The Great Takheti Coffee Coup, or The Igh-Berkaana Incident

"And who among us can even speak to the accomplishments of this Manahar, beyond his being a warlord's son? I spent two weeks around the Stronghold inquiring into his achievements, searching for even one of our Takheti blood-brothers who has ever served beneath him. For the entire time I was there, not one man could tell me of this Manahar's victories in the field, nor could they say how he inspired his compatriots to fight for a cause greater than themselves. And yet I have heard news on this very morning that this Manahar walked into our community as if he were its lord, backed by Haifah soldiers who don't even speak our language!"
"How could this be? Could this Manahar yet be a worthy son of a renowned warlord, his achievements unknown to us alone? No, he is no leader of fighting men but a mere mercenary for those fat merchant princelings in Andaen."

- Excerpted from a speech by Haman in-Mezzan, one of the

organizers of the occupation of Igh-Berkaana's town square.

26 Altawat, 4132 HE.

Pejoratively referred to by Andaeni commentators as "The Great Takheti Coffee Coup," the Igh-Berkaana Incident of 4132 HE was the most heated site of contestation for hegemony over Tel-Adragar, a petty warlord state of Near Takhet, when a power vacuum resulted from the declining Haifatnehti city-state of Kailrana having lost its capacity to maintain its hold on Tel-Adragar as a protectorate. When competing factions of Takheti locals threatened to fight a civil war over Tel-Adragar's future, military and economic advisors to the Council of Andaen pressed for their leaders to take advantage of the developing situation, "benevolently restoring order" to Tel-Adragar by means of materially supporting their preferred candidate for leadership. While the intervention received a mixed response among most residents of Tel-Adragar, an economic realignment initiated by Tel-Adragar's new ruler caused laborers in the town of Igh-Berkaana to see Andaen's intervention as a blatant, economically-motivated power grab. In response, a labor movement arose in Igh-Berkaana, advocating for improvements in labor conditions in an increasingly export-oriented economy, greater local Takheti political autonomy in Tel-Adragar, and (as per the Andaeni account) the ousting of the Andaen-supported leadership there. Andaen reacted to this situation with a prompt crackdown of the insurrection, making its economic and security interests in the region plainly clear.
Though the incident is sometimes treated as a punchline by those discussing geopolitics in the northern sea, it is also regarded by many political commentators as one of the clearest demonstrations of the indirect forms of imperialism that uphold Andaen's political and economic dominance of its regional spheres of influence.

Background

Ever since the Shame of Wahaareh cast doubt upon the Takheti warlords states' status as rising powers (and as potential threats to Haifatnehti sovereignty), multiple Haifatnehti polities have taken an interest in establishing trade relations—sometimes exploitative ones—with the polities of Near Takhet.
The warlord state of Tel-Adragar, and particularly the town of Igh-Berkaana within its borders, aroused the attention of the former Haifatnehti city-state of Kailrana ever since Haifatnehti merchants realized the potential of its locally grown coffee as a profitable import. Kailrana, being the only Haifatnehti polity other than Andaen on the coast of the northern ocean, could conveniently send galleys across shallow waters to coastal Takhet and was quick to do so, establishing a sphere of influence there through military intervention in 4076 HE. Helpful for Kailrana's aims was the lack of a strong, central power in coastal Takhet due to the collapse of Great Wahaareh long beforehand.
Kailrana's leaders subsequently sought to use their newfound wealth to establish additional spheres of influence and aggregate the beginnings of a scattered, informal empire across the northern coast. Though the first two generations of this hegemonic reign brought economic prosperity to Kailrana, by the beginning of the 4130s the city-state had over-extended itself, unable to adequately defend its interests during an economic downturn driven by a massive drought in 4129. As former client states of Kailrana began to negotiate or force their severance of ties with Kailrana, merchants throughout Tel-Adragar soon caught wind of these developments by means of their Haifatnehti business contacts. It was not long before multiple competing personalities were rallying their fellows to throw off Kailrana's rule and reestablish Tel-Adragar's status as an independent state.
The Council of Andaen, too, caught wind of these developments. Given that they had long since identified Tel-Adragar as being ripe for enterprise, most of all through the town of Igh-Berkana which was famous for being the single largest coffee exporter in all of Vast Takhet, the Council saw the independence movement in Tel-Adragar as potentially squandering a key business opportunity for Andaen. It is thought that the Council members gathered information on the developing political situation by using their contacts among Andaen's importers to enmesh spies among the ports and marketplaces of Tel-Adragar's major settlements. (Most sitting members of the Council of Andaen were, and to this day remain, elite merchant-princes, many with directly vested interests in commerce across the Haifatneh Basin and nearby regions.)
A considerable amount of spying identified several Takheti rebel leaders in Tel-Adragar, but few among them appeared to be pliable to Andaen's interests as the rising rebellion went hand-in-hand with intensifying anti-Haifatnehti sentiments. The Council found themselves settling on Manahar rab-Purazan, a warlord's fourth son, who had little military experience himself but had been educated in Andaen. Manahar's subsequent success in intimidating or militarily overcoming his rivals is now widely attributed to substantial advising—and a combination of donated and loan supplies—contributed directly or indirectly by multiple Council members.

