian clerical regime in the release of the American hostages caught by the Lebanese Hezbollah in exchange for weapons and ammunition, through the usage of Israel as their intermediary, was exposed on live television. By far the worst part of the scandal was the leaked conversation in the Tadiargate tapes between Oliver North and Major Saulito Aromin, where the latter was making a joke about stopping Jesse Jackson from being elected as the next President of the United States.



Incumbent Vice President George H. W. Bush addresses the media upon the revelation of the infamous pair of scandals, the Iran-Contra Scandal and Tadiargate.

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Excerpts from “A Cinderella Run into the Presidency: How Jesse Jackson Became America’s First Black President”
By: Isaac Feldman
CBS Documentaries


The Tadiargate scandal that exposed the Republican plan to stop Jesse Jackson from becoming President did not stop Bob Dole from seizing the Presidency in 1988, but Jesse Jackson would learn the tough lessons and apply them more vigorously in his 1992 Presidential campaign. The Democrats learned that the Republican Party’s biggest Achilles’ Heel was their response to political scandals, which was evident by the revelation of both the Iran-Contra Scandal and Tadiargate. The fact that Oliver North was conspiring with one of the top leaders of Brigadier General Artemio Tadiar in Major Saulito Aromin was the leading factor in his arrest for sedition and conspiracy to interfere in an American Presidential Election on behalf of a foreign nation (even if that foreign nation was an American ally and former colony to boot). In the end, it was a tight race for the Republican Presidential ticket between Bob Dole and Pat Robertson that resulted in the narrow win for Dole. However, the selection of the vice president was tricky and controversial too, since the selection of Elizabeth Dole was considered by her husband, but other Republican politicians feared the party being concentrated in the hands of a single family. Eventually, Elizabeth Dole was awarded with the job in her husband’s administration as Secretary of State, the first woman to hold such a position within the United States. In the end, Thad Cochran would be selected as the Vice-Presidential running mate for Bob Dole. On the Democratic side, Jesse Jackson secured the Presidential ticket for the Democrats, with Dick Gephardt as his running mate. However, in 1992 Jackson would change his VP running mate from Gephardt to Jerry Brown as the new VP running mate.

Bob Dole’s first act as president was to start up with the improvement of America’s rail system in an unprecedented manner, with $37,000,000 in investing with Amtrak on rail maintenance, as well as the manufacturing of new rolling stock, passenger cars of all kinds and the production of new rail lines. In March of 1988, President Dole traveled to Canada for a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, to secure an agreement between the two countries in expanding the existing railway networks from the American border towns to their Canadian counterparts. At that time, the Canadian Via Rail company was just starting, and they have struggled to keep up with the increasing costs of the railway. Thus, the Canadian American Railway Collaboration Agreement was signed, allowing American railroad companies to buy up to 45% of the shares of Canadian railroad companies. The agreement was highly controversial with some of the Canadian politicians, as they feared total economic domination by the US due to the growing American financial colonization of Canada’s infrastructure. President Dole tried to negotiate a similar agreement with the Mexican government, but failed to secure one agreement, due to the growing instability within the Mexican state. Ironically, it was Jackson who would build on his opponent’s successful railroad ambitions to lay out an ambitious plan to build a Pan-American railway network from Anchorage, Alaska to the tip of South America, with multiple routes within Mexico, Central America and South America. However, two events would derail the planned project: the shooting of the Pan-Am Flight 234 from Miami to Panama City by Nicaraguan troops (their target was the Corporate Air Services HPF397 that was delivering humanitarian goods to Nicaragua due to Hurricane Joan), and the Zapatista rebellion of 1994, in which CIA leftovers from the Dole administration had smuggled Filipino and Chilean mercenaries into the Mexican province of Oaxaca on the request of the Mexican government in their fight against the Zapatistas.

