User:Clint.hotvedt/Dutch Civil War

Dutch Autumn
Generally speaking, the term Dutch Autumn is usually used to refer to a number of increasingly violent clashes in a number of major cities between the Dutch government and insurgents in the period between September and November 2023 (dates are not right). The events of late 2023 (incorrect date)would eventually lead to the proclamation of the Free city of Nijmegen, later the Free Netherlands, the breakout of the Dutch Civil War, and eventually the all-out defeat of the Wilders administration.

The prelude of the events can be traced back to the elections of 2017, when Wilders' Party for Freedom won a landslide victory of 42.3% which gained his party 63 seats in parliament. Support for this party mainly came from rural and suburban municipalities, and a few, impoverished, cities. Within months after the elections, the policies of the Wilders government proved to head towards a head-on collision with EU policies, as well as the intelligentsia of the Dutch nation. In her last Christmas speech, before she abdicated the throne to her son on January 30th, 2019, Queen Beatrix warned about history repeating itself, with the dark clouds of racism and exclusive nationalism gathering over the Dutch sky. PM Geert Wilders said: those were the comments of a mindless fool still living in the past, and it was a great idea if she went on the pension, better earlier than later.

With state paramilitaries patrolling the streets of the major cities, officially to quell violence perpetrated by minorities, the Dutch distanced themselves further and further from mainstream EU policies, and there was serious debate in the EU parliament about the Dutch being eligible to stay a member of the EU, when the Parliament in The Hague voted 91-59 in 2020 to reinstate the Death Penalty, starting January 1st, 2022. The Netherlands would be the first modern European country to do so. The elections of 2021 turned out to be the final straw for the European federal parliament in Brussels though. According to official sources, the Party for Freedom had won a 51.5% victory, but in the race leading up to the elections, the Wilders government had stripped the Dutch living outside of the Kingdom of the Netherlands of their right to vote for parliamentary elections. Since the mid-2010's, over 1 million Dutch had moved to Germany and Belgium, mainly due to the political climate in their home country. Had they been, according to EU law, eligible to vote for the Dutch parliament, Wilders would've likely gained between 42 and 45% of the votes, similar to the 2017 general elections. Again, this victory was mainly won outside the major cities, with only 12% support for the PVV in Amsterdam, 15% in Utrecht, 9% in Groningen City, 10% in Nijmegen and 16% in Arnhem.

After a 52-hour meeting of the EU executive in Brussels, it was decided to expel the Netherlands from the European Union on the basis of unfair elections and policies striking the heart of the foundation of a United Europe going into effect on December 1st, 2021, giving Wilders a six-week window to decide to hold new elections, and possibly avert expulsion from the EU. Only representatives from Denmark, and some from Flanders (Notably VB), Germany (Republikäner), Italy (Lega Nord), Hungary (Jobbik) voted against. Wilders' recation to this was: "those Sharia-Socialist technocrats in Brussels are in no position to tell us how to run a sovereign nation, I will withdraw the Netherlands from the EU going into effect tomorrow, October 14th, and they will find out themselves that we are right the hard way, when Islamists would be overrunning the streets of their cities and infiltrating their parliaments."

In the early morning of the sixteenth of October, 2021, border checkpoints were reinstated along the Dutch-Belgian, and Dutch-German border. Mainly Germany reacted fiercely to this, diverting their trade through the ports of Antwerp and Hamburg, and installing tariffs and other trade barriers on the Netherlands. The German President, Eva Lorenz (SPD-Kleve, near the Dutch border) was quoted: "Our grandparents have suffered enough under fascism, that it is our moral duty to not allow this to happen again, especially right on our doorstep. Supporting a government like this would be highly unethical for the modern German nation, so we see ourselves forced to limit our dealings with our Western neighbour as much as possible."

In their decision to expel the Netherlands from the EU, the EU executive had allowed Dutch citizens to remain European citizens (in essence creating a dual nationality for the Dutch, both Dutch and European), but the Wilders government reacted by canceling all old (EU) passports, coming into effect on January 1st, 2022, and only allowing Dutch nationality to be used within the Netherlands. The old Dutch (EU) passports could be exchanged for new Dutch passports until April 1st, 2022 (insome cases until July 1st) and in case of dual citizenship, the dual citizen had to choose between either Dutch citizenship or leaving the country. This created problems, mainly for the 650,000 ethnic Moroccans, which could not relinquish their citizenship, and the ones that hadn't already left for any of the neighbouring countries like Germany or Belgium, were told to leave before July 1st, after which they would be considered illegal immigrants and eligible for deportation from the Netherlands. The EU, however, would continue to recognize old Dutch ID-cards and passports until January 1st, 2027, as stated in EU-resolution 2022/08a, hoping there would be a solution to the problem before then. When the Wilders government declared the use of old Dutch (EU) passports illegal, and in cases where old documents wre not exchanged for new documents, the citizen was considered to have relinquished Dutch citizenship for the citizenship where they were residing, over 2 million de jure stateless individuals were created.

