Federated States (Yellowstone: 1936)

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Federated States of Africa
États fédérés de l'Afrique
Timeline: Yellowstone: 1936
OTL equivalent: Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo

Flag Seal Location of Federated States Location of Federated States Motto Tandem liberi sumus (Latin) ("We are free at last")
Anthem	"Lift Up Your Voice"
Capital	Freetown
Largest city	Monrovia
Other cities	n/a
Language   official	English, French
others	Others outlawed
Religion   main	Catholic Christianity
others	Others outlawed
Ethnic Groups   main	African-Americans
others	Amero-Liberians
Demonym	Africans
Government	Single-party state Totalitarian dictatorship
Legislature	Federated States Congress
President	n/a
Vice President	n/a
Area	1,626,330 km²
Population	187,245,582
Established	17 February 1941
Currency	African dollar
Time Zone	Greenwich Mean Time (UTC+0)
Calling Code	+5
Internet TLD	.na
Nominal GDP	FS$7.909 trillion (2013) FS$42,242 (per capita)

The Federated States of Africa is a large nation located in West Africa. It was established in 1941 by African-Americans fleeing the disaster in North America following the Yellowstone Eruption in 1936. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled the nation, and resettled in Liberia, where the government provided them with shelter and citizenship. However, Liberia's government was later taken over by the rapidly growing African-American population, and the nation re-branded as the Federated States of Africa in 1941. Today, the republic is home to 187,245,582 residents, and the leading power in the region.

Thanks to the plentiful resources and the lack of resistance in the region, Federated States has been able to establish itself as the dominant power in West Africa. Due to the origins of the government, Federated States is a totalitarian dictatorship, which has come possess an iron grip on national policy and social norms in the region. Federated States views itself as the sole heir to the future of Africa, which was greatly depopulated by the catastrophe in North America. The state adopted many ideals from the Nazi Party in Germany, which inspired the early leadership of Federated States during the ice age that followed Yellowstone.

Today, government is obsessed with establishing itself as the sole government on the African continent, convinced that its citizens are the true heirs of all Africa. This has caused contention with its neighbors, who fear the danger posed by Federated States, and have placed numerous sanctions on the fascist state. Despite this, Federated States has emerged from the Yellowstone Eruption as one of the most powerful nations in the world, and maintains one of the finest military forces on the continent. With a rapidly expanding population and a growing desire to fulfill its original mandate, few doubt that war is on the horizon with Federated States.

History

Pre-Eruption

The African nation can trace its origins to the Back to Africa campaigns of the 19th and 20th centuries, attempts to prompt African diaspora to their motherland had been popular. The nations of Liberia and Sierra Leone were formed by the United States and Great Britain respectively to provide their African populations with a new homeland to settle down in as their own. These failed greatly due to economic pressures, military threats, and political incompetence on all sides. Before the eruption, African-Americans, black Britons, French blacks, the two groups that would go on to form the basis of the African population in the modern day, did not wish to leave their homes for a forbidding land, that as one scholar put it, they had been generations removed from and were unwelcome.

This trend would continue for many decades until the arrival of Marcus Garvey to the United States from Jamaica in the 1920s. He built up a popular following of African-Americans to support his push for a major Back-to-Africa movement, which facilitated the creation of a major shipping company known as Black Star Line, which would serve to ferry volunteers back to Africa. It was a major economical flop, as many African-Americans still felt America was the new homeland, and that Africa did not hold much promise for them as immigrants. This course was only marginally altered by Garvey until he was brought up on mail fraud by the U.S. government.

Others such as W.E.B. Du Bois would continue to champion the rights of African-Americans at home, while the situation in the United Kingdom and France became increasingly difficult for Africans there. Until the eruption, the social standing of the African diaspora had been very poor, and in the United States for example, many African-Americans moved north where their economic situation had improve, but on a wider level, they were still at the very bottom of the social ladder. Attempts to remedy the matter as a whole failed, and segregation continued in many regions that were considered "forward-thinking" and "paragons of justice", such as in Waco, Texas.