The shooting down of those two aircraft was controversial, since many conspiracy theorists believe that the two aircraft were intentionally placed in harm’s way in order to create a pretext for the United States to invade Nicaragua, which they predictably did in September of 1988. In addition to increased military aid to the Contras, the Dole administration would begin to deploy the 11th and 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit to invade the west coast of Nicaragua, while the 22nd and 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit would invade the Nicaraguan east coast. To support the invasion, the 30th and 50th Armored Division, the 82nd Airborne Division and the 35th and 36th Infantry Division of the US Army were also sent to support the Marines. The US Navy’s Pacific and Atlantic Fleets were also deployed to provide naval support, while the US Air Force would deploy their fighter and bomber planes (especially the F-117 Nighthawk and B-1 Lancers) to carpet bomb Nicaraguan military positions. Unlike the Soviet War in Afghanistan where carpet and strategic bombing often caused civilian casualties, the American Invasion of Nicaragua started with the aerial bombardment against military units and infrastructure, followed by the ground and naval invasion. Even worse, the US Air Force would drop chemical weapons like Agent Orange and White Phosphorus on Nicaraguan troops, followed by napalm. The aerial bombardment used by the US against Nicaragua was also observed by the Soviet military leadership and applied its lessons to Afghanistan, with horrific results.

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Excerpts from the Opinion Piece: “Did the Rejection of both the Burbulis-Konayev Agreement and the Planned Creation of the Commonwealth of Sovereign States Led to the Influx of Islamist and Maoist Movements in the former Soviet Central Asian Republics?”
PolitBlog
By: Patricia Alcott
August 21, 2020


This year is the 30th anniversary of the start of the Second Russian Civil War, one of the bloodiest conflicts since the Second World War in terms of human casualties and damages to materiel. It is not hard to discuss how the collapse of the Soviet Union would have been peaceful, with minimal or no bloodshed whatsoever, although another example in the collapse of multi-national federation in the collapse of the former Yugoslavia might be used as a template, with the juntas established in the constituent republics that made up of communist Yugoslavia, from Kadijevic in Serbia, to Tus in Croatia, Korosec in Slovenia and Halilovic in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union was on its last legs in the early 1990s due to the increasing economic difficulties it experienced, from a lack of consumer goods to the growing nationalist feeling within each republic that made up the Soviet Union. On the other hand, I could not fault Alexander Lebed for not wanting to kill innocent civilians because he himself almost died during the Novocherkassk Massacre when he was just a kid. Moreover, while I doubt that the Soviet Union paid attention to the emerging military dictatorship of Philippine Major General Artemio Tadiar (to which I am happy to see him stand on trial for crimes against humanity), they did not want to take any more examples from him or the Chinese PLA, which had fired on civilians during the Tiananmen Square protests that ended in a massacre that dwarfed even the Jeltoqsan protests and the EDSA Revolution.

So why did I ask the question of whether the Burbulis-Konayev Agreement could have been accepted as a painful compromise when the alternative was the war that affected the entirety of Soviet Central Asia? Because the origins of the rise of Islamist and Maoist movements in the former Soviet Central Asian republics had its origins, both in the Second Russian Civil War and the Soviet War in Afghanistan when Islamist groups had started to recruit from among the disaffected Central Asian Muslims that were fed up with the Soviet system and the growing appeal for the revival of Islam in Central Asia. In addition, the rise of Islamist-backed organizations like the Islamic Liberation Front of Kazakhstan, the Islamic Renaissance Movement of Uzbekistan, the Turkmen Islamic National Revival Movement, the Kyrgyz Islamic Movement, and the Tajik Islamic Alliance Movement, had played a role in the destabilization of Central Asia from the end of the Second Russian Civil War in 1995 to 1998 when Russia had invaded Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on the pretext of removing the Islamist groups from threatening Russia’s Volga-Ural regions in 2001. It was the Islamists’ targeted bombings that triggered the Russian response. The first phase of the plot was the assassination of Patriarch Alexy II of the Russian Orthodox Church through a plane crash that was hijacked by three Islamists from Kyrgyzstan in July of 1996, followed by the assassination of Pavel Grachev, the rival of Alexander Lebed, in a car bombing incident four days after Alexy II’s murder. The second phase of the plot was the series of chain airline bombings throughout Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia, with the airports in Rostov-on-Don, Simferopol, Kutaisi and Vitebsk being targeted for such bombings. The second phase was launched on December 10, 1996, with the total civilian death rate combined from the attacks on four airports at over 5,387 civilians. The final phase was going to be the plane crash plot on the FSB Headquarters in the Lubyanka District, but this phase was foiled by the arrest of two more hijackers, both which had ties to the growing Islamist groups emerging in the North Caucasus in early 1997.