Grievances and Protests

Manahar's ascension as the new warlord of Tel-Adragar was more or less accepted by the public there, as locals were relieved to see that Kailrana or another Haifatnehti city-state did not directly intervene in the leadership clash and assert control over Tel-Adragar. Still, if Manahar's support from Andaen was not obvious during the leadership contest, it became clear as day when Warlord Manahar issued orders to local leaders to shift their communities' agriculture and small industries toward outputting export-friendly products. While local leaders were assured that these exports would generate sufficient revenue for purchasing grains and other essentials from the Haifatneh Basin region, this top-down pressure to rapidly grow different crops than before or redesign their workshops was odious to many farmers and craftspeople.
Discontentment with the drive for exports was particularly acute in Igh-Berkaana, where new political appointees chasing lucrative contracts with Andaen imposed high quotas for coffee production on the town's plantations. Though plantation owners were glad to see an expanding market for their products, the burden of meeting these quotas fell on the plantation laborers. The resulting push by many plantations to hire more migrant laborers led to overcrowding in Igh-Berkaana and sometimes chaotic conditions on plantations; as for those plantations whose owners thought hiring more hands would be too costly, laborers saw their hours or workloads nearly doubled in the most extreme cases.
Unrest in Igh-Berkaana swelled up dramatically in the middle of the month of Jaatin, the end of the first coffee harvest season after Manahar gained the title of Warlord, when many plantation laborers realized they weren't being paid much more than previously as the plantation owners and middlemen kept a large cut of their increased profits. Heated discussions and informal rallies arose in the canteens in the town center where workers would spend their evenings. Heightened emotions, especially when combined with cheap Haifatnehti ale or local moonshine, led to brawls among laborers and occasionally mob attacks on Haifatnehti merchants and caravaneers. Since the latter attacks tended to take place outdoors in the markets, making them highly visible, Igh-Berkaana's town guards disproportionately acted to break up these attacks on Haifatnehti victims while largely ignoring the indoor canteen brawls. This heightened the perception that the town's officials served foreign rather than local interests; the town guards, who often didn't know better, thought they were simply maintaining public security.

Insurrection and Crackdown

Due to the town guards' mixed response to unrest in Igh-Berkaana and the information gap surrounding this situation, laborers' rallies and demonstrations escalated. Late Jaatin saw vandalism and rioting directly outside the guards' quarters, at which point the captain of the guard told Igh-Berkaana's mayor that he would not be to restore order without outside intervention. The mayor spent three days deliberating with his advisors on the matter, well aware that a heavy-handed intervention would only raise suspicions of the town's leadership and their loyalties, yet this time spent discussing alternative solutions squandered valuable time as the town guard was left without direction from above and the agitated laborers didn't see any solutions to their grievances materializing. By the evening of the third day, laborers began organizing in the town square, presenting demands their to their mayor:

1. The mayor of Igh-Berkaana should require coffee plantation owners to raise laborers' wages by at least twenty percent compared to wages from the previous harvest year.
2. Plantation owners should also be required to limit working hours to no earlier than two hours after sunrise and no later than an hour before sunset. Further, at least two breaks throughout the workday should be mandatory, one of these breaks taking place during the late afternoon (the hottest part of the day).
3. Town guards should be forbidden from carrying weapons during their regular patrols, keeping their gear in armories for any emergencies.
4. Protestors also identified a list of town guard officers who should be investigated for wrongful, hasty use of force against protestors.
5. Imports other than grain and ale should be taxed with a tariff no lower than twenty percent so as to protect the livelihoods of local (mainly Takheti) artisans and household businesses.

