Epocha Vertit

DEATH OF PRESIDENT SIAD BARRE!

4 March 2002 - Mogadishu, Democratic Republic of Somalia

| State media outlets reported today that Jaalle Major General Mohammed Siad Barre, founder and President of the Somali Democratic Republic, has died last night at the Villa Somalia, his presidential palace, at the age of eighty two from an apparent heart attack. |

| The Somali president's health had reportedly been in decline since a rumored stroke last December, which retired him from the public eye and kept him exclusively within the walls of the Villa Somalia. His situation had been largely unknown since January, with the Ministry of Information and the presidential office refusing to comment on his recovery beyond vague implications. According to a statement by the office of the President, Barre 'died surrounded by his family and loved ones, as well as members of his administration, and was swiftly given a traditional Muslim burial'. In the wake of his death, his son-in-law Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan will succeed him as President of the Somali Democratic Republic, having been sworn in at the Villa Somalia in the hours after his death. |

| Barre rose to power in the 1969 Somali Coup, a military operation which overthrew the Somali Republic and established the Marxist-Leninist Somali Democratic Republic. Instituting a plethora of reforms, Barre oversaw the standardization of the Somali language, nationalization of banks and industry, promotion of cooperative farms, and a social modernization campaign aimed at reducing tribalism within Somalia. Perhaps his most well-regarded accomplishments were leading Somalia to victory in the 1977-1978 Ogaden War, in which the Somali Army successfully liberated the region of Western Somalia from the Soviet-backed Ethiopian Derg; this massive victory was followed up with the 1984 Djibouti Crisis, in which Somalia intervened in a small civil conflict between the Somali Isaas and the Afars and successfully prevented a war by annexing the Somali portion of Djibouti and granting independence to the Afar-majority Democratic Republic of Obock in the north, ostensibly with tacit French support. The following two decades of Barre's administration consisted of a 'Pax Barreicum', with Somalia experiencing very little domestic tension outside of the historically tense Somaliland region. Somalia has quickly out-developed neighboring countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya. |

| Newly-incumbent President Morgan, the former head of Barre's state security forces, was long believed to be his eventual successor after his appointment as Chief of the Defense Force in 1990. Since 1997, Morgan served as Vice President of Somalia, effectively lining him up for the Presidency by the time of Barre's passing. This morning, Morgan released an official statement eulogizing his late father-in-law, and honoring to uphold his legacy. As a member of the Harti clan of the Darod tribe, Morgan has inherited the support of both the state apparatus as well as the Darod tribe and their allies such as the Marehan, the Ogaden, the Dhulbahante, and even the Majeerteen which, since the late 1980s, has been increasingly integrated into the national Somali structure. Less enthusiastic about the choices are the Isaaq and Hawiye who, long opponents of the Barre regime within domestic politics, are well known to dislike Morgan even more - Morgan's heavy-handed administration of the occupational government in Djibouti from 1987 to 1990 was a cause of much concern for both Isaaq tribal leaders and the Barre government, and Morgan's opinions towards the Isaaq are well known nationally. |

| As Siad Barre is laid to rest, a thirty two-year long era of Somali history has come to an end. Tens of thousands of mourners flooded the streets of Somalia's major cities today in massive demonstrations overseen by the Republican Guard, an impressive show of public loyalty for the former President, and a testament to his legacy as Somalia's great unifier. |

MÉLANGER LES CARTES! • SHUFFLING THE CARDS!

_{| Novembre 1960—Decembre 1961 || Port-Étienne, République Démocratique de Maurésie |}

Following the independence of Maurésie from France, the country officially stylized itself as the République Démocratique. With that, First President of the Republic, Lamine Houbeib readily favored cooperative engagement with L'Organisation Commune des Régions Sahariennes (OCRS) and the Communauté Française, decisions supported heavily by les Saharois Blancs, the Maurésie-born French population numbering some 12,000 nationwide at the time of independence. Contrarily, as Houbeib navigated the controversial inroads aforementioned, these efforts did well to divide the political base that had hastily supported him as the 20 August 1961 presidential elections neared, largely those of whom that moved away from the camp of Mokhtar Ould Daddah as his campaign stagnated and ultimately faltered at the ballot box.

As the now elected incumbent, Lamine Houbeib picked his cabinet of ministers, appointing Bertrand Guissé and Gen. Hugo Francheterre as Minister of Defence and Chief of Defence Staff of the newly contrived Forces Armées Maurésienne (FAM), this understood by many of his detractors as a symbolic gesture ordered by France, and labeled Houbeib their 'marionette'. By 28 October 1961, almost two months following the election, the Daddah-led Parti de Regroupement Mauresien rallied and protested in Atar, where a significant amount of his political base was comprised. They decried Houbeib's cabinet picks as 'one-sided governance' and called for the appointment of Abdullah El Houceine Eby as Minister of Defence in order to open the government to the opposition in true democratic nature. Though appeals were made to the recently elected government, their offices delayed not to further political endeavors in effort to fit the apparatus of the OCRS and broader French Community.

