posters and flags

Flag of the The Bureau/Shan People's Republic/The Directorate

With the abdication of Vadim Yenisein in 1940, his heir Lev Tomsky took the throne as Supreme Chairman, and initiated a standing down from the "permanent revolution" of Yenisein's administration after a cabinet purge. The defeat of 41st and 77th Armies of the by the armored battalions of the Royal Army's Cavalry Corps in 1928 and 1933-35 proved to Tomsky and his followers that revolution by force of arms was inadequate at best, and suicidal at worst. In truth, Yenisein himself had come to this conclusion much earlier, although political inertia meant that acting on such beliefs was impossible until the mid '30's. Thus he laid much of the groundwork for Tomsky by removing obstinate opposition and "tilling the ground" to allow for a more thorough adoption of the New Economic Program of the early 1920's. Thus adopting a moderated path, most hardliners were purged and a path, similar to Julius Sverdlov's earlier proposals of a social-democratic organization, were fully embraced by the Politburo. Thus, the Permanent Revolution period that typified much of the '10's, '20's, and '30's died on the banks of the Orgon and Pasvik rivers.

Not all Socialists took this laying down, and by 1941 two new Internationals, in opposition to the Second International, had appeared. One, a resurrection of the First International that had opposed Hsingnu Supreme Chairman and Eternal Father of the Proletarian Revolution, Yenisein, and brought back the Agrarian Socialist Democratic values of Nerguel ("No Name"), and the other the Permanent Revolution of the "Early Yenisein". Waiting in the wings was the Fourth International, which would take values of No Name and apply them to their fullest, logical extent: forced de-urbanization, mass starvation as a political weapon, and aggressive pursuit of an austere and xenophobic autarky by expulsion of all foreign influence.

With the creation of the Golden Triangle in the Shan-Isaan-Melayan Kingdoms in the late 1940's, after the victory of the Jade Empire over southern Socialist rebels, these groups were pushed over the border. Having no other sources of income, many of these groups became sedentary and occupied or took over small farms, where they imported the practices of opium growing from Southern Yue. The Gallan Royal Army slowly began increasing its military presence in the region from its island colonies of Suwannaphuk in reaction to these incursions, and by the 1970's the Golden Triangle had taken full form. The Triangle was so named due to the shape of the heroin growing regions in the northern highlands of the Shan and Isaan states, and southern lowlands of the Melayan Kingdom, which resembled an isosceles triangle on a map. While cash crops were common in the region, opium exploded in popularity in the late '50's and early '60's, as many peasants would be conscripted into narco-armies formed from socialist forces. The destruction of drug growers in the Jade Empire in the 1960's, which was in the midst of the largest methamphetamine addiction in modern history at the time, and where even small sales could lead to punishment of breaking wheel, meant that many growers and distributors fled south. Thus, by the '70's, much of the northern Shan highlands had become overrun by cartels and drug kingpins looking to make a buck. Even staff officers as far as Roanapur Army Headquarters were not immune to the siren song of drug pushing, and it has been rumored and asserted by periodicals from the Great Yue that the Gallan Far East Theater Army has been a front for drug running and smuggling since at least the early 1980's. This has been denied by the Gallan military, which points to numerous successes in the capture and confiscation of high grade cocaine and heroin, and numerous itinerant drug lords in the region by the Roanapur Army.

Mired as it was in the growing Kampalan Crisis, as Frisian troops sought to encroach on Gallan territory in the sub-Sajaric deserts and jungles through the funding of guerrillas and judicious use of special forces, the Royal Army had little interest in another jungle war when news hit that several battalions of the Shan Army were routed by a large drug army during a raid on several opium growers in the Golden Triangle. Thus, beyond providing "advisors", materiel, and a few commando units from Suwannaphuk, the protectorate states of the Melayan Kingdom, the Shan Kingdom, and Isaan Republic found themselves battling the narco-armies on their own terms. The Jade Empire, interested in evicting its ancient enemy: the Federal Republic of Oumei, and its allies Galla and Layam, from the region in terms of military presence, found itself funding the narcokings, and supplying their armies with weapons. So too, did the Hsingnu People's Republic, which surreptitiously shuttled armaments and equipment to the region through cargo ships. Nominally opposed to each other, battles between the socialist and Celestial narco-armies erupted across the Golden Triangle. By the beginning of the '80's, the region was considered the deadliest in the world, with reported murder rates in Northern Shan peaking at 70 per 100k in 1982, albeit it is now believed that these are severe underestimates to the real extent of violence, which approached that of a low level civil war. Armed patrols by soldiers of the Shan Army were common, and Gallan advisors routinely found themselves dragged into skirmishes and gun battles with drug traffickers or debt collectors in the region by their students.

