NETO Discussion Thread

[Ceausescu]

Kyrzbekistan would suggest that Wadiyah government moves toward a more inclusive government, in order to give more stability to the country. This may include interim president Bassam Al-Fayeed and his allies, a Silestrian representative, and other political forces (Kyrzbekistan's ruling party likely established friendly ties with some Wadiyah's secular center-left political party which was established after the civil war, after all), who knows if even moderate Akhadists, if Wadiyah is that a conservative country.

That Wadiyah becomes a NETO member makes sense, but it sounds a bit precipitate. The country barely left a military occupation -which may be reestablished- and I don't know if even a constitution and more permanent institutions were established so far, after all. West Germany only became a NATO member six years after the alliance was created, for example.

Wadiyah is a bit more complicated than that. The divisions between conservatives and lefties fall on geographical lines. Wadiyah is more or less an artificial state, formed by merging the former colonial holdings of Carpathia, with the eastern territories (I don't know who ran that place at the time). Thus, like many states in the IRL middle east, the differences are not just sectarian, but tribal as well. There is no real sense of national unity, or even a cohesive national identity in Wadiyah. The stark economic differences don't help, either. The west is far better off than the more populous east, which, in contrast, is extremely impoverished and underdeveloped. The problem here is that the east has a larger population than the west. And the east was heavily in favor of the Akhadist State group and is heavily anti-NETO, because they view NETO as an "alliance of blasphemy", which destroyed the Akhadist State organization.

Given how much the eastern population outnumbers the western regions, and how the military is drawn mostly from the eastern region (its mostly impoverished people to whom the military is the only chance at a stable job and a steady income), its not unexpected that the military would be ultraconservative and heavily opposed to the current government and the NETO peace treaty, as they consider the secular government to be blasphemous and the accords which give Silistria its autonomy, are viewed as equally heretical, because those accords prevent religious law from being imposed on the autonomous region.

Politically speaking, Wadiyah has fallen along two lines, with two prominent parties emerging and the others being just satellite for these two. On one hand, we have the interim president Bassam Al-Fayeed's Coalition for Progress, which supports a liberal policy of secularization and religious freedom, on the other hand, we have the eastern-based cleric Hamad Asmar's Conservative Akhadic Party, which is ultraconservative and runs on an agenda of enforcing strict religious laws nation-wide (including Silistria) and dismantling the autonomy of certain areas, in order to achieve this.

In addition, there is also the problem of rampant corruption, which was to be expected in a post-civil war scenario. Both candidates are equally corrupt and have ties to some rather shady groups, with Hamad Asmar being rumored to recruit former Akhadist State fighters into eastern militias, under the umbrella of eastern autonomy and clemency for low-rank Akhadist State members, in exchange for "civil service", while Bassam Al-Fayeed pretty brazenly uses the Silistrian paramilitaries and their connections to Carpathia, in order to consolidate power for himself, while also openly inviting NETO to continue their occupation, in order to prevent a major uprising by eastern groups.