In the weeks that followed, the realized situation for the opposition was that political efforts were for nought and the public's expectations of their representative parties utterly squandered. This caused a second rupturing of Daddah's PRM that only briefly re-coalesced to contest the 1961 elections. With the outcome of which seemingly sealed, many declared a call to jihad, which Daddah disavowed. Several Islamist proponents of the PRM broke off to form Hizb at-Tajammuʿ al-Islāmī, translated as the Islamic Regroupment Party, headed by Abdelrehman Sidi Bakar, a prominent Islamic idealogue from the Adrar Region. At the same time, the Mauresien National Renaissance Party, known colloquially as 'Nahda', whom initially supported Houbeib against Mokhtar Ould Daddah, also resonated the call to armed struggle against the government. In response, Houbeib readied the Acte de la Nationale Libération des Infortunés, which would effectively outlaw slavery nationwide. This held the potential to crush the Beidane slave trade, mitigate funding from slavery for their causes, and embolden Haratin unfortunates against their former masters. Moreover, it would also serve as basis to allow the President to mobilize military assets against Arab-Maur slavers, known as Bīdhan, many of whom support the armed opposition brewing in the eastern regions.

As of 3 December 1961, the Acte had been reviewed by the Conseil des Ministres and was further submitted to the Assemblée Nationale for vote. In lead up to the date that members of parliament were set to vote, multiple demonstrations were held across Maurésie. During a particular instance, a mob rioted in the southernmost capital town of Sélibaby, in the Guidimaka Region. What ensued there resulted in great loss of life, as Bīdhan masters slaughtered several of their slaves in preempt of the act's passing. Other measures of resistance to the anticipated emancipation indeed arose elsewhere across Maurésie, prompting a much sooner parliamentary convening on behalf of the Acte, formally passing by fair majority on 11 December. The following day, President Lamine Houbeib officially promulgated the Acte as law by decree before the Assemblée Nationale, signing the law and implementing decree therein.
—

_{HONNEUR, FRATERNITÉ, JUSTICE}
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ဒေါင်းငှက်သည် သည်းခံ၏။! • THE PEAFOWL ENDURES!

_{Sunday, 4th Waxing of Pyathoe 1310 ME | Rangoon, Rangoon Division, Royal Federation of Burma}

At approximately 4:20AM on the fourth day of Pyathoe, Sao Shwe Thaik, first President of the Union of Burma, stood atop the Stone Pillar with former Colonial Governor Hubert Rance as the independence banner slowly raised to the sky, fluttering in the morning brisk, creating the illusion of endless battle between the Naga and Chinthe displayed upon it's crisp white field, enclosed with the Great Buddha's eternal wisdom inside a deep blue border. Bamar and non-Bamar alike saluted it's raising, the flag that had been keenly discussed, designed, and approved at both Panglong Conventions in March 1946 and February 1947, where the basic framework of the Burma Union had been forged at roundtables which seen the Burmese, Mon, Kachin, Chin, Shan and Kayin signatories of the Panglong Agreement and the formation of the Union of Burma as a vehicle of democracy in light of recent restorationism of the Lion Throne and the ascension of it's Crowned Monarch.

With a true blood claim to the throne as a relative of Thibaw Min, last King of the Konbaung Dynasty deposed 1886, Taw Phaya Gyi was crowned at Kuthodaw Pagoda, Mandalay in 1945, taking on the regnal name, Ag Zaw Thawda Min, Master Lord of the Golden Palace and Golden Spired Roofs, sending riders to the furthest reaches and the dwindling warfronts to inform the Burmese people that the Lion Throne no longer sat barren, delivering many over to his cause much like the common folk had done in 1932 for the Renegade King, Hsaya San, and his attempted monarchal restoration that dissipated into a bandit uprising. The Burma Independence Army, which had been forged by Imperial Japan against the Allies, defected from their collaboration and rallied behind their King, representing a major patron for Burma's independence to all political sides, the end of British rule under it's very own Crown. With an influential cadre consistent of General Aung San, the Sawbwa Sao Shwe Thaik, and Thakin Nu behind him, King Agzawthawda led the talks on behalf of an independent Burma with the United States and the United Kingdom after attempted colonial reestablishment of the nation came into direct question during those post-war years that ended in the subsequent grant of independence for the Burma Union amid times of political strife characterized by factional infighting and splits.

