1990s (Part 1)
The 1990s would be a turbulent time, and one which redrew the world as everyone knew it.
1990 started off with the Iron Curtain in tatters, and now many parts of the USSR were agitating for independence from Moscow. Perhaps a natural consequence of being essentially held together by force for decades, many of the nations of the USSR were agitating loudly for their independence. The protests got vicious and ugly in January and February 1990 in the Baltics and the Caucasus region, which had been shaken to bits just 14 months before by the massive earthquake of December 7, 1988. The explosive growth in nationalist media and the Soviet Union's rotten to the core economy contributed to the situation getting wildly out of control, By 1991, the Baltics, Armenia, Moldova and Azerbaijan had declared their independence. Gorbachev's attempts to keep the USSR together through a referendum in May 1991 failed, causing the Soviet Union to disintegrate. A coup by hardline forces in August 1991 just caused the military to turn on each other, causing much of Russia, Ukraine and several of the republics to devolve into a nasty, vicious civil war.
The USSR's collapse caused numerous incidents. One of the famous ones was numerous Soviet warships being unwilling to serve the coup plotters. The largest of these was nuclear-powered battlecruiser Kirov, which turned up without a flag flying at Simonstown, South Africa, in escort with a Udaloy-class destroyer and a Krivak class frigate. The South Africans interned the vessels and allowed the people who wished to stay in South Africa - which was virtually all of them - to stay in South Africa. Others included fighter pilots landing in Sweden, Finland, Japan and Turkey, and a number of other warships not wishing to be in the middle of the mess.
Ukraine was broken in half by the war. At least three cases of tactical nuclear weapons being used on opposing sides of the conflict were well known, and by 1992 the humanitarian situation was desperate. Some 125,000 refugees were accepted by South Africa and nearly 160,000 were accepted by East Africa, with others also being accepted by nations as far away as Australia, Canada and Argentina. By 1992, millions of refugees were reliant on food aid from everybody. Kennedy mobilized many aircraft of the US Air Force to do food deliveries, but when the Russian combatants refused to allow landings, the USAF air-dropped food and medical supplies into Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Fearing shoot-downs, many European Air Forces launched aircraft to protect the airlifters, and in one case in January 1992, MiG-29s of the Russian Air Force ran into allied escort aircraft, including Arrow FG.4s of the South African Air Force. Despite the age and size of the Arrows, their AIM-7M Sparrow missiles still did the job, destroying three MiGs with no losses. After several skirmishes resulted in only three fighters - two Luftwaffe F-4F Phantoms and a RAF Tornado ADV - being shot down and over two dozen Russian aircraft shot down, the Russians gave up trying to shoot down the airlifters.
By early 1994, both sides were exhausted, and the death toll had been ghastly to say the least - estimates ranged from 250,000 deaths to a million plus. Russia had broken into the European Russian Republic and the Russian Federation, the latter of which was largely east of the Urals. The economic damage was immense, and much of the population was forced to rely on Western aid for their survival. With the official armistice on March 24, 1994, food and supplies moved into European Russia by truck, train, ship and aircraft. Nobody had had the stomach to nuke any cities, so Russian cities were somewhat intact, but starvation was a major problem. Operation Restore Hope, as it was called by US President Bill Clinton, involved virtually every airlifter the USAF had and most of those of the NATO allies, and those of many other nations, as well as every truck and train that could be scrounged, as well as bulk cargo carries and grain vessels, who moved an astounding 224,000 tons of food into European Russia in a three-month period between May and August 1994. Russia, still led by President Boris Yeltsin, had little way of paying anyone back for the help, with his country's economy in shambles. That didn't stop him trying, though. Among other things, he said that any military gear that had been used for defections could be kept by the nations involved. When Prime Minister Biko pointed out to Yeltsin that a billion-dollar nuclear-powered battlecruiser was in South Africa's custody, his response was "If you can use it, keep it. I have no use for it with my nation in such a state, do I?" The nukes held by the two sides were quickly secured, as they in many cases unusable in any case. The nuclear scientists were quickly hired away by the various powers, including the African nations.