Yellowstone Eruption

When Yellowstone erupted in 1936, emergency efforts undertaken by the United States in many areas, often cut off due to rioting and chaos, ignored many prominent black neighborhoods, and totally excluded majority black areas of cities, which were deemed "lost" by government sources. Outraged, many African-American citizens banded together to save their neighborhoods as they burned, were suffocated by toxic ash, or attacked by white civilians looking for food and shelter. A second migration rivaling that of the Great Migration in the 1920s, saw millions of African-Americans moving to the south where the status was much better. However, they came under the strict laws and curfews of the state governments there. News of the eruption moved quickly, with Marcus Garvey getting the word in London, England. With a chance to see his dream of a mass migration of African-Americans back to Africa, an attempt that failed due to his deportation from the United States, Garvey moved quickly to have himself smuggled into the United States to New York, where he still had a large following.

Garvey returns to the United States in 1937 came under the guise of his desire to help oversee the efforts undertaken by the NAACP under Du Bois. Garvey's organization, the UNIA, was already assisting with efforts to protect African-American communities, though Garvey remained astonished by the lack of care his people received compared to other groups, especially by the American government. With his goal still in mind, Garvey capitalized upon the government's failure to send aid to black neighborhoods, or protect them when white Americans ransacked their homes to gain food and water. Garvey pushed for a renewed attempt to begin an exodus to Africa, where there was plenty of land and food, and rallied many supporters in his speeches, often causing fights between himself and Du Bois, who felt that Garvey was exploiting the suffering of black Americans to gain power for himself. Though they came to despise the other, both came to the understanding that the current situation they and their people were in was not sustainable. Starvation had killed off many tens of thousands of people in the south, and even the government could not support itself. The decision to leave the United States was thus accepted as the most logical answer to their problems.

Exodus to Africa

Following the eruption of Yellowstone in 1936, it was acknowledged that the African-American population could not remain in the United States, where they were being systematically cut off from government aid as it went to more "critical regions" of the United States. Garvey and Du Bois, often considered the two most powerful black men in America, agreed that they had to leave the country or die fighting ash covered fields and ruined cities. Black Star Line was re-established in 1938, and numerous ships were purchased by the NAACP and the numerous supporters who contributed their savings to the purchase of cargo ships. Seven vessels were acquired by the line, and an agreement was reached with the government of Liberia, which agreed to take in the fleeing refugees as the resources at home began to dwindle. With the fleet, a total of 5,063 people could be moved between New York and Liberia every six, allowing for a total 25,315 refugees to be be every month, exactly what Garvey was seeking to accomplish.

Between 1938 and 1941, tens of thousands of African-Americans fled to Liberia through Black Star Line. They were later joined by others, such as black Britons who were fleeing the British Isles as the ice caps began to cover the northern half of the islands, but lacked a valid destination as many had no intentions of moving to a foreign land with foreign people who were unaccustomed to their way of life. Though they were not motivated for the same reasons as the African-Americans, they saw Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone as the best places to restart their lives, especially when given the promise that their way of life would be maintained and even improved with their help. The exodus did not go unnoticed by international powers, as fears of a major conflict in the region by Europe's greatest nations, saw France and Britain seek to make efforts to contain the African diaspora moving to Africa. However, with an action conflict with a massive desert in between them and Liberia, little was done in the end.

Of course, the exodus had its moments of pain. Two of ships purchased by Black Star Line, the SS Yarmouth and the SS Shadyside, sank in 1940 and 1942. The Yarmouth took with it 1,180 passengers, and the Shadyside more than a thousand. Many passenger vessels saw dozens of people dying of preventable diseases that the ship had no medicine for. By the end of the exodus as a major voyage in 1943, out of the estimated 950,000 African-Americans and other African diaspora groups that moved to West Africa, some 17,000 died during the trip and later resettlement of the land. Though it was an costly trip, a considerable fraction of the black population in the United States moved to West Africa, and several thousands in Britain and France followed. The long and difficult road to establishing a system that was able to support the exodite population was underway, and attempts to ensure that all could contribute in a beneficial manner were taking place at a rapid pace.