Scathed by uncertainty and eager to forge a democracy in a post-independence Burma, the three great proprietors of the nation, Sao Shwe Thaik, Thakin Nu, and Aung San formulated a combined system of tradition and monarchy with modernity and democracy, where all the ethnicities of Burma are no longer regarded as Bamar tributaries, instead rather as equal participants in national governance through the 125-seat Lumyozu Hluttaw, or Chamber of Nationalities, the Upper House of the bicameral Pyidaungzu Hluttaw, otherwise known as Union Parliament. The Lower House, Pyithu Hluttaw, or Chamber of Deputies, serves to convene on matters of law, order, and national security, initiating and passing bills to be sent for review and vote by the Upper House. In an unfortunate turn of events, however, after aiding in the mutual establishment of this democratic system, winning the approval of various ethnic groups and their leaders on it's behalf, Aung San was assassinated alongside six others at the Secretariat Building in Rangoon whilst the Executive Council sat in session. A group of paramilitaries entered the building and fired off all their ammunition at the members of government. Murdered alongside him, Thakin Mya, Ba Choe, Ba Win, U Razak and his bodyguard, Ko Htwe, and Ohn Maung, all important figures for the planned post-independence government. The target killings took place 19 July 1947, and devastated the progress being made toward transition of governance. U Saw and eight other co-conspirators were jailed, investigated, and tried in connection to the assassinations via special tribunal set up by Colonial Governor Hubert Rance. U Saw and his cadre were found guilty and sentenced to death on 30 December 1947. Shortly thereafter, a British national and Royal Army Officer, Captain David Vivian, was sentenced to five years imprisonment at Insein for supplying the conspirators with a Thompson and two Sten Mk.II submachine guns, four Webley revolvers, and several "Mills Bomb"-type hand grenades. As a measure of good faith and signal to begin the framework for healthy relations to come, Captain David Vivian and two other minor officers were extradited to Great Britain on 3 January 1948, a day before the great independence celebrations erupted across lower and upper Burma alike, from Tenasserim, to Thayarwadyy, to Kayah, Kaw Thoo Lei, to the Kachin and Shan Hills, all nationalities of the Union marvel and revel in the dissolution of the British Crown's colonial rule.

——

OPERATION FORTITUDE - A COUP IN CHAD!

_{September 1989 - N'Djamena, Chad}

Victory against the Libyans in the ten-year long Chadian-Libyan War, on top of Libya's defeat in the Tripolitanian War, has left the Republic of Chad in a precarious triumph. With Libya's power in the region all but crippled, President Hissène Habré and his western backers have been left unchallenged by their primary external opponent, a blessing and a curse as the lack of external threats has left the destitution and fragility of the Chadian state exposed. Bankrupt after years of war and with internal pressure against the Habré regime growing, central authorities in N'Djamena have spent immense resources in the two years since the end of hostilities with Libya investigating and rooting out dissent and internal opposition, leading to the deaths and disappearance of hundreds, if not thousands, and a large scale purge of the military including prominent ministers and generals such as Idriss Déby, Mahamat Itno, and Hassan Djamous. So extensive have been the purges, especially since the beginning of 1989, that France has deployed hundreds of additional soldiers to Chad with the express mission of protecting French civilians and assets amidst 'a quickly deteriorating internal situation'.

The death of the so-called Déby-Clique from April to May, though executed quietly, has left a massive vacuum in the anti-Habré factions of the upper military and state institutions. Across summer 1989, purges against both suspected pro-UAR and anti-French figures in the military and state institution further reduced both the effectiveness and loyalty of the Chadian Armed Forces, but has succeeded in keeping power, for a time, firmly within Habré's hands. Unbeknownst to the President, or to his middling internal security apparatus, is the low-level dissent brewing within the military amid the chaos of purges and executions. With the loss of the Déby-Clique's center of gravity in the military and state, lower level officers have been left to fill tenuous and dangerous posts in Habré's military and, as a result, have by the summer become the primary drivers of secret plans to overthrow the Habré regime.

At the center of the revolutionary movement is a small cadre of officers within the Chadian Armed Forces, known as the Red Five: their leader, Commandant Djasrabé Mahamat Ngarndé, alongside co-conspirators Blaise Kemdong Tchermé, Issa Djibrine Korom, Martin Ngarlé Beïdoum, and Abakar Youssouf Hamidou. Young commissioned officers of the Chadian-Libyan War, all five have ascended into small but important commands within central and southern Chad, and all five harbor anti-western, anti-Libyan and communist-adjacent beliefs. Ngarndé, hailing from an Islamic Sara family, rose through the ranks of the CAF during the decade long war with Libya, being promoted to the command of the Presidential Security Battalion in June amid the height of the purges. 33 years of age, Ngarndé had become an ardent though secret Marxist in the years during the war, disgusted with both the ethnocentric socialist rhetoric of the neighboring Arab states and the lingering imperialist systems of Western influence over the Republic of Chad. His co-conspirators, from various other southern ethnic groups, represented the few officers in the fractured Chadian Armed Forces capable of effectively supporting Ngarndé's goals of overthrowing Habré and establishing a Marxist state. In August, the Red Five (through secret channels) set about drafting the initial plans for a coup, starting with the mobilization of the Presidential Security Battalion to seize N'Djamena and overthrow Habré, followed by units under the command of the other officers seizing key military and industrial points across southern Chad. With Libya thoroughly neutralized by Vandaly and the UAR unlikely to cross the border to the west, victory could be secured totally first in the south before the new revolutionary army could establish itself in the northern deserts.

