About the game:
A Fading Star: Insurgency and Piracy in Somalia is Volume XV of the COIN Series originally designed by Volko Ruhnke. The year is 2007. We reach the climax of several decades of civil war that have ravaged Somalia since the fall of dictator Siad Barre in 1991. An African Union coalition, assisted by the Ethiopian army, enters Mogadishu to support a nascent but corrupt Transitional Federal Government. They face a relentless and violent insurgency waged by Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, an Islamic group seeking both to expel the “invaders” and to transcend the traditional clan-based government structure of Somalia. In the middle of this power vacuum, minor clans and warlords organize themselves to administrate otherwise ungoverned regions, while others engage in large-scale piracy operations, painting their acts as a fight against foreign trawlers pillaging Somali fishing resources.
Players can select from three different scenarios:
1. A Fading Star is the main four-campaign scenario. Through an eight-year-long story starting in 2007, when the federal government resettled in a war-prone Mogadishu, you’ll witness the slow decline of piracy and the struggle for an insurgent-free South-Central Somalia. The scenario historically ends with Al-Shabaab’s “Emir” Ahmed Abdi Godane’s death in a US drone strike and the subsequent AMISOM sweepings of major Al-Shabaab strongholds.
2. The Lion of Mogadishu scenario is a three campaign mid-length scenario, starting in 2009. As Ethiopian troops completely withdraw from the country, a precarious situation ensues, leaving the underequipped AMISOM contingent responsible for the capital’s fate. In the countryside, the Somali clans consider their impact on the war as the federal government’s days might be numbered.
3. Fighting for Peace is the shortest scenario, with the factions competing through two campaigns covering the four years following Al-Shabaab’s 2011 retreat from the capital. The pirates face an existential crisis as they must deal with increased efforts by the seafaring industry and global community to deter their business. At the same time, more clan elders begin to join the country’s federalization process.
The stage is now set for A Fading Star, as decades of intermittent civil war have laid the foundations for a violent contest between the weak and corrupt Transitional Federal Government, the relatively powerful and flexible Al-Shabaab movement, foreign intervention in the form of the African Union Mission, and an opportunistic coalition of pirates and regional warlords.
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