Republic of Ilhas Verdes (1983: Doomsday)

 The RIV, formally called the República das Ilhas Verdes, or more commonly Ilhas Verdes or Cabo Verde, is an island nation off of the coast of West Africa. It is the successor state to the former Republic of Cabo Verde. It is closely associated with the nation of Portugal.

Geography
The RIV is comprised of the entirety of the Cabo Verde archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 570 kilometres off the coast of West Africa. There are ten islands and eight islets, all volcanic in origin, arranged in a horseshoe-shaped cluster. Each island varies widely in terrain. Throughout most of history, the archipelago has been mostly arid, with a few islands exhibiting isolated areas of wet rainforest-like growth. The ecological effects of Doomsday, however, have resulted in a nearly 30% increase in regular rainfall on the islands, which has transformed the semi-arid islands into a reasonably lush and arable nation.

Much of the islands are dedicated to agricultural production, though there are a number of protected areas that host several endemic species, including multiple species of endangered birds.

Politics
The RIV is a presidential republic with a unicameral legislature. The National Assembly (Assembléia Nacional) has fifty-two seats and, unusually, does not have a Prime Minister. Executive power is vested in a separate branch, with a democratically elected President-Commander and an appointed cabinet. A national court system holds judicial power in the country.

The National Assembly is a highly multi-partid body; no less than seven parties currently hold seats, with five other separate parties having previously held seats in the Assembly. Currently, the government is formed by a coaliton of the left-centre environmentalist PG (Partido Verde), which holds fifteen seats, and the leftist NPS (Novo Partido Democrático), which holds nine seats. The official opposition is formed by the Christian centrist PDC (Partido Democrata Cristão), which holds fourteen seats. Other major parties include the formerly ruling Socialist Party, the moderate Labour Party, and the right-wing Citizen's Party.

The RIV maintains close ties with Portugal and Brazil, who are its main trading partners and provided vital aid during troubled times.

Economy
The economy of the RIV has very recently begun to expand as a result of massive government-funded programs. The economy could be described as more socialist than capitalist, with several large government-owned or sponsored companies dominating several sectors of the market. Private corporations still constitute a large portion of the market, however.

Agriculture has boomed as the climate on the islands improved for farming, and the Republic now provides almost 60% of its food consumption domestically, up from only 10% in 1983. Salt collection is a small, but profitable industry, and secondary manufacture businesses have begun to formulate, mostly around the manufacture of naval and aeronautic parts, and recently, the vehicles themselves.

Military
The RIV boasts a functional Armed Forces, if only a small one. It is rather more militarized than its close neighbor of Portugal, a left-over from its violent past. Roughly one in ninety citizens is a part of the RIV military, totalling almost three thousand members in all. It operates three naval vessels in total; one is an old Kondor I Class patrol boat, and two are João Coutinho-class corvettes purchased from the Portuguese navy in 2002.

It also operates two Antonov An-26 military air transports, recieved from the USSR in 1982. The nation originally possessed three, but one was destroyed during the post-genocide civil war.

History
Prior to Doomsday, Cabo Verde had only claimed independence in the last eight years, as a result of Portugal's Carnation Revolution. The PAICV (The African Party of Independence of Cabo Verde) ruled the country through a one party system that held the entire nation in a tight grip, with no end in sight.

Doomsday (1983)
When Doomsday struck the globe, the nascent Republic of Cabo Verde was spared any attack, being little more than a cast-off colony of the former Portuguese Empire. However, the crisis hit the island hard; with little rainfall and a lack of arable soil, almost ninety percent of the island's food source was lost as imports dried up overnight.

The country plunged into immediate chaos; President Pereira declared martial law, suspending the right to protest and ordering the military into the streets of Praia. In order to maintain civil order, any sign of anarchism was brutally suppressed. Severe rationing of food and basic materials was implemented within days as supplies began to dwindle.

Over the next few months, riots began to break out as food supplies disappeared. The government made every effort to increase agricultural production; non-edible cash crops were prohibited to clear agricultural space for food crops, and all the while the government funnelled large reserves of cash into irrigation and collective farming incentives. In the end, however, it was simply not enough, and the population began to starve.

Genocide (1983 - 1984)
The repressive government of Cabo Verde was faced with an impossible choice; to let the people starve on their own, or to make the unthinkable choice of deciding which citizens would live and which ones would die. On 14 December 1983, President Pereira issued a clandestine order to the military; shut down the food supply lines to the islands of Maio, Boa Vista, and Sal completely, in order to meet emergency level rationing for Santiago and other, more agriculturally productive islands.