On 16 September, Habré is informed by informants of a believed coup attempt forming within Mongo, where units under the control of Hadjerai officers led by Issa Djibrine Korom had prematurely mobilized into combat-ready positions. Fearing the worst, Habré issues orders to Ngarndé to secure the capital with his battalion, roughly 700 troops and some technicals strong, to prevent any coup attempt from reaching the capital. With immediate pressure on him to act, Ngarndé seizes the moment and commits to launching the coup. The following day, on 17 September, Ngarndé issues orders to his men to seize the Presidential Palace along the Chari River, as well as the nearby N'Djamena International Airport. Four technicals armed with anti-armor weapons are dispatched to the airport, while infantry armed with AK-47s descend upon the Palace in mass. Owing to the intense suddenness of the coup, communication between the Presidential Security Battalion and other units loyal to the coup are minimal, and the events of Operation Fortitude remain mostly self-contained within N'Djamena throughout the day.

Around noon on 17 September, roughly 400 soldiers seize the Presidential Palace. In a flight, Habré, his family, and key members of his inner circle escape through the back of the Palace and attempt to use a dresser as a makeshift raft, but are found trying to cross the Chari River into the neighboring Cameroonian city of Kousseri by soldiers loyal to the coup. After being shot at, they are detained by the soldiers, who summarily execute members of the inner circle before throwing their bodies into the Chari, being careful to keep Habré alive per orders. With the Palace and the Airport secured, a small detachment of troops is sent to shut down foreign media outlets in the city such as Voice of America and Radio France Internationale, while the state-run Radiodiffusion Nationale Tchadienne is to be seized outright to announce the coup and show images of the President and his family in custody. Armed men arrive at the many major radio stations throughout the city, forcing them down for the day and holding many of the employees at gunpoint, while the RNT building is fired at before being entered and captured. At 4:15 local time, the military makes a short broadcast announcing that soldiers and officers loyal to the Revolutionary Command Authority of Chad(ACRT) have seized control of the capital, arrested President Habré, and are establishing military order across the country. Shortly thereafter, Ngarndé himself appears on the broadcast reading a short written statement announcing that the ACRT will immediately put Habré on trial for his abuses of power and establish a new, multiethnic, transitional government focused on creating a new Chadian state. In his address, he directly announces his intention to restore 'full national sovereignty within Chad' and expose the crimes of the Habré government, including foreign collusion with western powers to exploit the resources of the Chadian state. Following his short statements, all broadcasts are turned off and replaced with the Chadian national anthem.

As night falls, skirmishes between police officers and Habré loyalists against the new ACRT forces keep the city mostly quiet in between short bursts of rifle fire. N'Djamena Airport is shut down, and all planes grounded underneath the watchful eye of technicals with large machine guns and RPG rockets trained on the planes. With word of the coup gradually spreading beyond the capital, the other members of the Red Five order their troops to seize key posts in other outposts across Chad, most notably seizing the cities of Mongo, Sahr, and Doba overnight. Units not loyal to the coup, caught off-guard by the blitz, largely defect, surrender, or break up in the face of opposition, though some holdout units immediately begin forming overnight to protect posts particularly in the deep south, the east, and in the ring of towns outside of N'Djamena. In Faya-Largeau, Aouzou, and other remote garrisons in the far north of Chad, units there receive word of the coup deep in the night, and are mobilized, but with central command effectively non-existent, they man posts awaiting further orders that are never to come.

By morning on the 18th, fighting in N'Djamena proper has largely calmed, though scattered gunfire on the outskirts of the city continue as units loyal to Habré retreat on foot. That morning, the ACRT reopens media institutions across the country, displaying images of Habré on trial in a small room before an impromptu military court, the last time Habré is ever to be seen in public. With Habré alive, loyalist units are contacted by France to secretly assemble at Massakory, slightly to the northeast of the capital, where they are to assemble and await further instructions from the Ministry of Defense or from the Chief of the General Staff, Abakar Saleh Youssouf. While Minister of Defense Brahim Hassan Djarma had been one of the handful of Habré's inner circle executed at the palace the day before, CGS Youssouf had managed to escape N'Djamena during skirmishing there and begin his journey to Massakory, informing the French of his intentions to form a resistance force in the city. Together with some 40 troops, Youssouf arrives in Massakory in the early evening of 18 September, with loyalist forces trickling in afterwards.

