Amid the Zoldish far right's rise, the Pravish Self Defense Forces find rejuvenation
Traumatized by the memory of violence from Zoldhegyek throughout the past century and a quarter, the Pravish Self Defense Forces are seeing a surge in enlistment.
PRAVGOROD, P.O. – TRIO 26, 126 PM
At a “security training facility” on the outskirts of Pravgorod, Pravish Premier Aaron Landau speaks at the graduation of a fresh new class of recruits. These sixty or so men and women will be the newest members of the Pravish Self Defense Forces (PSDF, or PSSB in Pravish), the last legally recognized commonwealth militia in the Federation.
“We have seen times like these before. In the aftermath of the Milito, so many of our people were killed. Not by Ylrikian bombs, but those whom we believed to be our fellow countrymen. We were defenseless,” Landau said. “And after that, we said ‘never again’. Yet, we once again came to rely on outsiders to assist in our defense. And then the Bloody Week came. They failed us again. And now we do not merely say, but we promise – ‘never again.’”
Thirty-five years ago, nationalist extremists from neighboring Zoldhegyek staged a massive operation both there and in Pravo, setting out to kill ethnic Pravs and otherwise remove them from the borderlands between the two commonwealths. Though they failed in their ultimate hope of establishing a Zoldish ethnostate and eradicating the Pravs, the Zoldish National Army was able to kill hundreds of people and destroy millions of notes worth of property before the then-diminished Pravish Self Defense Forces and the Federal Army were able to stamp out the insurgency.
In the three and a half decades since the Bloody Week, the commonwealth government of Pravo has slowly rebuilt the PSDF. And with the recent rise of the far-right in Zoldhegyek, the Pravish government has seen a resurgence in recruitment.
“In years past, typical class sizes were twenty cadets, thirty at most,” Premier Landau told me, himself a veteran of the PSDF who fought during the Bloody Week. “Now, as you see, this class of cadets is sixty. The Forces is even expecting to hold another session of the training academy this summer, and another in the fall.”
“The generation two back – my generation – has told people what the outsiders are capable of,” he says. “Now they’re starting to listen. They want to sign up to defend Pravo before it’s too late.”
History of the Pravish Self Defense Forces
Immediately after the Milito, general order broke down in the fragmented and isolated mountain communities of the Zoldhegyek and Pravo. Both regions’ capitals had been catastrophically damaged by significant explosive devices (SEDs), and communications lines were generally severed. This chaotic environment was further compounded by the cutting of trade routes that brought food, medicine, and other essential supplies to the backcountry, as well as existing ethnic enmities between the two peoples.
In Zoldhegyek, rumors emerged that the Pravs had stockpiled supplies and were hoarding them as Zolds perished to starvation and the other privations of the Collapse Era. In reality, the Pravs were suffering just as much as the Zolds – according to historical studies of the War and the Collapse Era, death rates among both peoples in the first year following the War were generally similar, around 52%.
Even so, this paranoia led to conflict. The Zoldish warlords stormed across historically Pravish lands, looting the threadbare homes of the poor peasantry and murdering countless thousands of innocent civilians. When Pravish defenders fought back, the Zolds used the weapons they found to justify further warmaking against the Pravs. The Zolds managed to push the Pravs even further eastward into what is now considered Pravo, where a final line of defense was established.
This “national redoubt” – ludowa reduta in Pravish – became the basis for future Pravish defensive policy and the establishment of the first iterations of a formalized Pravish Self Defense Forces. The People’s Defense Forces (PDF), founded in 3 PM, would defend all Pravs behind the reduta to the death. In the coming decades, Zoldish forces would twice more attempt to invade Pravo, and both times they would be repelled by the PDF.
After Vetludo and the territories of Terre de Lac joined Uniguita in the late 10s, the generally isolationist Zoldhegyek joined as well in 19 PM. Ultimately, the Pravish government found it more advantageous to be a part of the Federation, especially if the possibility arose that the already-integrated Zoldhegyek could persuade the government to take action against Pravo.