The Bureau, as it called itself, before conquering the Jingdong province of the Shan Kingdom and establishing an illegitimate, unrecognized state between 1984-1988 called The Directorate, was created in 1979 by the Wajin-Shan warlord, poet, narcolord, and mass murderer Nok Noi. Nok Noi, a pseudonym (Tai Shan: "little bird"), was reported by his prison biographer to have been chosen due to his avid hobby of birding and his related nickname. Born to a prestigious Wajin merchant clan in 1940, his father made a fortune plying the waterways. Nok Noi was educated in Gallia between 1965-1969. It was here that he found a book, Democracy in the New Era, produced by former Chairman of the Javan State Pak Sutan, which detailed radical forms of First International agrarian socialism. Pak Sutan had successfully led a colonial war during the 1960's and '70's against Frisian East Indies, supported by both Galla and the HPR. This would later be termed the Fourth International, as espoused by Nok Noi. Upon his return to the country, he found a nation "in ruin", saturated with narco-crimes and drug growers, "parasites" (feudal lords), and criminals, and felt that only radical and violent revolution could solve the problems of the Shan, Wajin, and Celestial peoples, which he would describe as suffering from "moral sickness" and "materialist malaise". The next decade would be spent preparing the groundwork for a general revolutionary overthrow, biding his time, and making deals with narco-kings in exchange for soldiers, power, or money.

Notable for his soft spoken nature, genteel demeanor, and known for always carrying a fan with a dove on it, Nok Noi's pseudonyms for himself were clearly inspired by other socialist leaders such as Yenisein, although his often changing names makes it hard to keep track of what he may have been called at certain time periods. It is known that he went by the pseudonyms "High Elder", "Nok", "69", and "Aniki" at various points in his life. His delicate tone and youthful appearance, even when in the throes of his most violent and aggressive rhetoric, provided him an extreme appeal to many Wajin, who had long been held as a easily blamed minority in the Shan Kingdom due to their outsize local influence and wealth. His brutal subjugation of wealthy peasant and urbanite alike earned him the backing of much of the rural agrarian highlands population, who often found they themselves were brutalized by monied families, and his rejection of modern mechanization meant that life for many rural peasants was hardly changed. By this point, Nok Noi was well known for his self-imposed and reportedly brutal asceticism, often eating as few as three or four times a week, sleeping on the ground, and refusal to use rickshaws. Nok Noi also enjoyed court theatrics and regularly went into hiding, only to reappear as coup plotters emerged, executing them and their families, at times hundreds of people, for the crime of daring to oppose him.

To Nok Noi there were only two kinds of people: "good" and "bad", "old" and "new", and that these two concepts were the same. Urbanites, the "new people" with their cities, materialism, and ostentatious wealth, did not care about the "old people", who supported them with back breaking labors and brutality at the hands of feudal lords who still ruled over traditional monarchical territories eve in the 20th century. The old people were, in a word, slaves, the new people were the masters, and it was the nature of slaves to overthrow their masters and establish new societies. Having played the role of a narco-shadow emperor through the late 1970's, Nok Noi felt that the Shan Kingdom was finally on its last legs. Supported as it were by Galla, this support was limited: weapons, materiel, and occasional training exercises. Meanwhile Hsingnu special forces troops trained the Wajin and Celestial peasants in socialist warfare, and in 1983 "the Bureau" announced its existence.

