From: John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@y...>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 12:41:32 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [Background] Islamic Fed/Caliphate
I've almost finished up on the NRE stuff on my home page, and I'm considering adding an OPFOR section in which I can discuss Islamic Federation. I was wondering if anyone had anything up about them on the Web other than the one page I've seen with discussion of Infantry batallion organizations (same guy who has the OUDF orgs, IIRC). As near as I can figure it is built up from the the RSLF/SANG and the Egyptian Army, and so likely maintains a mix of those two traditions. I'll be throwing in some inspiration from the Abassyid Caliphate and so forth. Any other input is cetaintly welcome--people who play IF, people who've worked with Arab militaries (and the IF is certaintly Arab-dominated, if now rather nastily military/religious-ruled rather than a monarchy), etc. please drop me a private e-mail (esp regarding speculation on how I should rate them experience-wise). I'm also trying to decide how good their tech should be--current practice would seem to indicate a hodge-podge mix of ESU stuff that's been out-of-date for 2-4 decades. It seems the IF rather quickly terminated the (current) warm relations between the House of Saud and the West, and things only get worse when the religious fruitcakes take over.