Ambassador Ma worked with his African counterparts to identify young men and women who could be trained as drone pilots to form the backbone of a new Air Force. Drone aircraft were cheap and easy to manufacture in comparison to an advanced fifth generation stealth fighter. It was also easier to train someone how to operate a drone than a plane. Ma’s counterpart, General Ming, had 100 drone pilot instructors brought to Africa, and they immediately began an aggressive program of training new drone pilots.
Four new military airbases were built, an intense ten-week drone pilot training school was constructed, and the new crop of drone pilots began to be trained. Multiple state-of-the-art 3D printing fabrication facilities were built across the confederation, and the construction of thousands of fighter/bomber drones had begun. The challenge Ma and General Ming faced was finding enough skilled workers who could man these advanced manufacturing plants and repair the machines to keep them operational. Most of 2041 and 2042 was spent training a workforce that could handle these tasks and develop a nucleus of skilled workers who could, in turn, train more people.
President Aliko Dangote had been the leader of the African Congressional Congress during the 2020s, and was the instrumental leader who advocated for the creation of the African Confederation. He had championed this cause for nearly twenty years, advocating for a stronger, unified Africa. He believed the 21st century was going to be the century of Africa, the rise of the continent from its past colonialization and resource pillaging from the West. With aid from the Chinese, Dangote built a grassroots network across many countries, garnering support from every political circle and walk of life he could. He was the young revolutionary leader the continent needed.
When the formation of the African Confederation began to take shape, he was nominated to become the leader of the movement, and later put forward as the nation’s figurehead. He had worked closely with the leaders of China and Russia in developing the needed foundations of a successful government and country. They needed a functioning economy and the ability to feed their own people. Through a myriad of trade agreements, the African Confederation became a major global food producer. This provided the needed counterbalance to the American-led Grain Consortium, which had formed under President Stein.
President Dangote admired President Stein’s rise to power and what he was doing in America. In many ways, Dangote wanted to emulate what he saw Stein doing in America, but he also had to be cautious. Dangote owed his rise to power and the formation of the African Confederation to the Chinese, not the Americans. It was China that had poured hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure and education across Africa, not the Americans. It was China who had provided them with the engineers they needed to bring stable and renewable power sources to Africa. Who had established a manufacturing base and increased food production using genetically modified crops and dozens of irrigation projects? China.
Dangote had done what he could to keep the Confederation’s focus on Africa and not the global war being waged against the major superpowers. He was of the mind that Africa would work with whomever won, but that was not to be the case. His Chinese leaders had other plans in mind. While he wanted to focus on uniting Africa under one banner, his Chinese bosses wanted him to train a military force that would be used against the Americans. He had reluctantly agreed and authorized the creation of a new International Force that would serve with the Chinese wherever they deemed necessary.
The Chinese had nearly 260,000 soldiers stationed in the African countries, spread across numerous provinces. They had assisted Dangote’s forces in the capture of many countries and in the institution of law and order. Now, they were being used as military trainers and advisors to train the nearly 850,000-man army he had been told to draft. Most of the people being drafted into the army could barely read and write their name. The Chinese did not seem to care. They had established a dozen training bases, and began to filter the recruits through their training program. By the end of 2041, the PLA had trained 330,000 soldiers. As they completed training, they were quickly moved to the north of the country to fight with other PLA soldiers who were moving in to capture the Horn of Africa and some of the other provinces from the now-defeated Islamic Republic. Clashes with American and Israeli soldiers were becoming more common, but no direct military engagements between the armies had yet been fought. The PLA was more concerned with grabbing land and consolidating their gains.
What concerned Dangote was the treatment of the civilians in the former IR provinces. He knew the PLA could be brutal when they needed to be, but if the rumors were true, then he was horrified. The PLA had been eliminating nearly every civilian in Somalia and South Sudan. Rather than feed the people they were conquering, the Chinese began a process of systematically killing the population off. While China may have been allied with the Islamic Republic, they did not like or agree with the Islamic faith. The People’s Republic of China had been brutal in their treatment of their own Muslims, and now that they were conquering former Muslim lands, they were doing whatever they could to eradicate the religion and the people who practiced it.
President Dangote had already brought the issue up to Ambassador Wa once, and he was quickly told not to concern himself with what the PLA was doing and to focus internally on winning the war with Cameroon and Nigeria. Dangote was not comfortable with how the Chinese were using his soldiers and was becoming less content with the PLA’s ever-increasing control of his own military. His best officers were being transferred into the International Force that the PLA was training at an alarming rate. Secretly, he feared the Chinese would depose him and just assume control of Africa once he had done the hard task of unifying the continent.
Up until that point, the Americans had left the African Confederation alone. They had no real diplomatic ties with the country, and were solely focused on the wars in Europe and on their own soil. However, once the PLAN lost the majority of their naval forces near California and Hawaii, Dangote began to wonder how long the Americans would stay away from Africa. Just when it seemed they had been defeated, they rose from the ashes and squashed their enemy. Would they repeat this history in Africa?
Liberators
President Stein was sitting in his chair at the head of the table in the PEOC, listening to the military advisors around the table talk about the next steps in the war. America had been in conflict for three years now. Millions of people had died as war had been brought directly to Main Street, America. At least after a bloody summer campaign in Alaska, the Chinese and Russians had been defeated and had withdrawn the majority of their troops, leaving those that could not be rescued to surrender. Nearly 128,000 Chinese and 83,200 Russian soldiers had been captured once it was clear they were not going to be rescued.
The re-capture of the Hawaiian Islands and Midway Island a month ago meant the American navy was finally back in control of the Pacific. The US had completed construction of two additional Supercarriers and moved them to the Pacific to join the three operational carriers of CSG12. President Stein had appointed Admiral Michael Stonebridge to be the new Seventh Fleet Commander, and directed him to work with General Gardner on developing a plan to liberate Japan and the Pacific from the Chinese.
Admiral Juliano observed that Stein only appeared to be half listening. “Mr. President,” he said, gently tapping the desk and hoping to gain his fully attention. “We have to be realistic in our expectations regarding taking back the Pacific from the Chinese. I know we have just scored two huge victories in recovering Alaska and in seeing a successful coup in Japan, but the liberation of the Pacific is going to take time.”