The mess in Russia was not the first event of the 1990s, however. That went to Iraq. Iraq, after its long and bitter 1980s war with Iran, had amassed a huge army, over half a million strong with thousands of tanks and heavy vehicles, and a massive air force. But the costs of the war with Iran had left Iraq virtually bankrupt, and the collapse of oil prices in the late 1980s made this situation worse. Iraq had always claimed that Kuwait was part of Iraq, and on August 2, 1990, sent its huge army to take the territory over by force. Caught unawares, the Kuwaiti army collapsed within hours and much of it fled across the border into Saudi Arabia. Saddam had figured that the world's attention was turned to the north with the crumbling USSR. A bad assumption, to say the least. Saddam had also taken a substantial number of westerners hostage, which did not sit well with most of the Allies. Within days, a naval embargo was established on Iraq, many vessels, including HMEAS Nairobi, HMSAS Witwatersrand and SWAS Kalahari, were on the scene to ensure the embargo was enforced. The United States assembled a coalition of nearly 50 nations to shove the Iraqis out, including all four of the African powers, as well as Egypt, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast. Over a million troops assembled in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, but the House of Saud, facing massive internal opposition, tried to placate it by allowing famed zealot Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda group to help protect the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. That did not turn out to be a good idea. As the troops massed in the Desert, Saddam had started fortifying his positions. On November 29, 1990, the UN laid down an ultimatum - Iraq would get out of Kuwait by January 15, 1991 or face being driven out by the coalition. Saddam responded to this by stupidly attacking a number of his neighbors and the coalition with Scud missiles. One of these landed on a children's hospital in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 35 people and wounding over 300. Another hit the barracks of the Korean Army near Hafar al Batin, killing 21 Korean soldiers. These attacks did nothing but tick people off and improve the support for the war. The Iraqis actions during the war, which included incredible amounts of pillaging and crimes against women, didn't help.
On January 15, 1991, the deadline passed and the Allies struck. The first shots were fired by battleship USS Missouri, and more fire from HMSAS Cape Town and SWAS Kalahari joined in the naval pasting. Over 120,000 aerial sorties were flown during the war, and one of the first was the demolition of an Iraqi supply depot by SAAF Victor bombers, which each dropped fifty-two 1000-pound bombs on the site. One escorting F-16 fighter was shot down by an Iraqi SAM in the raid, but the bombers escaped without loss. Ship-launched and ground-launched air strikes caused massive damage, though the Iraqi air force did attempt to put up a fight, they did little more than just lose planes in the attempt. Many of Iraq's air force fled to Iran, hoping to go back after the war was over. (The pilots were allowed to go home, but Iran kept the planes.) The air war was effective in wrecking any hopes Iraq had of organizing a major fight.
The ground war was equally effective. The coalition armies rolled over the Iraqis at the Battle of Khafji, though both sides took substantial casualties. A SAAF Canberra bomber was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crash-landed on its way back home, though the crew was rescued. Less lucky was a EAAF F-111, which was also hit by ground fire and crashed, killing both crewmen. The African armies had the advantage of their East African-designed Merkava IV main battle tanks, which were among the best in the world and easily a match to the American M1 Abrams and British Challenger 1 tanks, and leagues above Iraqi T-72s and T-62s. South African MT-40 "Rooikat" AFVs and MT-44 "Terminator" IFVs also cut Iraqi armored personnel carriers to pieces. The African I Corps, as the African army became known, was brutally effective - much more so than many had imagined. The units had virtually every advantage on the Iraqis, and even in tactical bungles, the African forces cleaned house, Taking only 27 dead in the Battle of 73 Easting but annihilating an Iraqi brigade. On February 25, the Africa Corps led the way into Iraq itself, having flatsmacked the Iraqi V Corps.
On March 1, Saddam attacked the African Forces with chemical weapons, claiming the lives of nearly 2000 troops. Now thoroughly pissed off, the Africans raced reinforcements to the area, and in many cases NBC-protected recovery vehicles grabbed the vehicles lost by unprotected troops and hauled them back, and when decontaminated and cleaned they went back out to destroy the Iraqis. The Saudis, who had not wanted a drive on Baghdad, now had little choice in the matter.