In 27 PM, Pravo joined the Federation. Like all commonwealths, it was entitled to maintain a militia for the purposes of defense and internal law enforcement. Though by this point many of the commonwealths had abolished their militia, Pravo elected to retain theirs. To keep in line with the more politically secular naming conventions of the Federation, the PDF was rechristened as the Prawijskie Sily Samoobrony – better known as the Pravish Self Defense Forces, or the PSDF.
Despite persistent animosities and low-level ethnic conflict among organized gangs and small bands of ethnonationalists, relations normalized between the Zolds and Pravs. Over time, the PSDF diminished in importance as a paramilitary organization, and began to primarily focus on law enforcement and assisting in disaster response.
“They called us the kalosznicy komanda – the ‘mudboot commandos’ – because we were more likely to be wading through muck to save some idiot who didn’t listen to flood warnings than to be fighting in actual battles,” Landau tells me. Because of this shift in purpose, combat and weapons training became deprioritized.
Then came the Bloody Week. In the early morning hours of Trio 25, 91 PM, members of the ultranationalist Zoldish National Army staged coordinated terrorist attacks across Zoldhegyek and Pravo. Members of the organization stormed the Zoldish and Pravish houses of parliament, killing dozens of legislators including the Zoldish premier. Simultaneously, operatives attacked Pravish villages along the borderlands, killing hundreds in the name of anti-Pravish hatred.
Federal troops ultimately restored order in the region, but for many the ultimate restoration of order came too slowly. In the end, more than 900 Pravish civilians were killed during the Bloody Week, alongside 56 Zolds.
“It was a bloodbath, and they caught us unprepared. We had gotten complacent,” says Landau. “Like I said – ‘never again.’”
Though the PSDF still remains primarily a law enforcement and disaster recovery agency, combat training and readiness has been re-emphasized. Weapons are regularly updated, and the “national redoubt” has been reinforced with pre-built checkpoints and concrete bunkers, and all but one of the PSDF’s “bases” are located within fifty miles of the Zoldish-Pravish border.
“Things have been relatively peaceful since 91,” Landau tells me, though he contends “we thought that in Trio 91 PM too.”
The Black Eagles rescue Grawlowicz
On a cool, early spring morning in the rural frontier between Zoldhegyek and Pravo, privates Emil Kuna and Viktoria Florek share cigarettes over a dying campfire. A few other enlisted PSDF personnel amble about their campsite, nursing metal cups of instant coffee and tea.
“It’s too cold out here,” Private Florek complains. “They always schedule our exercises when it’s cold.” Small gray-white-brown lumps of snow muddled with dirt clings to the bases of the trees, and each breath hangs lazily in the air. The campsite sits on the side of one of the region’s characteristic rolling mountains, offering unrivaled vistas of the thawing valleys below and the frosted ridges some miles away.
Captain Franciszka Malecka, a mountain of terror stacked just five feet high, arouses the members of the militia, ordering them to kick out their fire and begin their march into the valley below. When a private slips on the wet leaves, tumbling a few feet down the hillside, a mere stare from Captain Malecka gets him to his feet at a speed I have never before seen.
After twenty minutes of hiking, the captain calls over two soldiers, pointing out to a rock jutting out over the valley. One puts binoculars to their face announcing estimates of the number of enemies while Captain Malecka observes, as the other soldier scribbles on a small notepad.
Reaching the valley floor, the members of the unit cling to a line of trees along a small rural lane heading into the hamlet of Grawlowicz. As they approach the inner core, Captain Malecka juts her hand behind her, slowly motioning it downward.
“Down, down!” she hisses, as an armored personnel carrier lumbers past.
“Okay, up, up!”
Sliding into an alleyway between two archaic stone buildings, the militia performs a final check on its weapons. Peering around the corner, Private Florek whispers to the captain and me, “five terrorists, two blocks down in the courthouse.”
