Faction Name: Union of African and Arabic Emirates. UAAE, UE short for the Union of the Emirates.
Faction Government: An outfit of highly industrialized states over the Suez canal and off the east coast of Africa. The ruling party is the Organized Progress Party, with
Amos El-Amin as the senior director of the board of emirs. All power is concentrated in the hands of the government; there is a weak opposition party rumored to be existing just for the facade of democracy. The emirs are a twisted, corporate version of medieval vassals.
Territory/Claims: The Middle East and Africa are the territory of the UE.
Cairo is considered the political headquarters of the Union. Dubai and Cape Town are next in importance, being formidable economic powerhouses with plenty of factories and manufacturing plants.
Among the stars, three asteroids on the belt have union stations on them; 372 Palma, 19 Fortuna, 45 Eugenia. Palma Station personnel is mostly comprised of North African gun runners and engineers. Fortuna is inhabited by a myriad of colorful personalities from all over the union territory, where they harvest tholins to use as microbial food and screen for protecting planetary surfaces from ultraviolet radiation. Eugenia employees are handpicked Saudi secret police. They supervise a team of scientists extracting crude oil and natural gas out of Kerogen.
Callisto is considered the final, most advantageous base of operations that the Union has control over. It is here that the colonists toil on the alien soil and mine precious resources and extract organic compounds.
Culture: Islam is the predominant culture, with Christianity and Bahá'í Faith placing second and third in popularity.
As a whole, however, the government exercises secularity in the handling of all matters. The emirs are appointed noble governors of the province (formerly considered a country), and though it is possible to become an emir through merit and effort, square and unbridled nepotism remains in the regional politics of the Earth territory.
The ruling noble class, however, is favored by the populace - several rich clans direct finances to foundations, provide educational loans and contract work over tenders. This stimulates the economy and establishes a future influx of professionals to different colonial and space station projects over the system.
The Kafir are half special service, half surveillance and intelligence agency of the Union. They carry a nigh mythical reputation as an omnipresent entity, watchful and calm, non confrontational, yet deadly and ever as effective in their own right.
Most obscure, isolationist cultures, clans and tribes were shipped off to the asteroid colonies to be used as a cheap workforce, divided and with a lost sense of identity.
Over fifty percent of those with a higher level of education live outside earth. Half of them on Callisto, about a tenth on the asteroid colonies as supervisors and middle management, and the remainder is spread out elsewhere over the breadth of our solar system. The other forty percent of the educated population reside on Earth as the Emirs' army of personal aides, record keepers, programmers, PR and marketing teams.
History: Almost a century ago the loose, abundant in resources and yet stagnant in economic growth, the Union of the Emirates was established. Previously the quantity and variety of African and Arabian resources were treated neglectfully; corruption, war and mass-scale privatization was rampant.
A detailed and pragmatic economic reform (with just a bit of armed guidance) helped establish a system to make good use of the natural resources and eager workforce. Constant Bousaid's new economic plan was approved by the board of emirs, and a strong emphasis in the fiscal policy was placed on nationwide industrialization, beginning to do the bulk of contract work for corporations seeking to save money by outsourcing jobs abroad. It was first exercised in Northern Africa, and to great success - those who passed the annual exam were given grants for education and a home in the newly explored planets and asteroids. Batches of employees with good potential were sent overseas and into space to procure a professional education whilst the rest spent a decade toiling on factories and manufacturing plants.
Returning home as engineers, economists, accountants and programmists, the educated lot now had the knowledge on how to automate the production, cut costs any way possible and create artificial intelligence to store and keep track of information.The saved capital and workforce was then used for student grants for the remainder of the population.
Some analysts and historians consider the UAAE an economic miracle, though many hotly debate this matter today, considering the ethical issues associated with poor working conditions for the first five years since Bousaid's economic plan came into power.
The union gradually branched off into spheres of arms trade and spacecraft engineering, having made a fortune selling weapons to separatist colonies in the solar system from their main headquarters in Callisto.
Technology: Through decades of hard work, the Union can boast widespread infrastructure ranging from space elevators in equatorial Africa to refined water reservoirs and hydroelectric power plants based in and around Niagara Falls.
There is a whole system of manufacturing plants and factories all over the UE.
The Emirs have a sophisticated private software that allows them to see the expected income rates, yields, charts and other graphs to detail the statistics of their assets. This software is tended to with regular updates and patches from the coding teams in the ultrarich's employ.
Military: There is about ten billion active duty personnel and ninety billion reserves in the Union's armed forces. Their fleet has just under a thousand military spacecraft. Fifteen percent of it is comprised of stealthy satellites, unmanned drones, recon bombers and five-man concealed transporation for operatives and assassins.
The Scorpion CA gunships are the rough equivalent of artillery; providing much of the needed gunpower. There are two hundred operational gunships in the Union navy, along with variations that serve the same purpose but use different methods to achieve it.
The pride (and arguably the backbone), of their fleet are the thirty 'legendary' spacecraft carriers of the Union. They are sturdy and maneuverable vessels with the capacity for ten railgun and missile launching fighter jets to be stored inside - accordingly, there are three hundred of them at this moment. They are symbolic and may be even seem like a mascot for the military.
However, this comes at a cost; to make war cost-effective, it would be catastrophic not to establish a chain of outside defenses to absorb damage, distract the enemy and cause sabotage.
The exceedingly well funded Shield of Ibrahim program attracted the best and most Machiavellian minds of the nation to develop remotely controlled spacecraft that could best be described as mobile obstacles; obscuring the enemy's view of the carriers, absorbing and deflecting shells or missiles, and ultimately decreasing the damage and casualties suffered by the carriers. They make up the remaining thirty percent of the fleet.