In the deep south, units loyal to the coup succeed in seizing the major cities, but due to their numbers are unable to exert any influence beyond them. In the absence of stable authority, local militias begin to form out of police units, civilians, and loyalist army units. Lieutenant Constantin Beadoumgar, a Lieutenant in the Chadian Armed Forces, alongside some 100 Christian Sara soldiers under his control had refused to take part in the coup in N'Djamena, fleeing south towards the city of Moundou. These forces, under the command of Beadoumgar and Robert-Michel Ngaraltom Bérangui, deliver a statement via underground radio channels declaring their intention to oppose the coup and restore order in the south of Chad, though importantly refuse to declare loyalty to the other Habré loyalist forces assembling elsewhere throughout the country, with Beadoumgar assuming control of 'all counter-revolutionary activities within the Republic of Chad' per his own statements.

In the days after the coup, the Chadian Armed Forces begin to fall apart as factionalism emerges. Wielding the capital and many of the nation's most elite units, the new revolutionary government in N'Djamena is able to keep much of the Armed Forces under its immediate control through sheer strength of force and political capital, but is unable to prevent a sweeping number of desertions such as those occurring in Massakory or the south. Ngarndé is quick to order forces in Sahr and recently-joined forces in Koumra to strike at rebel forces forming in Moundou, but owing to fear and a lack of communication within the ranks, the offensive never materializes. Facing no opposition, Beadoumgar's forces are able to successfully rally in Moundou and form, between defecting military units, local police units and civilian militias, a legitimate non-state oppositional force. Beadoumgar declares the formation of an anti-communist fighting force, the Chari Democratic Forces of Chad, in Koumra on 22 September with the stated intention of rallying forces in the south and establishing a transitional authority there to oppose the CAF. Desertions within the CAF notably pick up following the establishment of the CDFC in the south, with many of the Christian and animist soldiers in the now communist coup defecting to pick up arms against the new ACRT and their primarily Muslim organizers.

In Massakory, loyalist units under Abakar Saleh Youssouf marshal and reassert their loyalty to the Republic of Chad, though with Habré captured and his whereabouts unknown and most of the government executed, arrested, or having fled, Youssouf's forces are pledging loyalty to a government that largely only exists on paper. Nonetheless, the remnant forces of the Republic of Chad rally what forces they do have in Massaguet and Massakory, dissuading coup forces from pressing north beyond N'Djamena.

By the end of September, the entirety of Chad has all but descended into factionalism, with the ACRT controlling a large band in the center of the country stretching from its eastern and western borders and all the way through the south - garrisons as Faya-Largeau, Aouzou, and in the south are all brought under the fold of the new revolutionary government in the chaos of the first weeks. However, crucially, the ideological hardlines of the new revolutionary government and the lack of overwhelming strength allows loyalist and rebel groups, notably those in Massakory and Moundou, to crystalize into legitimate opposition forces with equal organizational strength and logistical cohesion to the standing Chadian Armed Forces. On 1 October, the ACRT declares the establishment of the Transitional Government of Chad, with Ngarndé planning on establishing a new state under the name of the Democratic People's Socialist Republic of Chad in the following months. The Chadian Armed Forces are immediately renamed to the Chadian People's Armed Forces, allowing the Massakory forces under General Youssouf to claim the name of the Chadian Armed Forces among international backers, primarily France. The Chadian Armed Forces form a contingency government in Chad under former economics deputy minister Dr. Moussa Abdelrahim Mahamat, who as acting President of Chad orders loyalist forces to rally around the government organizations in Massakory against the coup.

Operation Fortitude's immediate phases culminate in mid-October, with a political victory for the coup in the seizure of most of Chad's major cities, though a tactical and strategic failure to secure control over the entire or even overwhelming majority of the country. Facing immense internal opposition, Ngarndé's revolutionary government establishes contact with the Soviet Union, who offers tacit messages of support to the new revolutionary government, though due to events unfolding in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe are unable to offer assistance beyond pledging military advisors in the near future. Cuba and the other remaining Soviet satellite states give messages of support to the ACRT as well, with Cuba in particular dispatching some 30 key advisors to Chad's N'Djamena International Airport to oversee inspections and training of the new CPAF. France, for its part, maintains its positions in Chad while evacuating as many French civilians and assets as possible - French officials quietly establish contact with the contingency government in Massakory and promise tactical and political support there. In the deep south, where Beadoumgar and his forces are establishing a warlord state, the United States, Vandaly, and the United Kingdom all see a potential ally in the fight to both liberate Chad from the revolutionary communist government and undermine French neocolonial efforts in Africa.