Out in the street stand five figures dressed in military fatigues and cloaked in ski masks. “Terrorists” in the parlance of the PSDF, they are meant to represent a potential threat to Pravo’s safety and not any particular organization specifically. Their resemblance to the ski mask-clad members of the Zoldish National Army terrorists of the 90s is purely coincidental.
“One, two, three, four, five,” Malecka says, pointing out each terrorist. Turning around, she points to two privates, “one, two” she says to one, “three, four, five” she says to the other.
Florek and Kuna jostle forward. Florek stands while Kuna kneels.
They take aim.
Pak! Pak! Pak! Pak! Pak!
Paint explodes on the chests of the terrorists. They tumble to the ground to a successive chorus of “shit!” and that ever-present Pravish curse, “kurwa!”
The unit quickly crosses the street, breaching the courthouse. After a brief firefight, the unit makes its way to a backroom, where there are three “hostages” tied up.
“Black Eagle has rescued the hostages; no casualties,” Malecka says into a radio with a grin stretched across her face. The other members of the unit high-five, congratulating each other on a job well done.
This is the third year in a row where Captain Malecka’s Black Eagles managed to save the “hostages” – five members of another unit dressed in civilian clothing – without a single casualty.
“Back in 123 PM, we accidentally shot a mother carrying a baby in the head,” she tells me. “I caught hell for that. No way I was ever going to do that again.”
These exercises are a part of the PSDF’s mandatory “Terrorism Response Training”. Using the bountiful ghost towns and villages of the Zoldish/Pravish borderlands, the militia effectively reenacts real scenarios from the Bloody Week. Most analysts believe that if Pravo were to be attacked again, it would again be a spontaneous assault by a well-organized enemy or cellular assaults on remote villages. In 103 and 109 PM, Zoldish ultranationalist terrorists again staged attacks in Pravo, storming into rural hamlets to take hostages. In both cases, the PSDF was able to use their expertise to release the hostages without any casualties.
“This is like… less than 5% of what we do. Less than 1%, I’d guess,” the captain tells me. “But when that less than 1% happens… we have to be ready.”
The “Barcza boost”
Back in Pravgorod, I meet Brigadier General Pawel Favre, the current commander of the PSDF in his office. Appropriately spartan for this career soldier, the only two decorations of note are an old flag and a helmet with a ghastly chunk ripped out of it.
“This is from the Collapse,” he says, lifting the helmet from its display and circling the cavity with his forefinger. “A Zoldish soldier did this, likely from very close range. He looked a Prav in the eye, and then did this.”
At his desk, Favre shows me a series of charts. Over the past several years, enrollment in the PSDF has declined steadily. He blames the booming economy under former President Gaumont and fading threats of Zoldish terrorism for the decline.
“They weren’t attacking us very much anymore, and the alternatives were too good. If you can be a pipefitter, or a lineworker, or a driver and earn twice as much, why would you be a soldier?” he explains.
But the recent rise of far-right conservative Laszlo Barcza as premier of Zoldhegyek has been a boon for recruitment. According to a federal investigation back in 123 PM, Barcza was an active member of the Zoldish National Army during the Bloody Week, but efforts to prosecute him failed on procedural grounds.
For more on Barcza, read this Unuo 13 article about the far-right’s rise in Zoldhegyek and the reactions of various Zolds.
“Even if he were in prison, it wouldn’t make much of a difference to me, and to most Pravs,” the general explains. “Barcza himself is replaceable. The movement that brought him to power was one we thought had mostly died out, but it’s clear that it would’ve erupted regardless of who was at the head of it.”
In the nearby PSDF barracks I see a printout of Barcza’s official portrait tacked to the center of a dartboard, with evidence of multiple expert shots through his eyes. When I asked the soldiers why they joined, a common answer was fears of Zoldish ethno-nationalism and the rise of Barcza.
Private Janusz Tawicki – who stressed that he would very much like his name attached to this sentiment – tells me, “that fucking psychopath Barcza is why I’m here.”
“My village wasn’t ready when his friends came to town thirty-five years ago,” he says. “We’ll be ready now.”