However, the power sharing agreement between the federal authorities in Moscow and the constituent republic’s leaders proved to be a massive boon to most of the republics, especially Chechnya. A while back in March of 1995, in the last few months of the Second Russian Civil War, the Federation Treaty explained the power sharing system between the federal government and the constituent republics. Chechnya and the North Caucasian republics were given special attention due to historical grievances and redresses that General Lebed had explained. Furthermore, his famous “Orenburg Speech” of November 22, 1995 had a larger effect than Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization speech. In the Orenburg Speech, Lebed had come clean on the former Soviet Union’s major crimes, ranging from the mass genocide of the Ukrainian population in the Holodomor (to which the Russian government officially recognized it as a genocide and paid monetary compensation to Ukrainian victims of the man-made famine), the deportation of the ethnic groups within the USSR after the Red Army retook the occupied territories from the German Wehrmacht, and all other crimes as well. Lebed even admitted the Soviet Union’s role in the Katyn Massacre, the infamous mass murder of 20,000 Polish Army officers and civilian intellectuals committed by the NKVD, as well as the Baltic deportations, to which he ordered the National Redemption Army to exchange the Baltic deportees for Russians living in the Baltic States. Furthermore, Lebed also explained the attempts by both Dinmukhamed Konayev and Gennady Burbulis to create another power sharing treaty involving the Russian FSFR and the Central Asian SSRs that ended in tragedy.

The effects of the failure to embrace the Burbulis-Konayev Agreement can still be felt today, even in the West. Islamic terrorism was mainly aimed at Russia in the 1990s, but the United States also felt the effects of Islamic terrorism during the 1998 WTC Car bombing, as well as the 1999 Lima Senior High School Hostage Crisis where 70 terrorists from the group Al-Qaeda, led by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, had captured the entire school and held over 392 high schoolers as hostage. Their demands were to pull American troops out of the Middle East, and to stop supporting Israel’s expansion into the rest of the Middle East. While the American government was at a loss as to how to respond, the Russian government now had experience on how to deal with terrorist threats and offered to help the Americans in stopping further plots, only to be rebuffed by the likes of John McCain. The prevalent Russophobia in the West has paralyzed their governments from being able to cooperate with the Russians in stopping the terrorist threat. Lebed would even mention the United States’ involvement in shipping arms to the Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan, but Zbigniew Brzezinski simply replied by saying that “it was the same thing as the Soviets did in Vietnam”, though the alleged Soviet involvement in Vietnam was true or not, we can never know.

One cannot forget the Maoist factor in the power vacuum that erupted in the former Central Asian republics of the USSR when one of the former Communist Party leaders of Kazakhstan, one Serikbolsyn Abdildin, had traveled to China in July of 1990 to study the Maoist ideology, despite the Maoist revolutions becoming out of style. Upon his return to Kazakhstan, he and a few of his followers broke off from the Soviet-aligned Communist Party of Kazakhstan to form the People’s Revolutionary Party of Kazakhstan, and had it joined the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. Other communist leaders of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan had also traveled to Beijing in order to study the Maoist ideologies and returned to their respective republics in order to form their own Maoist parties. In Uzbekistan, the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Uzbekistan was the Maoist mouthpiece, while Kyrgyzstan had the Revisionist Communist Party (Maoist), Turkmenistan had the Democratic People’s Committee for Social Liberation of Turkmenistan and Tajikistan had the Democratic Socialist Revolutionary Party. Each Central Asian Maoist parties also had militant arms as well, with Alash People’s Liberation Front (Kazakhstan), the Bukhara People’s Liberation Movement (Uzbekistan), the Khorasan People’s Army (Turkmenistan), the National Liberation Armed Forces of Kyrgyzstan (Kyrgyzstan) and the Tajik New Red Guards (Tajikistan). However, the Maoist groups often clashed with the Islamist groups, creating another tinderbox of political instability. It was not until the Russian invasion and occupation of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that the Islamists and Maoists were brutally suppressed, but Uzbekistan surprisingly managed to bring together the Islamists and Maoists into a coalition. Only in Uzbekistan do you have an Islamo-Maoist party that combined political Islam with Maoism, and the RSPU also accepted Islamists willing to work with the new system. The Islamo-Maoist movement was approved by the Chinese government, since it can demonstrate to the Uyghur nationalists that they can combine Islam and communism together, though certain Western Maoists had criticized the Uzbekistani strand of Islamo-Maoism because of its incompatibility.

Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan after 2000 had managed to stabilize itself, and with the Russian withdrawal accomplished by 2005, the two countries have managed to regain their sense of normalcy. However, the relations between Russia and Central Asia were never same again, due to the heavy-handed Russian response to the Islamist attacks. It did not help their situation at all when Uzbekistan’s military, backed by the Bukhara People’s Liberation Movement, the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Uzbekistan, and the Islamic Renaissance Movement, who have joined forces into the new movement called the Revolutionary Brotherhood Party (2007), which espouses the Islamo-Maoist ideology. The rise of the Islamo-Maoist regime in Uzbekistan was the result of the bloody civil war between the pro-Soviet loyalist government, the pro-independence movement, and after 1998, the Islamists and Maoists who have began to establish themselves in Uzbekistan. In addition, both the pro-Soviet loyalist government and the pro-independence movement had to deal with the Karakalpak separatist movement, which sought closer relations with the Lebedite rebels (mainly due to the presence of the National Redemption Army officers who were hired to train the Karakalpak separatists). Mere days after the Islamo-Maoists have taken power in Uzbekistan, the Karakalpak breakaway movement was reconquered by the Uzbek Army. Turkmenistan’s Maoist movement, the Democratic People’s Committee for Social Liberation of Turkmenistan, was merged with the Turkmen Islamic National Revival Movement to create the Revolutionary Mujahidin of Turkmenistan. Out of all the Central Asian Republics, only Uzbekistan managed to create an Islamo-Maoist movement, while Tajikistan and Turkmenistan remained isolationist and were influenced by Islamists. However, the Uzbek Islamo-Maoists also had an irredentist agenda that was not founded on any ethnic irredentist ideas, but rather, the revival of the Timurid legacy in the former Khanates of Khiva and Bukhara. That was the danger Central Asia faced, in addition to the rival Islamist movements inspired by Al-Qaeda that are influential in the rest of Central Asia. Even worse, China was revealed to have funded these Islamo-Maoist movements in order to distract both Russia and the United States from its ambitions.


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US AND RUSSIA HELD FIRST JOINT MILITARY EXERCISE FOR FIRST TIME SINCE THE END OF THE SECOND RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR
Stars and Stripes
May 18, 2018


Washington, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA – The United States Defense Secretary Richard V. Spencer has announced the first joint ground, air, and naval exercises with Russia since the end of the Second Russian Civil War, in the exercise called “Joint Challenge Infinite Stratos”, involving all branches of the US and Russian Armed Forces. Joint Challenge Infinite Stratos will also involve NATO member states like Norway, Poland, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Turkey in the West, in a section called “Blue Tears West”, and in the east section, called “Amatsubaki East”, will involve Japan, Korea, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. The military exercise comes at a time when Russo-Chinese relations have begun to deteriorate, due to China’s growing influence in Central Asia, where Chinese economic power have penetrated the region. Moreover, the pro-Chinese regimes emerging in the former Soviet Central Asia region has been the cause of the animosity between Russia and China, although the Vostok 2016 Exercise was an attempt to repair the diplomatic and military relations between the two nations. Moreover, Joint Challenge Infinite Stratos also comes at a time when the European Economic Community is slowly losing its political and diplomatic clout to its Russian rival in the east, and its American rival across the ocean, with the recent establishment of the North American Customs Union of Canada and the United States.


