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Old 09-28-2009, 10:24 AM
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Mohoender Mohoender is offline
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Default Eastern africa

Eastern Africa has known its share of turmoil as most of the continent but as the Twilight War was starting, it was considered one of the most stable parts of Africa. Therefore, it started to be plagued with ethnic and civil unrest this was a surprise to everyone.

One country, however, had been the theater of a bloody civil war: Rwanda. This was over when the war started but tensions were still running high between Hutus and Tutsis and with the ensuing chaos, these tensions results in more violence again. A second civil war starts but this time it is not limited to Rwanda and quickly spreads to Burundi and later to Uganda. Massacres are numerous and bloody; rough estimates indicate a death toll which could be as high as 40% of the total population in all three countries. This time the world is unable to send any relief to the region and these deaths are followed by huge epidemics that might have killed almost as much. When everything is finally over, Burundi and Rwanda have been turned into giant graveyards while Uganda is in turmoil. Weakened by the ethnic war coming from Rwanda, the southern Bantu population shrinks and, then, comes under attack from the northern based sectarian terrorist movement known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Within weeks what is left of the governmental forces collapses and Uganda enters a period of chaos which continues to our days. While several groups of Bantu are still fighting, the LRA engages in a war of terror in which murder, abduction, mutilation and sexual enslavement of women and children have become the rule.

Tanzania also fells the weight of the Hutus/Tutsis civil war but that doesn’t spread very far in the country and that conflict is not truly involved in the collapses of the state. However, Tanzania was highly dependent on world trade and it had turned most of its agricultural production to export. Therefore, when world trade collapses, so does the economical base of the country. Unable to adequately feed its population the government in Dar-es-Salaam is facing huge food riots and, under pressure, the military commanders fire at the people. However, the well trained army is soon faced by the People’s Militias (numbering more than 100.000) and the country enters civil war. The government forms new loyal militias and massacres are performed by both sides, resulting in terrible death toll as the food riots turn to ethnic wars. The most important of these massacres takes place in Zanzibar when the government sends 2000 regular troops and more than 20.000 militias to suppress a large protest movement that has been held on the Island for several days. Power supply is shot down and the troops land at night, spreading to the street in silence and killing people in their sleep. When everything is over, after several weeks of fighting, almost 50% of the population has been killed (30% more will die) along with all the troops and militias. As a result, the survivors form their own government, established their own militia and declare independence. Nowadays, the island can be considered organized, it is engaged in some limited piracy but, most importantly, it is slowly becoming a major center of trade again.

Kenya is the only country where the government remains in place, despite some limited civil unrest in the North East and North West that comes under control when supplies are delivered to the army in exchange for the establishment of a small US military base near Mombassa. This base has expended greatly over the moths and it now holds the entire US Forces for Africa with an air base and a military port that can service ships such as destroyers and frigates. In addition, the refinery established nearby has become very important to this force but also to the troops deployed to the Middle East. It is indeed the largest working refinery on the Indian Ocean and whatever crude oil can be shipped out of the Persian Gulf end up there to be processed. Of course, support from the fledgling US is insufficient to explain Kenya’s survival and governmental success also results from continuously working industries and from the emphasize put on what is now considered to be the three pillars of the state: Christianity, Swahili language and a revived the Massaï warrior tradition.
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