Coup d'etat and civil war

Main article: Liberian Civil War

The government of Liberia was keen to ensure that the in influx of refugees were put to ease when they arrived from the United States, with many members of the leadership of the NAACP and the UNIA invited to join the government as ministers to show solidarity with their fellow brothers. Garvey had negotiated the terms to have this happen during his first trip to Liberia in 1937, pushing for government offices to placate the African-American refugees who were entering the country. Garvey was selected to become Secretary of Defense, largely given his strong militaristic stand that many felt would help improve the military position of Liberia. This, however, would prove to be a major mistake by the Liberians. Garvey was highly motivated by his desire to create a large and successful black nationalist empire in Africa, which he felt was important to the uplifting of Africans in the world of the time. He and his supporters established a militia group whose agenda was to prepare Liberia for the coming crusade that would unite blacks all across the world under the flag of a black empire.

The Liberian military was too small and poorly equipped to stop Garvey from taking over the government when he made his move, leading to a swift and relatively bloodless coup in the eve of 1938. Garvey was quick to kill of those who disagreed with his principles, and this led to, in turn, another crisis. Du Bois, the moderate and humanitarian, spoke out against Garvey and his violent rule, stating that he would only weaken his nation and his people and place a great divide within the refugee population. The NAACP, the most prominent group leading the population, denounced Garvey's power grab and informed their members not to support him. The UNIA which followed Garvey, did the exact opposite, telling its members that the NAACP was weakening the black nation and inciting them to weakness in a time they should not have been shrinking back in fear of expanding their lands. Garvey declared Du Bois a traitor to the state only a week after he took power, and Du Bois rebuked Garvey as President of Liberia.

By early 1939, Liberia had erupted into civil war, with the moderate NAACP forces seeking a peaceful existence in West Africa, combating the extremist UNIA forces, who wished to establish a large and powerful black empire in the region. During the war's course, the NAACP made many gains that weakened Garvey to a point observers were predicting his fall. However, Garvey was simply consolidating his political power and expanding his military power by playing on the previous falling of the NAACP back in the United States. Many African-Americans were not at all pleased with the fact the organization had failed to pull through on its promises back home, and now that they had a chance for a better life as an equal to the white European nations, they felt as if the NAACP was intentionally holding them back. Garvey successfully turned the NAACP members against their leaders, and weakened the organization from the inside out during the war. With members defecting to his own UNIA, Garney delivered the death blow to Du Bois in August of 1939, destroying the NAACP at Harper. However, Du Bois was spared in an act of generosity by Garvey to curry favor with the few remaining forces of the NAACP, all part of his next set of goals.

West African Campaign

Main article: West African Campaign

Garvey's war with Du Bois had drained Liberia of resources and caused much division within the new government. He was lacking fertile land to support the massive population surge, and the lack of accessible minerals saw the tiny mining dying, resulting in a spike in unemployment. Many of his citizens were soon questioning his authority and ability to govern, and Garvey could feel the end of his rule looming over ahead. With that, Garvey resolved that he needed a distraction and an outlet, a way to preserve his government as well as his nation's stability. In 1939, Garvey convened an emergency meeting with all of his cabinet members, and explained that Liberia's resources could not sustain the nation as it was, and that food stores were not large enough to fed the population. He proposed an invasion of French West Africa, putting the massive 75,000-man military force he had accumulated during the civil war, as well as the absence of French troops in the sub-Saharan regions of their colonial empire. Capitalizing on the limitations of the French navy and air force, as well as the response time thanks to the Sahara's size and severity, the Liberian military moved quickly to strike against the French forces in neighboring Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea.