The rapid escalation of the civil disorder in Igh-Berkaana pressured the mayor into attempting to act on these demands. Pressuring the plantation owners into improving labor conditions was feasible, even if enforcement would probably be inconsistent. Securing the tariffs was a hurdle on multiple fronts: Travel times delayed the delivery of letters between parties, Andaeni merchants were loath to take on additional costs of doing business, and the mayor worried that imposing a tariff at the gates of Igh-Berkaana would simply push incoming merchants to take their business to other parts of Tel-Adragar. Of course, to avoid imposing tariffs or reduce the proposed tariffs would be tantamount to admitting that Igh-Berkaana's political situation was fully in the grip of Andaen.
The demanded changes to the operations of the town's guard force faced the greatest obstacles. The guard force already felt that they were overworked and under excessive public scrutiny during the laborers' ongoing collective action. Guard officers did all they could to obstruct the new measures, and two officers and several other senior guards resigned and sought new posts elsewhere to avoid being held accountable for their actions. The protestors, with their demands hardly addressed and a weakened guard force unable to stop them, occupied the town square and disrupted business activities to put more pressure on their mayor and businesspeople alike. The protestors passed the days with revelry, fed by donations from supportive townspeople as they sang harvesters' chants and took turns giving rousing speeches.
During the slow negotiations with Andaen, word of the impasse between protestors and the mayor reached the Council by way of Andaeni coffee importers. Anxious over the shortcomings of leadership both in Igh-Berkaana and in Tel-Adragar as a whole—as well as their threatened business prospects in the lucrative coffee trade, in which two Council members had personal stakes—the Council redirected their correspondence to Warlord Manahar in Tel-Adragar's chief stronghold, demanding his intervention in the unfolding crisis. Manahar agreed to do so but requested Andaen's support against the growing movement, fearful that a failed attempt to suppress them with his own troops could ignite a new civil war. Though the Council had originally planned to minimize the costs of continuing to do business in Tel-Adragar, they agreed to deploy an Itbaqaan unit with the intent of intimidating protestors into ceasing their occupation of the town square and resuming business as usual.