In the wake of Operation Fortitude, Chad is at war with itself. Battle lines have been drawn, factions made distinct, and a civil war initiated.

The New Thai Regime, Pt. 2 of 3
March 1985 — March 1990

Thailand opened the mid-1980s with a declaration that the “New Thai Regime” had graduated from consolidation into projection. The 1985 general election had given the Thai People’s Party not merely a parliamentary mandate but a theoretical blank check, and the NECPTNVAES treated this moment as the proper time to cultivate Thailand’s position as a front-line anti-communist bulwark. In March and April of 1985, a sweeping military procurement package is negotiated and signed across multiple partners, part of a wider rearmament initiative framed internationally as Thailand taking its place as a modern, indispensable partner of the Western-aligned security order. NECPTNVAES propaganda did not dwell on the technicalities in public, but it emphasized the symbolism relentlessly: Thailand needed to achieve military capabilities that could preserve its sovereignty, defend its interests in the near abroad, and ensure its armed forces were capable of both defensive and offensive combat within the region. This was codified in the junta’s new strategic slogan, the “Year 2000 Readiness Initiative,” a fifteen-year military modernization promise that implied Thailand would enter the next century as a real regional power with the means to ensure its security within the region. The Year 2000 Readiness Initiative, like military rule broadly, was justified through a deliberately apocalyptic geopolitical narrative. The NECPTNVAES described Thailand as the lone “free pillar” within a ring of hostile forces: Indochina destabilized by the fall of Saigon, Communist Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia, Laos falling to the communist Pathet Lao, Soviet-aligned Burma under socialist-military rule, the Malaysian communist insurgency, and a wider region where the clandestine networks were coordinated by foreign intelligence services loyal to the communist menace. This narrative was useful not only for legitimizing growing defense budgets, but for the junta’s strict internal security posture. The Thai People’s Party’s leading MP, many of whom are active military officers, fused these themes into a single moral claim: Thailand had survived the 1970s only by virtue of the monarchy and the army, and therefore any future safety would likewise require a permanent military stewardship of national life.

One of the clearest symbols of Thailand’s 1980s modernization was emerging in Bangkok. In late-1985, the Thai Parliament allocates the first dispensation of funds for a new international business district in Bangkok, formally titled the 6th of April International Business Park. The name itself a reference to the 6th of April military coup, referred domestically by the euphemism "6th of April Revolution". By attaching the 6th of April date to this new development, the Anurak Suthammarat government sought to reinforce the association between the military government and stability, development, and modernity. The new district is envisioned as a modern mixed-use development of the highest standard — office towers for regional headquarters, corporate and private residences for Thailand’s expanding managerial class, hotels designed for Japanese and Western business travel, and an engineered nightlife strip meant to signal that Bangkok could be modern and cosmopolitan without needing the political permissiveness seen in the Western metropole. It is planned as a landscape of greenery, concrete, and glass that echoes the state’s Buddhist-based preference for moralized spatial layout: order, cleanliness, "flowing energy" projected through a prism of glass and concrete. Cinemas are explicitly incorporated into the plan, alongside retail corridors featuring both domestic and imported goods and luxury goods. Like other industrial zones, the 6th of April Business Park is placed under the direct influence of the Ministry of Industry, which in 1988 is renamed into the Ministry of Industry & Finance. The MIF welds the institutional pillars of production and capital, and places their conjoined interests in the hands of a class of well-educated technocrats who were well-aware that their success would be rewarded handsomely — with bonuses and promotions —and failure would be punished harshly — quite possibly with their own lives at worst. This period further deepened Thailand’s ideological alignment with the United States and the US’ closest allies, and nowhere was this more explicit than in the growing relationship with Israel. In mid-1986, Thailand and Israel sign a free trade agreement that the NECPTNVAES portrays as a concordat between two “islands” surrounded by common enemies of communism and socialism. The agreement is economically substantial and opens Thai markets to Israeli technology and military-industrial partnerships while encouraging a flow of investment and joint ventures. In diplomatic terms, it reveals the New Thai Regime’s worldview; with Thailand agreeing to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, Sinai, Gaza, and Suez Canal. The regime began the process of selling its old Tel Aviv embassy and transferring operations to Jerusalem, and makes a point of designing the new mission around commerce: the new Jerusalem embassy features a significantly expanded trade office, staffed not as a normal diplomatic posting but as an outward-facing extension of the Ministry of Industry & Finance. Trade attachés became quasi-planners, tasked with identifying technologies, security methods, agricultural techniques, and industrial partnerships that could be imported into the Thai miracle. While the junta sees substantial influent over military and foreign affairs, the domestic economic engine ran under the suzerainty of the MIF. While NECPTNVAES’ grip on political power was certainly firm, it increasingly left day-to-day economic governance to its technocrats, whose power grew into something like a secular priesthood. The baht–dollar peg was near sacrosanct sacred, part of the regime’s preference for policies that made Thailand feel frictionless to foreign capital. Corporate tax cuts remained reduced, tax holidays continued for sufficiently large foreign investments, and restrictions on foreign participation in land development and the stock market were relaxed even further — negligible outside of rural areas. Minimum wages remained intentionally suppressed, effectively frozen in real terms to ensure that wages stayed “elastic” and market-driven, while remittances from Thai workers abroad remained tax-free. The NECPTNVAES was all in on neoliberalism; viewing economic growth as a moral imperative and redistribution a dangerous temptation that led nations back toward poverty and agitation. The miracle that emerged was therefore not merely economic but psychological: Thai citizens began to internalize the idea that prosperity was a function of obedience, and that stability was the price paid for modern life.

