Chapter III: Trans-African Railroad
January 10th, 1908.
It's been a while since I've been able to write here; underground war is a demanding mistress.
Shortly after the Ottoman government announced their new trade policy, the Albanians were up in arms. The hot-blooded saps wrecked things for us and for themselves.
One of the best things that any rebellion based in that region had going for them was that the Turks had their presence in that region down to 15,000 men. After the upheaval and general malaise caused by the new trade policy, things changed.
As a patchwork of nationalities, the Balkans was hardest-hit by the policy. Already several thousand Balkan artisans are unemployed and thirsty for blood. The mouthpiece of the Albanian resistance, some newspaper (the name escapes me at the current moment) made a lot of threats and offensive posturing.
This drew the ire of the Turks.
The turks are a lot of things but they aren't stupid. They were keen to the general malaise in the Balkans andin Albania and upped their numbers from around 15,000 to nearly 35,000 not counting the garrison in Istanbul.
The only silver lining is that we were able to sway some of the agitated merchants to our cause rather than pathetic nationalist armies that would be snuffed out without proper international backing.
Our man inside the government has been able to smuggle out some financial statistics showing some interesting things, most notably that many artisans can barely afford food and the tax rate isn't even that high.
Ottoman government tax statistics
If the grumblings that the government is going to further raise the taxes on the poor and vastly raise them on the middle class in order to finance it's ill-advised "Trans-African Railroad," the artisans and other groups will be pushed to the breaking point.
Confidential map of the theorized operating area of the Ottoman Trans-African Railroad
Our source has confirmed that the taxes will almost definitely be shooting up. The entire African railroad was a botched operation from the start. The Sultan and his cronies were attempting to draw gold blood from their African stone by praying that a railroad would somehow make the backwards farms and mines profitable.
Originally, the project was started by independent Ottoman financiers. Once the costs became astronomical, the government had to step in or else the Turkish captains of industry would've been out on their arses.
The under-construction railroads in Africa were a tempting target, but we just didn't have enough of an influence in the area. After all, the Ottoman's haven't been there long enough for the natives to realize the inherent dishonesty and cruelty in the capitalist way of life.
But the timing of the whole thing couldn't have been worse for the Turks, since they were at the start of undergoing a massive military buildup in Anatolia.
The idea was to have an elite fighting force in the Empire akin to the Roman Legions. These elite Guardsman—who could only be recruited from native Turkish populations— would act as agents of "Ottomanization" across the non-Ottoman parts of the empire, or so the propaganda said.
As of now, not one brigade of these modern-day Praetorians has been founded and they likely never will, at least if we have our say.
How I'd love to see an entire division of the Saxon Red Guards marching in Istanbul! That's the dream, anyway.
The Turks could sure use those legionnaires though. About a month ago the Ottoman forces got a bloody nose in Yemen.
The newspapers leaked how the Ottoman secret services knew about the Yemenese insurgency. Seeing as they were outed, the Yemense decided to make a stand. The insurgency was driven underground (again)but it cost the Turks money and blood, which is alright in my book.
Well, I've perhaps spent too much time writing. There's much to be done.
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