Not Just A Brush War: Building the Emirate of Ylaruam

I recently got hold of a copy of Not Just A Brush War from Nordic Weasel Games. I quite like the idea of a wargames supplement that helps you to create a fictitious Third World country from scratch by rolling dice. 

As someone who grew up in some decidedly tumultuous parts of the world during the latter phases of the Cold War, this got my attention. I wanted to use Not Just A Brush War to help me to create the fictional Middle Eastern realm of Ylaruam from scratch.

My plan is to potentially set some 1990s era wargames in Ylaruam. Fans of the old D&D campaign setting Mystara will recognise the name as the pseudo-Arabic realm in that world. This version of Ylaruam is a little bit different. I will track my progress in creating Ylaruam as the basis for a Cold War wargames campaign, and then maybe use it to try to run some tabletop games there.

Welcome to Ylaruam

I'm working on the basis that Ylaruam is either in the Middle East or in East Africa, somewhere adjacent to the Red Sea. It may have borders with Ethiopia and Sudan. Ylaruam has a moderate population size of between 5-20m people. Its resources are its strategic position, which reinforces my idea of its location on the important Red Sea shipping lane, and its knowledge base. I'm not sure what the latter represents yet.

The population is largely urban (urbanisation score of 9), pointing to one or two big cities, potentially one on the coast. The rural population will be small, scattered, and I suspect largely under-represented in government. I'm nominally setting the campaign in 1993, and Ylaruam is not that far behind Europe in terms of overall development (-7 years or so); it represents a relatively advanced country technologically, probably similar to Lebanon or Jordan.

Ylaruam has some heavy industry (7), which comes as no surprise. Its political system is a tribal confederation. The government of the country is, however, rated as 'somewhat illegitimate' and does not command the loyalty of the majority of the population (only about 40%, possibly the members of the majority tribe or tribes). The realm creation system distinguishes, however, between legitimacy and popularity. This latter is a measure of how well liked the government is at the start of the campaign, as opposed to, say, the way it came to power. In Ylaruam's case, popularity is also 40%.

Religion is that of the predominant religion in the region, so I'm going with Sunni Islam in this case. Sadly corruption is commonplace (4). Culturally, Ylaruam is moderately coherent, predominantly Arab, but with some minorities, although only about 20% or so of the population is non-Arab, with potentially a non-Muslim minority as well. The country has a strong allegiance to a former colonial power, in this case I'm going with France. This could mean that French is widely spoken by the country's urban elite and by one or more of the tribal groupings. France may still have strategic interests here.

Ylaruam has a number of pressing issues in 1993. These are - fuel shortages (this is obviously not a country with big oil and gas resources), social inequality (potentially caused by systemic inequalities between tribes), and the informal economy, which also supports the relatively high levels of corruption. The banking system is likely a basket case.

The military in Ylaruam

Ylaruam's military has historically adopted a tactical doctrine that emphasises close quarter fighting. The air force has been developed to ensure air superiority. It is still in relatively good nick (grade 9, or moderate). In terms of technology level, the air force is frankly pretty good, with aircraft of late 1980s vintage. But emphasis has been on buying front line interceptors.

Armoured formations in Ylaruam are focused on infantry support in the main, which is not surprising given the close combat tactical doctrine. However, availability is very limited. It feels like Ylaruam has a heavily infantry-biased army with some light armoured support attached to the infantry brigades. Unlike the air force, investment in armour has been more limited, with nothing later than 1974.

Despite all this, the pride of the army is the popular militia. The country buys most of its military kit from the US these days. Ground forces are somewhat limited in terms of their access to support weapons (level 3). Training could be better, but the levels of corruption mean that it is rated a 4, limited, hasty or outdated. We are effectively looking at an early 1970s military with little heavy armour, but with a decent late 1980s air force.

Morale in the military is impacted by the legitimacy, popularity and coherence scores. A base roll of 12 is reduced to 10 because of the government's lack of popularity, and a further -1 due to the government's legitimacy issues. We arrive at a 9 for morale. Cultural coherence is not a factor at this level.

Why is Ylaruam at war?

We roll a 95: outside regime change. Someone, possibly the US, is trying to remove the legitimate government. Given the poor legitimacy score for Ylaruam, that does not come as a major surprise. 

It is possible that the ruling tribe has fallen foul of the US in 1993, persecuting a minority group, seizing US corporate assets, grabbing energy supplies from another US ally in the region or even flirting with the Russians, or indeed all of the above. 

Then there's that old chestnut of working on a WMD program without the blessing of Washington DC. This goes back to the knowledge resource level mentioned previously. Perhaps Ylaruam has decided to upgrade its civilian quest for nuclear power into a nuclear weapons program?

Next time: we look at the US invasion of Ylaruam and try to build a bit more background on the Emirate and its leadership.