The Thai National Broadcasting Service becomes the regime’s most powerful instrument for public relations and manufacturing mass culture. Following TNBS founding in 1985, the years that follow see it become the beating heart of Thai pop culture, an institution that go far beyond junta spokesman repeating slogans. TNBS executives study and learn from BBC, American majors (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.), and recruits consultants from the West to design its programming, production, and formatting. TNBS does both the regular public broadcaster role — carrying royal ceremonies, Buddhist sermons from the State Sangha’s Patriarch, and coverage of news stories both domestic and foreign. Additionally it, inspired specifically by MTV’s success in US and Europe, catalyzes a pop culture shift as television and tv series become a major part of Thai society in a way that had simply never been seen before. Lakorn — a form of popular Thai soap operas — achieved a level of national reach and synchronicity that pumped the same story lines, themes, motivations, and desires into the heads of entire generations each night at prime time. The film and music industries likewise follow suit — part of this wider Thai cultural flourishing. The creative sector is granted a fair deal of creative license so long as it respects the regime’s very clear red lines: no criticism of military rule, no satire of the monarchy, no sympathy for leftist politics, and no sexual indecency that challenged the state’s Buddhist-family ethic. Within those boundaries, Thailand’s emergent entertainment industry is given ample room to flourish. City pop, which followed the influx of Japanese capital and products which flood Bangkok, gained widespread popularity among the urban youth and middle class, while a general trend toward Westernization in music continues from the 1970s. What results is a Thailand that looks increasingly modern — stylish, trendy, beaming with fast consumerist impulses — while remaining totally politically controlled.

It was in this environment of controlled modernization that the War on Drugs came to Thailand. The NECPTNVAES viewed the narcotics industry not merely as crime but as an uncontrolled societal pillar capable of challenging state authority. The Golden Triangle which partially encompassed Thailand’s northern extremities had long been linked trafficking networks across neighbouring communist states. Beginning in 1986 and intensifying through 1987, the northern frontier areas Laos and Burma are further militarized and fortified. Persons crossing outside official checkpoints are treated as hostile by default, subject to detention, interdiction, and, under the most aggressive rules of engagement, lethal force if attempting to flee. The Thai government posts signs along border crossings warning would be illegal migrants of the severity with which the possession of illegal drugs and illegal border crossings are treated by the Thai state. The Narcotics Suppression Bureau the Royal Thai Police is expanded dramatically and rapidly gains a reputation for violence: armed with modern equipment and near-total operational immunity. Opium fields are razed as part of a publicized eradication campaigns broadcast by the TNBS. Emergency decrees escalate penalties toward death for those engaged in cultivation, processing, distribution, or smuggling of heroin or illegal opium. The New Thai Regime uses these laws not only against traffickers but against anyone it could plausibly frame as a facilitator. The violence introduced into the Thai drug trade is qualitatively different from any earlier eras. The state switches gears from being reactive and punitive to being demonstrative and proactive. Grand campaigns are executed to make participation in the narcotics economy feel existentially suicidal for all who’d dare to engage. At the same time, the regime’s security state engages in the hypocrisy that has played almost every front of the modern War on Drugs. The Royal Thai Police Special Branch Bureau, Thailand’s secret police, while publicly waging war on narcotics, covertly tolerates and manipulates certain trafficking routes when doing so serves external objectives. From 1987 onward, the Special Branch quietly allows the movement of narcotics out of Thailand to Cambodian royalist guerrilla networks fighting Vietnamese-backed forces, allowing such groups to sell narcotics and raise funds for arms and equipment.