26 Altawat: The Confrontation

On 26 Altawat, within a month of Andaen's initial correspondence with the mayor, a troupe of well-organized soldiers arrived in Igh-Berkaana with arquebuses and pikes in hand—much to the mayor's surprise, as he was informed neither of the coming troops nor that Manahar would be leading them. The soldiers did not wear Andaeni uniforms, yet their allegiance was obvious to locals given their equipment—not to mention their Haifatnehti features and their poor command of both Standard Erani (the language of coastal Takhet) and the inland dialects of the nomads who lived inland. The arriving troops were met with both verbal protests from laborers and praises from those townspeople who only wanted to see an end to the unrest, but most of those who saw the procession kept their distance and remained quiet, fearful that the arquebuses—weapons which the majority of townspeople and visiting herders had never seen before—would be used for more than mere intimidation.
News of the visitors' arrival quickly reached the town square. The occupiers assumed the worst, preparing for a confrontation by erecting barricades from the boards and awnings of long-abandoned merchants' stalls. The town guards, in turn, refused to be stationed where they were likely to be embroiled in an armed conflict and forced to choose between serving foreign interests through violence against their fellow townspeople and opposing the (well-armed) outsiders. The majority of the guards abandoned their posts, and a few even defected and joined the protestors. The disarray among the guards was such that the personnel who remained on duty were insufficient in number to supervise their two armories within the walls of the town.
Manahar and his reinforcements soon arrived at the town square from two directions (due to the size of the Itbaqaan relative to the width of the major thoroughfares), where unofficial leaders of the protestors were giving increasingly strident speeches. Some witnesses to the events that follow claim that Manahar was already within earshot when Haman in-Mezzan, a protestor from the village of Mezzan whose had moved to Igh-Berkaana during a boom in the coffee industry twenty years before, openly questioned Manahar's legitimacy as Warlord. (It is also thought that it was in-Mezzan who coined the epithet "Manahar the Runt.") This would help explain how the exchange between the visiting party and the protestors devolved so quickly, with both sides brandishing weapons at each other while issuing unilateral demands. It is thought that the two factions would have come to blows in that moment if not for advice offered to Manahar by the leading officer of the Itbaqaan, who perhaps was able to speak freely because he was not a subject of Tel-Adragar.
The pause that followed should have presented an opportunity to de-escalate the situation. Unfortunately, while most of the protest's leaders began acting with more restraint once they came face to face with a professional military unit wielding sixty arquebuses, one of the leaders—possibly in-Mezzan, though others are also suspected—took it upon themselves to prepare for a violent clash. Sometime around twilight, a loyalist townsperson tipped Manahar's troops off, informing them several defecting guards were delivering a cache of weapons to the protestors.
The situation devolved rapidly from there, with Manahar and his Andaeni companions anticipating a coup and preparing accordingly. The reduced visibility and the poor communication between opposing camps led the protestors to anticipate an impending crackdown and mobilize accordingly. Manahar ordered several soldiers to discretely evacuate the buildings around the town square, but this was interpreted by protestors as an attempt to round up dissidents. A band of protestors confronted those soldiers assigned to evacuate civilians; two protest leaders involved themselves in the altercation but had disagreeing perspectives on the situation, with one favoring de-escalation and the other wanting to demand that the Andaeni soldiers leave the town. The ensuing argument between the two leaders added to the commotion, causing the Andaeni lead officer to conclude that the troops on the evacuation assignment were being apprehended or worse. With Manahar's agreement, the officer ordered the Andaeni troops to assemble into formation.
Historical accounts conflict as to which party attacked first, though the official narrative is that the rebels launched sling bullets or debris at the Andaeni formation in attempt to disrupt them. (An alternative theory is that the fading light caused a clumsy accident among the formation of already-nervous Andaeni soldiers, resulting in a collective panic.) For whatever reason, the front row of arquebusiers leveled their weapons and fired into the town square, wounding several protestors and killing at least one on the spot. The protestors initially looked as if they might disperse after these initial casualties, but a rebel leader who was only half-familiar with the Andaeni weapons and operations assumed that the long loading time of arquebuses granted the rebels an opening for a counterattack. More rebels began launching projectiles at the Itbaqaan, and a number of others jumped the barriers in the town square to charge their opponents, wielding guards' polearms or improvised weapons. As per the arquebusiers' training, however, only one of two rows of arquebusiers had fired their shots, with the second row awaiting a separate signal. The second volley came shortly before the protestors would have come toe-to-toe with the Itbaqaan, after which the Itbaqaan's pikemen charged for a counterattack.
The battle that followed was a gruesome rout for the protestors, whom the Andaeni soldiers now regarded as insurgents to be crushed. The early casualties and the bedlam of the initial clash scattered the rebels, many of whom only had experience with one-on-one fighting or skirmishing in tribal blood-feuds, if that. Some of the more militant protestors resorted to sheltering in buildings surrounding the town square and taking shots at the Itbaqaan from dark windows; the Andaeni troops responded with a combination of suppressive fire, and Manahar, fearing the possibility of urban warfare, ordered his troops to smoke out the buildings' occupants. Manahar also briefly ordered the Andaeni troops to pursue the rebels but later walked back this command, likely at the behest of the Andaeni lead officer. The Andaeni troops held their ground in the town square, and by the following morning, they were working with a number of the city guards to apprehend protestors or accept their surrender.

Aftermath and Legacy

The Controversy over Casualties

Given the misinterpreted intentions leading up to the insurgency, the continuation of the battle late into the night, and brief beginnings of urban warfare around the town square, historians continue to dispute the number and nature of casualties among Igh-Berkaana's locals. As the fighting did move from the town square to nearby buildings, the official Andaeni record is that any bodies which were discovered in the town square or its vicinity were those of combatants. (The Andaeni account also presents the evacuation prior to the clash as being more or less complete.) While the majority of historians have adopted this stance or demurred on the issue, locals interviewed privately have attested to anywhere from two dozen to four dozen civilian deaths, including collateral deaths of those caught in the crossfire in the town square as well as those who could not escape from the smoke and flames in time. Andaen is not likely to revise its record of the Igh-Berkaana Incident, however, as its hegemony over Tel-Adragar has remained unchallenged to the present day.