The USS Farragut is seen arriving in Russian territorial waters, accompanied by a Russian tugboat, with the Russian aircraft carrier the Kiev in anchor, just outside Severomorsk, Murmansk Oblast, Russia.


“The free trade agreement between our two nations have been beneficial, although there are also great fears of the loss of sovereignty. Let me make it clear that we do not intend to surrender our sovereignty to supranational organizations for the sake of globalization. The NACU is a vehicle in which we will engage in closer economic trade with the United States on the economic policy as stated by Vice President Clark and President Tim Kaine. The Greenback will be a great currency that ties the North American Customs Union together,” Canadian Prime Minister John Turmel comments during a speech he gave in front of supporters in Winnipeg, Manitoba. “Moreover, our military cooperation with other NATO member states and Russia is crucial in stopping the penetration of Chinese economic influence in a region that is traditionally considered as American.”


The Canadian Armed Forces is heavily reliant on the United States Armed Forces for most of its equipment, although the recent unveiling of the Armscor Philippine Firearm APF FP-04 Kalis bullpup rifle is proposed as the new official assault rifle for both the Canadian and Australian militaries. Though it is based on the Bushmaster M17S bullpup assault rifle that was designed for the Australian military, the Philippine bullpup is being upgraded and modified for export purposes. To help upgrade the moribund Canadian military, the United States has offered to invite Canada for a joint military hardware project that will involve the complete redesign of its tanks, amphibious vehicles and artillery pieces, with Israel joining the project as well.


“While I am not surprised at the sad state of Canada’s military, a little more training and upgrading from the United States might be helpful in the long run. In addition, I would also like to see Canada establish its own Marine Corps, just so I could become the first instructor in helping it to become a dangerous, fighting force in the world,” comments former US Marine Corps general Paul van Riper, who gave a scathing criticism of the Millennium Challenge 2002 exercise a while back. The Van Riper Military Doctrine has stated that human factor will always be critical, even in the age of technology. A lesson that the Russians have learned during their fight against the Islamist groups in Central Asia and in the North Caucasus region. “Unlike the United States Armed Forces, with its overreliance on military technology, I see Canada as being a better candidate for my military doctrine to become an important doctrine to study.”


Van Riper also served as Defense Secretary back in 2008, during the Cain administration, when he oversaw the reduction of the American defense budget and the massive doctrinal reforms that saw much of America’s military hardware being placed in storage due to the reductions in troop numbers. At the same time, he also encouraged frugal spending in the military budget, slimming down on unnecessary additions into the newest US Air Force fighter jets, and the standardization of the US Army’s production of tanks. Back in 2016, the United States had donated most of its obsolete M551 Sheridan tanks to the Philippine Armed Forces for research and development, with the bottom chassis being taken for a new amphibious light tank design that will be a mix of both the old M551 Sheridan and the PT-76 amphibious light tank used by the Russians. The result of Van Riper’s guidance and direction regarding American military hardware was the emphasis on pilot safety, as was the main issue when developing the F-22 Raptor fighter jet. The purchase of the KAI T-50 Golden Eagle by the US Air Force for research purposes also allowed Air Force engineers to learn more about pilot safety, and the lessons learned from the T-50 Golden Eagle resulted in the unveiling of the F-27MI Thunderbolt fighter plane.


All the participants of the Joint Challenge Infinite Stratos would apply the lessons learned from the Van Riper Doctrine and to see how it would shape modern warfare. Moreover, the military exercises would also coincide with the planned talks between the North American Customs Union, the European Economic Community and the Russian Federation on economic agreements and the ambitious railway project that would stretch from Lisbon, Portugal to Anadyr, Russia, with additional rail lines connecting Anadyr to Naukan, from which it will have a planned tunnel connecting it with the Alaskan towns of Diomede and Wales. Though it is unsure whether or not the project will be approved, the economic projects will also highlight the importance of integrating Russia into the international community.



American and Russian troops are seen together, preparing for the start of "Amatsubaki East", the eastern half of Joint Challenge Infinite Stratos, outside the southern Sakhalin Island town of Korsakov.