And then the Iraqis got lucky. A Scud attack landed on one of the palaces of the House of Saud, killing King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah. That caused a power vacuum right when it was not wanted. The Saudi leadership allowed the fight to continue, but there was now many problems and the remaining government only grudgingly supported the foreign intervention. The Africans headed all the way to Baghdad, but the Americans, to the surprise of many, decided not to go all the way. The British sided with their former colonies and went the distance, as did most of the fighters from the Commonwealth. The US kept them logistically supported in any case. The African I Corps and their allies, a force nearly 350,000 strong, quickly powered through Iraq, with Saddam's forces only able to offer token resistance. Africa's Air Forces did not have any real trouble helping their brothers on the ground out, either. On April 12, the African armies rolled into Baghdad, having taken 65,000 prisoners in the process. Saddam died when one of his palaces was bombed into rubble by SAAF Canberras and EAAF F-111s. His two sons were ambushed and killed in Sadr City, a mostly Shiite slum in Baghdad - of course, the leaders had been tipped off the Mossad. The African powers accepted the independence of Kurdistan, which briefly pissed off the Turks (but they came to like the idea after terrorist activity in the area largely stopped as a result) but brought down what little was left. The war over, the armies left some behind to help the new Iraqi government negotiate peace terms and get a new government set up.
But the mess in Saudi Arabia was getting nasty in one big hurry. Osama bin Laden's men had taken up defensive positions inside the holy cities, and Saudi Army personnel were expecting major problems rooting them out. The idea of fighting inside a holy city for the democratic government was not something even most of the Saudi Army liked very much. Realizing that many things could come out of this and few of them were good, by January 1992 the Saudi Army was being left to handle bin Laden and his men, realizing that non-Muslim forces helping the Saudis would just cause more problems. While the armies were home by April 1992, the mess in Saudi Arabia was just beginning. While the oil kept on flowing, the fighters in Saudi did not let up for some time.
The 1990s would be a turbulent time, and one which redrew the world as everyone knew it.
1990 started off with the Iron Curtain in tatters, and now many parts of the USSR were agitating for independence from Moscow. Perhaps a natural consequence of being essentially held together by force for decades, many of the nations of the USSR were agitating loudly for their independence. The protests got vicious and ugly in January and February 1990 in the Baltics and the Caucasus region, which had been shaken to bits just 14 months before by the massive earthquake of December 7, 1988. The explosive growth in nationalist media and the Soviet Union's rotten to the core economy contributed to the situation getting wildly out of control, By 1991, the Baltics, Armenia, Moldova and Azerbaijan had declared their independence. Gorbachev's attempts to keep the USSR together through a referendum in May 1991 failed, causing the Soviet Union to disintegrate. A coup by hardline forces in August 1991 just caused the military to turn on each other, causing much of Russia, Ukraine and several of the republics to devolve into a nasty, vicious civil war.
The USSR's collapse caused numerous incidents. One of the famous ones was numerous Soviet warships being unwilling to serve the coup plotters. The largest of these was nuclear-powered battlecruiser Kirov, which turned up without a flag flying at Simonstown, South Africa, in escort with a Udaloy-class destroyer and a Krivak class frigate. The South Africans interned the vessels and allowed the people who wished to stay in South Africa - which was virtually all of them - to stay in South Africa. Others included fighter pilots landing in Sweden, Finland, Japan and Turkey, and a number of other warships not wishing to be in the middle of the mess.