Thailand’s anti-communist agenda is not confined to Cambodia. In 1988, with the NECPTNVAES already operating as a regional sponsor of anti-communist networks, the regime oversees the formation of the Patriotic Committee for the National Liberation of Laos, based in Chiang Mai. The PCNLL is publicly a refugee-led cultural and political association, but in effect is a Thai intelligence front organization designed to keep pressure on the Pathet Lao and at some unknown date seize the opportunity to overthrow the Pathet Lao. The committee draws heavily from Laotian royalist refugees who had fled after the communist takeover and remained in northern Thailand, joined by former Laotian business figures, bureaucrats, and military personnel who’ve never fully accepted that their state had died. At its head sat Royal Laotian Army General Phoumi Nosavan, a major who had served as the strongman leader of Laos during the late-1950s and early-1960s. Nosavan had escaped to Thailand in the late 1970s with a small entourage and carried a reputation for being both articulate and cunning. Nosavan becomes the committee’s public face, viewed as the most high ranking Laotian refugee who hasn’t escaped to France or the United States. Under his leadership, the PCNLL pursues an array of active measures: creation of propaganda intended for clandestine distribution inside Laos, fundraising through diaspora channels in the United States and France, international lobbying for pressure against the Pathet Lao, and small-scale cross-border sabotage efforts conducted with quiet assistance from Thai intelligence services. The NECPTNVAES views these as part of a policy of long term destabilization against what it considers to be the most threatening of its communist neighbors. This threat was not necessarily directly military in nature, but the fact that a fellow Tai people had come under the control of communism — a people who could speak directly to Thai in their own language.

When the 1989 parliamentary election arrives, the outcome was certainly not shocking to anyone watching: the Thai People’s Party secured another two-thirds supermajority, while the Thai Socialist Nationalist Party remains the minority opposition with roughly one-third of seats. The parliament once again confirms Lt. Gen. Anurak Suthammarat for another term as Prime Minister, and King Rama IX approves the appointment in the manner that has now become the norm under the New Thai Regime. TNBS treats the election as a national affirmation, saturating coverage with language of unity, discipline, and development, while quietly minimizing any mention of dissent beyond the permissible boundaries. TNBS borrows tricks from Western election coverage, seeking to make Thai feel truly invested in an election everyone essentially knew the outcome of. Rally speeches, campaign advertisements, and campaign songs all find play on TNBS and produces an atmosphere that this very managed democracy is truly real and not simply a gesture. Yet as the regime approaches a decade in power, the costs of its structure began to evolve. By March 1990, a new form of corruption has become institutionalized. Instead of the petty bribery of low-level clerks and traffic police, which the technocratic restructuring had genuinely reduced, out springs the grand corruption of elite access. The consolidation of economic activity into fewer and larger “national champions” had, on paper, made Thailand feel more orderly and modern: fewer small gatekeepers meant fewer small bribes. But it also concentrated leverage into the hands of conglomerates and foreign partners capable of paying for policy. High-level officials, particularly members of the NECPTNVAES junta and their extended networks, become the true points of transaction. A business license is no longer greased at the counter, but a lump sum donation to a junta member can extend your corporate tax holiday by a few years. The sums involved escalated accordingly. For your average Thai, there was a sense of liberty in no longer having to shell out bribes constantly, but for the elites there was now ever more opportunity to “lobby” for their interests. While UC Clique often projected an image of incorruptibility, and in many cases it was true at the operational level (planners and economists received bonuses and promotions for economic growth), the military guardians above them began to behave like a quasi-aristocracy. By 1990, wealth was routed into anonymous accounts in Lebanon, Panama, and Singapore before being filtered through American and Caribbean shell companies and parked in real estate that could not be touched by Thai political winds. Rumors of senior figures purchasing assets abroad spread within Bangkok’s elite conversation — generals hosting lavish parties at estates in the south or abroad. Among the most notorious stories was that Lt. Gen. Anurak Suthammarat had acquired a plethora of properties in California, including a 40-acre estate in the Topanga area. The estate was fitted with a private airstrip, 12 car garage, pools, and lush gardens.

The NECPTNVAES ultimately justifies its authority by pointing to threats. Hence, in 1990 the emergency decree that had allowed the continuation of NECPTNVAES oversight through 1990 is extended once more to 1995. The TPP-led parliament cites the continued war in Cambodia and the communist insurgency in Malaysia as proof that Thailand could not afford a loosening of guardianship. The Thai People’s Party’s parliamentary leadership echo this repeatedly in speeches, alongside long lists of achievements that in summary tout that: Thailand was richer and more modern than it had been in 1980, the region remained dangerous, and therefore New Thai Regime must remain intact until the next milestone of safety was reached. By March 1990, Thailand has become a country that was viewed by many as a country of the future — gleaming urban districts, in flows of global capital, a thriving popular culture, increasing consumerism. All the while it remains governed by the social contract of April 1980: growth in exchange for obedience, security in exchange for silence, and quiet acceptance that the military would never truly have to leave politics.