Calling itself the Shan People's Republic, the Bureau began a general armed offensive against the Shan Kingdom's ground troops. Notable for its use of "battle wagons", improvised fighting vehicles made from Gallan Motors G78 pickups and mounting mortars, heavy machine guns, aviation rockets, and anti-aircraft cannons. The SPR "army" moved rapidly to secure a foothold in the traditionally Wajin and Celestial territories of Jingdong, Lan Xang, and Falam. Ill-prepared and poorly trained, many Shan troops fled, leaving their armored vehicles, including tanks, and automatic weapons in their depots. Worse, many Celestial troops often defected, incensed by treatment of Modern HPR weapons, such as the "Grouse" surface-to-air missile, and the "Cockatrice" anti-tank guided missile, were also found in abundance. At least six Shan attack helicopters, Gallan-built Bretons, were shot down by Grouse missiles and 14.5mm machine guns during the first month. By mid-1984, the Shan Kingdom had collapsed in a general rout, and the Shan government fled to Suwannaphuk to seek assistance from the Gallan government. This took time, as Gallan administrators in Kiruna were initially incredulous that the Shan Kingdom had collapsed so quickly. Equally incredibly, the SPR had stopped near the waterline, the traditional dividing point between Wajin-Celestial and Shan parts of the country. A small attack across the waterline, mounted by about 100 battle wagons, was repulsed by a aero-naval bombardment from Royal Navy supercarriers, with two AJS.8 "Korsar" fighter-bombers being shot down by Grouse missiles, and a local counterattack by a Gallan airfield defense regiment in armored cars and light tanks, which had been positioned some 80 kilometers away from its garrison. After this "Battle of the Narrows", no further attacks against Shan Kingdom were noted for the next six months. Evidently the SPR had no interest in continuing to conquer and the rest of the Shan Kingdom as its lightning offensive had suddenly ground to a halt due to the appearance of a few bridges, and Galla's principal interests (military naval ports) were not significantly threatened, although hesitation remained in committing a large field force halfway across the world. Additionally, while socialist troops remained in control of the northern part of the country it was unlikely that the airfields would remain safe for very long. Oumei Defense and State Department officials also pressured Kiruna, offering to support them with ground troops, as the Federal Republic had several maritime patrol bomber groups stationed in the Shan Kingdom at the Gallan airbases.

In early 1985, the Directorate, as it now called itself, began a series of border skirmishes with the Isaan state, which ended with the Isaan Army destroying the Directorate's field forces in about a week, and leaving several small farming villages razed and pillaged. Isaan troops established a small foothold in northern SPR territory, and discovered a series of emptied villages, mass graves, and a handful of survivors living among the ruins. The survivors recounted tales of the northern cities being emptied overnight, the people who refused to leave being pushed back inside their homes and killed, and their houses burned to the ground. Cadres, saying that villagers only needed to pack "for a couple days" and "bring nothing with you", that they would be provided for, or that they needed to flee before Gallan bombers appeared. They all found themselves shoved onto buses and shuttled to the countryside after several hours of driving, and upon arrival all hope had been lost as they discovered themselves being dropped in a field with a few farmers, with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Reports of death camps, human experimentation, and mass rape had filtered back through word of mouth. Clearly something was happening, but the scale was still unknown.

In mid-1985, Isaan diplomats approached Galla with evidence that The Directorate had been systematically liquidating urban populations in the highlands, based on the dilapidated border villages and ground photos showing mass graves, purportedly dug by the victims with their hands. The Isaan President suggested that Shan troops, backed by Gallan forces from Suwannaphuk, and an overland assault into the highlands by the Isaan Army, could overthrow the Directorate in less than a month. In July 1985 the Supreme High Command ordered the Far East Theater to draft an invasion plan with the assistance of the Isaan Joint Board and Shan Armed Forces High Command. By December 1985, the plan was ready and the Far East Theater requested a full strategic bomb wing of Tpb.52 bombers (24 aircraft), "one or two" supercarriers, and an airborne brigade.