Labor Reforms in Near Takhet

For laborers of the coffee planatations and other export-oriented industries in Tel-Adragar, the Incident was a significant setback, with their appeals for somewhat increased profit shares and reduced exploitation ending with violence and intimidation. As the episode was not exactly a shining example of Warlord Manahar's leadership, the Council of Andaen also installed more advisors in Manahar's court, to the point that most of Tel-Adragar's economic policies were being designed by a foreign power and implemented with a politically neutered warlord's uncritical approval.
However, while the labor movement in Tel-Adragar cooled off in the aftermath of the Incident, leaders of other states and settlements in Near Takhet grew wary of the possibility of labor uprisings in their own jurisdictions, paving the way for modest reforms that, it was hoped, would pre-empt violent episodes like the one in Igh-Berkaana. Though few formal labor organizations exist anywhere in Near Takhet, the overall culture of agriculture and other industries dependent on manual labor there has shifted to invite more active participation from and consultation with workers. In light of these developments, Tel-Adragar has come to be a relatively regressive environment for the agricultural industry in particular. Aside from the most lucrative coffee plantations, export-oriented agricultural enterprises in Tel-Adragar struggle to attract labor through normal means and are now frequently reliant on heavily subsidized production or the "recruitment" of prisoners and the like to meet their labor needs.

Andaen's Geopolitical Status

While the leadership of Andaen likely would have preferred quiet, smooth operations in a warlord state under their influence, the triumph of Andaeni military discipline in this episode and the short-lived nature of the uprising in Igh-Berkaana affirmed the security and stability of Andaen's hegemony in Tel-Adragar. The fact that Andaen managed to control this uprising in the aftermath of their pushing for Tel-Adragar's economic realignment in their favor is also promising for Andaen's ambitions in other spheres of influence in the Haifatneh Basin as well as Near Takhet: With the ability to reconfigure client states' economic activities to further Andaen's interests, the city-state is likely to continue to accumulate wealth and power for itself, further ensuring its ability to protect its regional security interests.
The failure of the uprising in Igh-Berkaana, which was colored by anti-Haifatnehti rhetoric and politics, is also likely to discourage more serious challenges to Andaen's hegemony. As long as Andaen's leadership learns the lesson from Kailrana's earlier overreach, it is likely to maintain a steady, albeit coercive, peace that serves the economic interests of Andaen and, to a lesser extent, of those regional leaders who pursue mutual cooperation with the city-state.

Names for the conflict:

• The Igh-Berkaana Incident (most widely accepted; favored by the Council of Andaen and the current Warlord of Tel-Adragar)
  
• The Igh-Berkaana Crackdown or The Igh-Berkaana Massacre (favored by Takheti locals resentful of Tel-Adragar's current leadership and foreign intervention, and used by some historians in non-official contexts)
  
• The Great Takheti Coffee Coup (pejorative; favored in Andaeni public commentary)

Conflict Type

Battle

Battlefield Type

Urban

Start Date

26 Altawat, 4132 HE

Ending Date

27 Altawat, 4132 HE

Location

Igh-Berkaana, the Cradle of Coffee

Belligerents

Warlord Manahar and Andaeni Reinforcements

Labor Protestors / Insurgents

Strength

• One Andaeni Itbaqaan (sixty arquebusiers, ninety pikemen)
• Igh-Berkaana Town Guard (13 Baarnaa; previously neutral)

• approx. 250-300 pro-labor protestors
• 26 Igh-Berkaana Town Guard defectors

Casualties

• 8 itbaqaan soldiers
• 2 town guards

• Official account: 110 combatants, 0 civilians
• Local estimates: 88 combatants, 22-60 civilians

Objectives

• (success) Restore order in Igh-Berkaana
• (ambiguous) Suppress labor organization in Igh-Berkaana and Tel-Adragar more broadly (as per protestors; Andaeni account disagrees)
• (ambiguous) Uphold Warlord Manahar's political legitimacy as ruler (as per Andaeni account)

• (partial success) Expand labor rights in Igh-Berkaana, particularly but not exclusively for coffee plantation laborers
• (failure) Secure, or at least improve, local Takheti political autonomy in Tel-Adragar (not agreed upon by all protestor/insurgent leaders)
• (failure) Overthrow Andaeni-backed Warlord Manahar (as per Andaeni record; most protestor accounts do not acknowledge this goal)