Public media was completely shut out and refugees were prevented from leaving the island's shores, creating a de facto quarantine on the three islands. Due to this, the public was largely ignorant of what was occurring. Anyone who questioned the travel restriction on the three islands was quietly silenced through coercion, bribery, and assassination.

This state of affairs persisted for barely two and a half months before the story broke to the public media. In February 1984, after being refused a permit to travel to the islands for journalistic purposes, a group of enterprising reporters breached the quarantine and sent their story to the major island news media. By that time, more than 90% of the inhabitants had died; a total of more than twelve thousand people in all.

Rioting and public outrage soon followed. A military coup, supported by popular opinion, deposed the government in Praia, leaving the military-led MLM (Movimento de Libertação Militar) in charge of the island of Santiago. Meanwhile, however, a group of far-right citizens calling themselves the FLCV (Frente para a Liberdade dos Cidadãos de Cabo Verde) wary of the militaries involvement in the genocide, called for the dissolution of the military junta and took the shocking step of murdering thirteen military personnel stationed on the island of São Vicente.

Civil War (1984 - 1995)
What followed was thirteen years of brutal conflict and war. In 1986, disgusted and enraged with the attrocities commited by both sides, a protest organization headed by socialist-leaning military officers called the MLP (Movimento de Libertação Populista) radicalized under a new leader and began to engage in guerilla and milita operations against both the MLM and the FLCV.

By 1989, the MLM controlled roughly half of Cabo Verde; they had managed to estabish civil order in Praia and most of the smaller islands were quiet. Mindelo, the second largest city, however, was completely almost completely lawless, with all three factions fighting for control, with the MLM barely hanging on to control.

The MLM, though repressive, was not an especially violent organization towards the general public, and the provisional government Portugal endorsed them as the legitimate government of Cabo Verde, associating itself with the MLM junta. The Portuguese government refused to offer military aid, but supplied the MLM with relief aid convoys to help their ailing populace.

In 1992, a brief cease-fire was signed by the MLM and FLCV, on the promise of a transition to democratic government with eighteen months. The MLP was excluded from the agreement, as both parties viewed it as a radical terrorist organization. The cease-fire collapsed six months later, however, when the MLM delayed the transition by twelve months, citing difficulties in establishing civil order to prepare the way for elections.

By 1995, the MLP had ejected the other two factions from the city of Mindelo, and set about establishing a provisional government in the city. They promised democratic elections within twelve months and declared an end to the common MLM practice of random civillian searches. This risky move garned a major amount of public support for the MLP administration, forcing the other parties into a watchful acceptance of the situation.

Peace (1995 - 1999)
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Fighting continued for two years, until the MLM, unable to eject the MLP from the city of Mindelo, extended an offer of a cease-fire, backed up with the formation of a transitional council of both groups to guide the country to democratic elections. After deliberation, the MLP accepted, and the two parties officially declared an end to the war on 11 September 1997. The FLCV continued to carry out subversive operations against the the transitional government, but was quickly ferreted out within the next year as the military made a renewed, undistracted effort to hunt them down.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">The next two and a half years were spent re-establishing civil order, building a domestic and imported food base, and repairing the damage done to island infrastructure by the thirteen years of brutal fighting. A new consitution was drafted, assuring political and individual freedom for all citizens of Cabo Verde. By the time the new millenium came around, the transitional government was finally preparing for a free democratic election.

Democracy (2000 - Present)
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">On 1 May 2000, the first democratic election the islands had seen in over a decade and a half took place; due to the transitional government's reluctance to be seen as oppressive to political freedom, no less than nine parties earned enough votes to gain seats in the National Assembly. The largest was the PRP, a socialist-leaning party formed by several members of the MLP, which garnered 21.9% of the vote and won eleven of the fifty-two seats.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">The government was formed from a PRP-led coalition of five parties, holding a total of twenty-three seats. The official opposition was formed from the coalition lead by the PCCV, a centre-right party, with seventeen total seats. Under the rule of the PRP coalition, the government implemented a number of infrastructure projects, designed to re-energize the economy, and helped to establish a labour union for agricultural workers.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">In 2003, the government of Cabo Verde voted to change the name of the country to distance themselves from both their violent and repressive history and from the nation of Guinea-Bassau, which had been a part of the colony of Portuguese Africa along with the islands but later declared its own independence and rejected union with the islands.