AHC: U.S. Occupies South Africa After 9/11-Analogue

[MerryPrankster]

I posted a link on Facebook about Huntsman and why I support him instead of Paul and got into a discussion with Abdul about the killing of OBL, the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

That got me thinking about a possible AHC:

With the latest POD possible, have the United States fighting an Afrikaner Calvinist insurgency in southern Africa after a 9/11 analogue attack perpetrated by Afrikaner Calvinist extremists allied to an Afrikaner-dominated government of all or part of South Africa.

I'm wondering if it's possible with a 1994-ish POD, with an Afrikaner Volkstadt in the interior being analogous to Afghanistan and this 9/11 being motivated by a combination of rage at the United States for apartheid's dissolution and an attack on decadent American cultural norms.

However, that strikes me as rather late.

 

[Color-Copycat]

I wonder what the reaction of American white supremacists would be.

 

[MerryPrankster]

I wonder what the reaction of American white supremacists would be.

Most of them would probably denounce it, but you'd have the hard-cores like the ones who defended 9/11 OTL who might endorse it. In fact, their endorsement would probably more enthusiastic, since it's their ideological kin doing it.

Which could probably backfire severely against white-supremacism as a whole, if the fact that ANY of them endorsed something 9/11-like becomes well-known.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Although a 1994 POD leading to apartheid die-hards being the perpetrators provides an easy explanation for why, the military realities are kind of a problem.

One reason the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents are so hard to deal with is because they're capable of blending in with the population and they have safe havens in Pakistan.

Unless we crank up the white population of Africa something fierce, the Afrikaner militants will have no population to hide among and, given how OTL apartheid was hated by its neighbors, no safe havens.

The terrain is not very guerrilla-friendly in an age of aircraft and satellites, so they don't even have mountains to hide in.

 

[TheMann]

^ Hiding the Drakensberg Mountains would be possible, but that part of South Africa is heavily populated by the Sotho, Zulu and Xhosa peoples - none of which have any love for the warriors of apartheid. The rest of the country, though, you are correct in it being hard to hide in. And you're right about cranking the white population otherwise they would stick out.

 

[The Space Viking]

I posted a link on Facebook about Huntsman and why I support him instead of Paul and got into a discussion with Abdul about the killing of OBL, the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

That got me thinking about a possible AHC:

With the latest POD possible, have the United States fighting an Afrikaner Calvinist insurgency in southern Africa after a 9/11 analogue attack perpetrated by Afrikaner Calvinist extremists allied to an Afrikaner-dominated government of all or part of South Africa.

I'm wondering if it's possible with a 1994-ish POD, with an Afrikaner Volkstadt in the interior being analogous to Afghanistan and this 9/11 being motivated by a combination of rage at the United States for apartheid's dissolution and an attack on decadent American cultural norms.

However, that strikes me as rather late.

I find it amusing how a thread like this could be started over a mundane argument over which political figurehead you support, when neither of them could ever reach the presidency in this world. It's not like we control who becomes president anyways...[end conspiracy rant]

OT: Without Mandela, I can see apartheid STILL getting quashed, regardless of the president, it had to happen, they were verging on pariah state status. It was dying out, and the people knew it. I don't think the Afrikaners have the balls or the ability (or the foreign funding *cough* Mujahideen *cough*) to pull something like 9/11 off (analogous or not) at all.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Nothing "has" to happen.

Apartheid was doomed in the long run for a variety of reasons, but let's not indulge in idealism.

And why wouldn't the Afrikaners have the "balls" to do something like this? This is the culture (if not every individual) that seriously punched above their weight class during the Boer War and thumbed their nose at the Western bloc and the Eastern bloc for decades.

And note I said "analogue." Even if they don't conduct a suicide attack (which takes balls), there's always, say, a couple of tanker trucks rigged to become fuel-air bombs in a major city center or near a national monument.

It would have similar casualties to 9/11, but it wouldn't involve the perpetrators themselves being killed.

 

[imperialaquila]

One major issue I see with an invasion is the South African nukes. If apartheid never ends, the nukes would surely have been kept, and possibly more built. If the US invades in response to such an attack, there is no question the nukes would be used. The big question is if the US and friends can eliminate the nukes before they can be launched or otherwise deployed.

EDIT: If they're going for a suicide attack on the US...why not use one of the nukes?

 

[Shevek23]

Has everyone here forgotten about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing?

There would be plenty of American terrorists for the Afrikaaner diehards to link up to.

 

[MerryPrankster]

One major issue I see with an invasion is the South African nukes. If apartheid never ends, the nukes would surely have been kept, and possibly more built. If the US invades in response to such an attack, there is no question the nukes would be used. The big question is if the US and friends can eliminate the nukes before they can be launched or otherwise deployed.

EDIT: If they're going for a suicide attack on the US...why not use one of the nukes?

In a scenario where apartheid is dismantled across the entire country except for some Boer "homeland" somewhere, I imagine *South Africa would give up its nukes per OTL.

Maybe the Boer "homeland" is permitted to keep one or two to as a sop to their paranoia. IIRC the South Africans OTL only had six.

And the analogy I'm going for is something like OTL Afghanistan--the Afrikaner extremists wouldn't be part of the rump-apartheid government per se, but they'd be allied to it and rump-apartheid wouldn't be willing to turn them over to the United States.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Has everyone here forgotten about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing?

There would be plenty of American terrorists for the Afrikaaner diehards to link up to.

McVeigh chose the target he did because it was a big ATF office and he hated the ATF. Everyone else was "collateral damage."

The Afrikaner die-hards wouldn't have so narrow an agenda.

Of course, McVeigh is one man. There's always some other nutjob that can collaborate with the AWB or whomever is trying to pull this off.

 

[Marius]

Yeah, I dunno if this is possible.

Also, a 9/11 thing wouldn't really be the style of the AWB (or an AWB analogue).

Hmm, I'll do some thinking but I can't really think of a way of getting this done.