While overall hesitant to commit large amounts of ground troops to what the Supreme High Command saw as a potential quagmire, the Far East Commander was granted this deployment of aircraft and Suwannaphuk airbases rapidly filled with massive strategic bombers and airborne forces. The airborne brigade was denied, but a second strategic bomb wing was deployed to "compensate" for the lack of infantry troops. The Oumei Defense Department offered to provide a Marine Amphibious Unit, a battalion sized force, to the Far East Theater Commander, which was accepted without consultation. On Christmas 1985, ground troops of the Shan Kingdom, backed by 80 and 81 Commandos of the Royal Marines (Celestial and Wajin Commandos of the Far East Theater), 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, the Northern Army Group of Forces of the Isaan Army, and 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines of the Oumeian Federal Navy, launched a massive assault against the Directorate. Gallan Royal Navy supercarriers had committed a massive aero-naval bombardment, and Navy heavy bombers pounded suspected troop concentrations with successive carpet bombings. At least two Tpb.52s were shot down by mobile surface to air missile batteries that had been captured from Shan armories during the first week, with another six being heavily damaged. By January 10, 1986, the Allied expedition had regained much of the ground lost and liberated several extermination camps, where starving urban citizens had been left in advance of fleeing socialist cadres, and hundreds of mass graves, and several labor-extermination camps, had been discovered.

Massive, firepower oriented solutions, and small quantities of Wajin and Celestial Marines from 80 and 81 Commandos of the Royal Marines, ultimately gave the Shan Army the backbone it needed to resume the offensive, and the shock and violence of action of Gallan troops proved itself advantageous in retaking ground. Ultimately, Nok Noi's Directorate went underground by the end of the year, as liberating troops from Isaan and Galla were met by a surreal duality of either cheering crowds or starving peasants, hardly able to stand, depending on which town they drove through. Shan troops, whom many peasants and urban peoples alike still remembered doing nothing but fleeing, were met with scorn and occasional mob attacks. Sporadic fighting in the jungles against roving pockets of socialist guerrillas, resembling that of the Kampalan Crisis, were often broken by arrival of Royal Marine fighter-bombers and Royal Army cavalrymen in armored personnel carriers and main battle tanks. By mid-1987, a light infantry contingent of the Royal Army had arrived and committed itself to "anti-partisan" operations in the highlands, which had been reclaimed but remained intensely violent. This rotational deployment of paratroopers and cavalrymen continues to this day, although since 1989 the deployment of combat troops has been exceedingly rare. Preference tends to be for private contractors and mercenary forces, if any, to support the fledgling Shan forces.

For several months after the restoration of the Shan Kingdom's borders, Nok Noi's whereabouts remained unknown, and its was believed that he had been killed in a Tpb.52 bombing raid on a Directorate command post for a brief period. However in 1990, special forces rangers of the Royal Army captured Nok Noi in a cave after a brief firefight with several guerrillas. He surrendered peacefully, and evidently he had been hiding out with his most diehard followers, who would rather have died than be captured. Nok Noi was pulled out in front of cameras, calm as ever, and stated that he had no regrets during the televised trial of war crimes. Evidence amassed against him took several years to process, due to the literal mountains of bodies needed to be sorted through, although by now many international citizens had become aware of his crimes. By the end of the Directorate and Nok Noi's reign, it was believed that as many as 4 million Shan, 2 million Celestial, and 800,000 Wajin had been exterminated, and possibly a million other people of various smaller ethnes, overall nearly a third of the population of the northern high- and midlands, and many more left starved and malnourished in extermination camps. During his trial, Nok Noi stated that he "never gave orders to exterminate women, or young children, or babies", that "so many millions is too high", and "what I did was for the good of my nation (...) of my people".

Nok Noi was hanged by order of the Supreme Court of the Shan Kingdom in 1996 following a 5 year trial. In accordance with typical Buddhist funerary rites, Nok Noi's body was cremated in front of witnesses from the Federal Republic of Oumei (at war crimes trial as an observer), the Principality of Gallia, the Shan Kingdom, and the Isaan Republic. A dozen of his closest lieutenants, notable cadres, and extermination camp commandants, were also executed by hanging between 1999 and 2004.

The flag is a standard Socialist Green with a yellow dove on the foreground, indicative of the colors (green and gold) of the First International, and alluding to Nok Noi's personal hobby of birding. It is the only socialist flag in the world to not feature the two symbols of the Workers' and Peasants' Agrarian Army: the plow and pick, nor does it feature wheat or cogs, tanks, tractors, trains or factories in any of its symbols.

tl;dr bishi pol pot reads sukarczynski's manifesto about the industrial revolution and its consequences for indigenous peoples

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