Numerous gains were made during the beginning of the campaign, with the cities of Conakry, Abidjan, Nzekekore fell quickly to Liberian troops, and the few French garrisons in the region were quickly destroyed before sizable reinforcements could reach them. The push north and east inadvertently saw many British territories taken by the overzealous Liberian soldiers. British civilians were massacred, and their homes seized by the Liberian government, which turned them over to native Africans in exchange for their loyalty to Monrovia. Building upon the desire of the native populations to overthrow European rule, the Liberian gained tens of thousands of supporters by promoting a platform in which they would have greater freedoms and equality denied to them under the colonial governments of Europe. With no local support and a hostile army moving on their positions, the French and the British had to abandon many of their military bases in the region, and retreat beyond the Niger River, with the French in particular having to fall back into the Sahara itself as the Liberian-led armies captured the cities of Nouakchott, Adagez, and Mali up to the northern half.

The British who were caught in the crossfire were decisively pushed out of Nigeria and into Cameroon, with all of their colonies in West Africa successful taken by the Liberian military. The Liberian successes can be attributed to a number of convenient events that were taking place in Europe during the time of the war. France and Britain were neck-high in the middle of a conflict at the time of the campaign, and the Yellowstone catastrophe had forced many Britons to flee the home islands, leaving the British military without a nearby industrial base to support the war effort, nor a large naval presence needed to move troops to West Africa, as these ships were being used to evacuate the British population to India. Likewise, the French military had been devastated by the German invasion of France, and the troop level in Sub-Saharan Africa had dropped as troops were moved north to protect the more valuable North African territories under French control, which would come to serve as the future French nation. Thus, Liberia was free to move as quickly or as slowly as needed to make whatever gains were necessary to win the campaign.

Military

Main article: Federal African Armed Forces

Federated States maintains a small, yet highly advanced and well-trained military force, whose history dates back to the 1940s. The African Armed Forces is the official military force of the nation, tasked with upholding the tenets of the nation as well as protecting the integrity of the nation from foreign invasion and local insurgency. The FAAF possesses a force of 1,050,152 personnel, which is divided into four branches; the Federal African Army (FAA), Federal African Navy (FAN), Federal African Air Force (FAAF), and the African Marine Corps (FSMC). As of 2013, the military had a total budget of FS$205.650 billion, or 2.6% of the national GDP. The government has earmarked a portion of the current budget to go toward the production of new tanks, aircraft, and warships, as it has been planning a renewed series of invasions of the weakened nations that border it.

The FAAF is well-known throughout the region for its violent and unforgiving doctrines, such as the total destruction of the enemy force. During the expansion of Federated States in the 1950s, African ethnic groups that refused to join the republic or stood against them were marked for genocide, a tactic the military relied on the pacify the lands it conquered and prevent its tiny numbers from being stretched throughout an unforgiving landscape fighting insurgents in Federated States while fighting an active war. Its reputation has thus tainted the international view of the African government, and weapon sanctions against the government have resulted in the military having to produce its own. This has had the unexpected effect of encouraging and supporting a local defense industry in Federated States.

In its early history, the military could not afford to maintain a large, powerful military force in the economically weak and largely underdeveloped lands of West Africa. Thus, what it could not have in quantity, it made up for in quality, seeking to improve the individual lethality of each soldier on the field, allowing the military as a whole to punch far beyond its collective weight. A level of isolationism has seen the military focus on maintaining a strong lead on its rivals by keeping its technological capabilities ahead of them, and ensuring that its ability to project its power overseas is sustained. By law, the nation may enter into a permanent military alliance with another nation, but may support them temporarily as an ally during wartime.

Economy

Federated States is classified as a high-income economy, with a national GDP of FS$7.909 trillion, and a per capita income of FS$42,242. Most of population is employed in the industrial and service sectors, while only a minority of the population is employed with the agricultural sector. Currently, the economy of Federated States is supported by the vast mineral resources of West Africa, such as petroleum, diamonds, gold, silver, and iron. The military has played a large role in advancing efforts by the government to increase its industrial capacity, and increase the abilities of the state to produce all of the goods it cannot acquire overseas. Many of the resources produced at home go into the sustaining of the vast military-industrial complex set up in the nation during the 1950s. The waging of war and growth of the military is thus of economic interest of the government the companies that support it.