Ukraine was broken in half by the war. At least three cases of tactical nuclear weapons being used on opposing sides of the conflict were well known, and by 1992 the humanitarian situation was desperate. Some 125,000 refugees were accepted by South Africa and nearly 160,000 were accepted by East Africa, with others also being accepted by nations as far away as Australia, Canada and Argentina. By 1992, millions of refugees were reliant on food aid from everybody. Kennedy mobilized many aircraft of the US Air Force to do food deliveries, but when the Russian combatants refused to allow landings, the USAF air-dropped food and medical supplies into Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Fearing shoot-downs, many European Air Forces launched aircraft to protect the airlifters, and in one case in January 1992, MiG-29s of the Russian Air Force ran into allied escort aircraft, including Arrow FG.4s of the South African Air Force. Despite the age and size of the Arrows, their AIM-7M Sparrow missiles still did the job, destroying three MiGs with no losses. After several skirmishes resulted in only three fighters - two Luftwaffe F-4F Phantoms and a RAF Tornado ADV - being shot down and over two dozen Russian aircraft shot down, the Russians gave up trying to shoot down the airlifters.
By early 1994, both sides were exhausted, and the death toll had been ghastly to say the least - estimates ranged from 250,000 deaths to a million plus. Russia had broken into the European Russian Republic and the Russian Federation, the latter of which was largely east of the Urals. The economic damage was immense, and much of the population was forced to rely on Western aid for their survival. With the official armistice on March 24, 1994, food and supplies moved into European Russia by truck, train, ship and aircraft. Nobody had had the stomach to nuke any cities, so Russian cities were somewhat intact, but starvation was a major problem. Operation Restore Hope, as it was called by US President Bill Clinton, involved virtually every airlifter the USAF had and most of those of the NATO allies, and those of many other nations, as well as every truck and train that could be scrounged, as well as bulk cargo carries and grain vessels, who moved an astounding 224,000 tons of food into European Russia in a three-month period between May and August 1994. Russia, still led by President Boris Yeltsin, had little way of paying anyone back for the help, with his country's economy in shambles. That didn't stop him trying, though. Among other things, he said that any military gear that had been used for defections could be kept by the nations involved. When Prime Minister Biko pointed out to Yeltsin that a billion-dollar nuclear-powered battlecruiser was in South Africa's custody, his response was "If you can use it, keep it. I have no use for it with my nation in such a state, do I?" The nukes held by the two sides were quickly secured, as they in many cases unusable in any case. The nuclear scientists were quickly hired away by the various powers, including the African nations.
The mess in Russia was not the first event of the 1990s, however. That went to Iraq. Iraq, after its long and bitter 1980s war with Iran, had amassed a huge army, over half a million strong with thousands of tanks and heavy vehicles, and a massive air force. But the costs of the war with Iran had left Iraq virtually bankrupt, and the collapse of oil prices in the late 1980s made this situation worse. Iraq had always claimed that Kuwait was part of Iraq, and on August 2, 1990, sent its huge army to take the territory over by force. Caught unawares, the Kuwaiti army collapsed within hours and much of it fled across the border into Saudi Arabia. Saddam had figured that the world's attention was turned to the north with the crumbling USSR. A bad assumption, to say the least. Saddam had also taken a substantial number of westerners hostage, which did not sit well with most of the Allies. Within days, a naval embargo was established on Iraq, many vessels, including HMEAS Nairobi, HMSAS Witwatersrand and SWAS Kalahari, were on the scene to ensure the embargo was enforced. The United States assembled a coalition of nearly 50 nations to shove the Iraqis out, including all four of the African powers, as well as Egypt, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast. Over a million troops assembled in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, but the House of Saud, facing massive internal opposition, tried to placate it by allowing famed zealot Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda group to help protect the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. That did not turn out to be a good idea. As the troops massed in the Desert, Saddam had started fortifying his positions. On November 29, 1990, the UN laid down an ultimatum - Iraq would get out of Kuwait by January 15, 1991 or face being driven out by the coalition. Saddam responded to this by stupidly attacking a number of his neighbors and the coalition with Scud missiles. One of these landed on a children's hospital in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 35 people and wounding over 300. Another hit the barracks of the Korean Army near Hafar al Batin, killing 21 Korean soldiers. These attacks did nothing but tick people off and improve the support for the war. The Iraqis actions during the war, which included incredible amounts of pillaging and crimes against women, didn't help.