Transport

Before the Yellowstone Eruption, West Africa was one of the most underdeveloped regions on Earth. The colonial governments supported by their European nations, used the roads and railways for economic activities linked to mining gold and diamonds, as well as other precious metals and gems that supported the growth of the economies in Europe. Thus, the transportation network was not developed for the benefit of the local inhabitants, but for the foreign governments that exploited them and their land. Following the arrival of the African government, these roads and railways were rebuilt to Western standards and to support the new industrialization that was taking place under the new government. Thousands of miles of road and rail were laid down by government-sponsored contractors, that employed the few remaining peoples in the region after Yellowstone killed off most of them. However, slave labor played a large role in the transportation network built up by the government.

Today, Federated States possesses one of the most modern transportation networks in the world, as well as one of the safest. One can drive from Freetown to Accra much faster than before the reconstruction efforts, and rail transportation is considered one of the most extensive on the continent. With increased urbanization in many of the major cities inland, the need for greater methods of transport were considered. High-speed rails link all of the major cities along the coastline, and as of the 1980s, a number of these rails connect the cities of the interior. Elsewhere, air transport in Federated States is quite phenomenal. There are an estimated three hundred paved runways in Federated States, of which thirty are major airports. The heightened demand for air travel have lessened the impact on the road network, allowing the state to increase funding on improving the roads without the fear of their wearing down in the future.

Demographics

Language

English and French are the official languages of Federated States, enforced on the land following the coup that formed the current government of the nation. Arabic was outlawed by the government in 1948 to weaken the growth of Islam in the nation, which itself had been outlaw three years earlier. With few Africans learning Arabic, and any books such as Qur'an, written exclusively in Arabic, burned by the government, Islam died out as a major religion in the nation. French became an official language due to many of the territories in the country once controlled by the French. It is estimated that some 15.1 million Africans speak French as their first or second language. The growth of French as a major language came as a result of hundreds of thousands of French Blacks moving to Federated States in the 1950s and 60s, and thus contributing to the rise of French as an official language.

Numerous native languages have since been stamped out by the government in an attempt to increase homogeneity in the population, and weaken the power of local tribes and clans over their members. Speaking a non-sanctioned language in a public center is a punishable offence, and can bring upwards of six months to a year of hard labor, and for multiple offences, five years in prison. Those caught teaching non-sanctioned languages to others and attempting to promote their usage in the countryside, are brought to trial and executed by the military for sedition and treason. Currently, there are a total of 113 records of such executions between 1950 and 2012. As a result, the government has been partially successful in stamping out nearly all other languages bar English and French.

Religion

The government adopted Catholic Christianity as the state religion in 1949, following the rise of the new government of the largely Catholic regions of West Africa. Islam and the numerous animist religions of West Africa were banned by the government in 1945. Possession of a Qur'an brings with it an immediate sentencing of death, as possession of such a book implies attempts to convert others to the belief, as only the wealthy and influential possess the ability to get their hands on such a book in a largely closed off nation. This people are often imams seeking to defy government authority and reintroduce Islam into Federated States. Currently, 93% of the total population are members of the African Catholic Church, while 4% are non-religious, and 1% consider themselves atheists.

The remaining 2% of the population is regarded by the government to be affiliated with non-sanctioned religions, and are currently being sought out by the government for conversion. The strict government-backed religious system has its roots in the government's desire to manipulate the people's beliefs in God and motivate them to fight for their God through the state. Thus, the state has a vested interest in keeping non-Christian beliefs out of the nation, which helps the government paint the beliefs such as Islam and Judaism as foreign beliefs that are attempting to weaken the African nation and prevent them from rising to the position that they so rightfully deserve - as told by the government, that is.