On January 15, 1991, the deadline passed and the Allies struck. The first shots were fired by battleship USS Missouri, and more fire from HMSAS Cape Town and SWAS Kalahari joined in the naval pasting. Over 120,000 aerial sorties were flown during the war, and one of the first was the demolition of an Iraqi supply depot by SAAF Victor bombers, which each dropped fifty-two 1000-pound bombs on the site. One escorting F-16 fighter was shot down by an Iraqi SAM in the raid, but the bombers escaped without loss. Ship-launched and ground-launched air strikes caused massive damage, though the Iraqi air force did attempt to put up a fight, they did little more than just lose planes in the attempt. Many of Iraq's air force fled to Iran, hoping to go back after the war was over. (The pilots were allowed to go home, but Iran kept the planes.) The air war was effective in wrecking any hopes Iraq had of organizing a major fight.
The ground war was equally effective. The coalition armies rolled over the Iraqis at the Battle of Khafji, though both sides took substantial casualties. A SAAF Canberra bomber was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crash-landed on its way back home, though the crew was rescued. Less lucky was a EAAF F-111, which was also hit by ground fire and crashed, killing both crewmen. The African armies had the advantage of their East African-designed Merkava IV main battle tanks, which were among the best in the world and easily a match to the American M1 Abrams and British Challenger 1 tanks, and leagues above Iraqi T-72s and T-62s. South African MT-40 "Rooikat" AFVs and MT-44 "Terminator" IFVs also cut Iraqi armored personnel carriers to pieces. The African I Corps, as the African army became known, was brutally effective - much more so than many had imagined. The units had virtually every advantage on the Iraqis, and even in tactical bungles, the African forces cleaned house, Taking only 27 dead in the Battle of 73 Easting but annihilating an Iraqi brigade. On February 25, the Africa Corps led the way into Iraq itself, having flatsmacked the Iraqi V Corps.
On March 1, Saddam attacked the African Forces with chemical weapons, claiming the lives of nearly 2000 troops. Now thoroughly pissed off, the Africans raced reinforcements to the area, and in many cases NBC-protected recovery vehicles grabbed the vehicles lost by unprotected troops and hauled them back, and when decontaminated and cleaned they went back out to destroy the Iraqis. The Saudis, who had not wanted a drive on Baghdad, now had little choice in the matter.
And then the Iraqis got lucky. A Scud attack landed on one of the palaces of the House of Saud, killing King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah. That caused a power vacuum right when it was not wanted. The Saudi leadership allowed the fight to continue, but there was now many problems and the remaining government only grudgingly supported the foreign intervention. The Africans headed all the way to Baghdad, but the Americans, to the surprise of many, decided not to go all the way. The British sided with their former colonies and went the distance, as did most of the fighters from the Commonwealth. The US kept them logistically supported in any case. The African I Corps and their allies, a force nearly 350,000 strong, quickly powered through Iraq, with Saddam's forces only able to offer token resistance. Africa's Air Forces did not have any real trouble helping their brothers on the ground out, either. On April 12, the African armies rolled into Baghdad, having taken 65,000 prisoners in the process. Saddam died when one of his palaces was bombed into rubble by SAAF Canberras and EAAF F-111s. His two sons were ambushed and killed in Sadr City, a mostly Shiite slum in Baghdad - of course, the leaders had been tipped off the Mossad. The African powers accepted the independence of Kurdistan, which briefly pissed off the Turks (but they came to like the idea after terrorist activity in the area largely stopped as a result) but brought down what little was left. The war over, the armies left some behind to help the new Iraqi government negotiate peace terms and get a new government set up.
But the mess in Saudi Arabia was getting nasty in one big hurry. Osama bin Laden's men had taken up defensive positions inside the holy cities, and Saudi Army personnel were expecting major problems rooting them out. The idea of fighting inside a holy city for the democratic government was not something even most of the Saudi Army liked very much. Realizing that many things could come out of this and few of them were good, by January 1992 the Saudi Army was being left to handle bin Laden and his men, realizing that non-Muslim forces helping the Saudis would just cause more problems. While the armies were home by April 1992, the mess in Saudi Arabia was just beginning. While the oil kept on flowing, the fighters in Saudi did not let up for some time.