When the deportations of the remaining more then a quarter million Moroccans, many of which had been residing three or four generations in the Netherlands, as well as almost half a million other nationalities began in August 2022, this was widely condemned, and viewed as an act of ethnic cleansing throughout the international community, although virtually no blood was shed during these actions. Small scale riots broke out in many cities, but these were quelled with minimal bloodshed on both sides. By the beginning of 2023, the population of the Netherlands was steady at 14,8 million inhabitants.

First Nijmegen Rising
The City of Nijmegen, which had suffered tremendously by an exodus of citizens to nearby Kreis Kleve in Germany, remained a left-leaning liberal hotbed in 2023. When the municipal elections of March 2023 didn't show the results Wilders' Party for Freedom was hoping on, with only 23% for his party, and an overwhelming 70% for the ruling coalition of Labour, Greens and the Progressive-Liberals, a party spokesman for the Party for Freedom said that although the government would respect the results, it was up to the municipality of Nijmegen to ensure that their policies were in line with official government policies. In July, the Green Party drafted a guideline for the city of Nijmegen, stating that "any person within the municipal boundaries of Nijmegen, regardless of race, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation would be treated equally by municipal officials, and the municipality of Nijmegen would, if necessary, enforce this guideline upon officials from other elected bodies working within the municipality." The guideline was voted in with 27 for, 2 abstaining and 10 against, and came into action on August 1st, 2023. This allowed Miriam Jankowska, a Polish-Dutch woman who was elected into the city council for the Progressive-Liberal party, but had been stripped of her Dutch citizenship because she was living in Kranenburg municipality, across the German border, to take her seat in the municipal council. By many, this was seen as a direct provocation of the Wilders' government, which replied immediately after Miriam Jankowska had taken her seat, on September 5th, after the summer recess, that it was an illegal act, and that the rulings of the municipal council of Nijmegen were illegal as long as there were illegal aliens. The Nijmegen council, unimpressed by this rhetoric, convened like usual on the 12th, causing the PVV opposition to leave as soon as Jankowska walked in. On September 19th, during the third council meeting with Jankowska, the Nijmegen council was stormed by police, arresting the entire ruling coalition on charges of conspiracy against the state, deporting Jankowska three days later.

The Dutch government ruled that Nijmegen was to be governed straight by the central government until the next municipal elections in 2027, and the council's aldermen where each sentenced to prison time, between 3 and 6 months each on the 25th of September. This caused large-scale riots to erupt in Nijmegen, which at first the police were trying to quell, but after the 27th, more and more policemen changed sides, and on the 28th, the Nijmegen police officially declared to be neutral in this conflict. The Dutch government replied by disbanding the Nijmegen police and sending in government paramilitaries on the 28th, and later, the army on the 7th of October. Jankowska had in the meanwhile managed to sneak back across the border into Nijmegen, and somehow, some shipments of arms made it into the city and into the insurgents' hands. Heavy fighting broke out on October 1st, after martial law was declared in Nijmegen, and when the Dutch army was called in to the city, they responded with excessive use of violence to stop the all-out anarchy on the streets. When the rebellion was stopped by the army, on the 11th of october, after more than a week of severe fighting between the sides, more than 450 people had perished; 134 on the government side, around 300 on the rebel side and a few dozen civilians. Jankowska, who made it back to Kranenburg on the 10th, most likely after being aided by some border police, because that part of the German border was extremely well guarded during these days, was sentenced to death in absentia on October 27th.

Although the government forces managed to stop the rebellion in Nijmegen, their excessive use of violence there has been later regarded as the fuse which set forth the chain of events which would eventually lead to the Dutch civil war and subsequently, the toppling of the Wilders regime. In this regard, although the government overwhelmingly won the battle, their victory could be seen as a Pyrrhic victory causing them to lose the eventual war.

Battle of the Amstel
With the events in the southeastern city of Nijmegen in progress, more and more civilians in Amsterdam protested against the excessive use of violence by the government forces that were sent in. Around the eighth of October, these protests began to be more organized, culminating in large-scale riots on the eleventh, with the news coming in that the rebellion was quelled. From the beginning of the events, the Amsterdam police department took a fairly laid-back role in trying to control these protests, some sources actually claim they deliberately allowed them to get more organized and spiral out of control. On the morning of the fourteenth of October the chief op the Amsterdam police, Gerard Heesbeen, issued a statement in which he stepped down as police chief, together with nearly 85 percent of his force, because they wanted to avoid being called up to use force against these protesters. What gives credibility to these sources, is that almost immediately more than half of the police infrastructure got seized by protesters in Amsterdam, together with the Amsterdam and a number of government buildings in the old town, west of the river Amstel. At 13:00, on the fourteenth of October, these protest groups, now united and operating under the name "ALA" or "Amsterdam Liberation Army" stated that a good part of the old town was now under their control, to which the Wilders regime reacted by giving an ultimatum; by 05:00 on the next day they were to dismantle their barricades and leave the old town. Any resistance after 05:00 the next morning was going to be dealt with with lethal force.

With the events in Nijmegen fresh in their minds, and the amount of troops and paramilitaries outside the old town increasing by the hour on the afternoon on the 14th, around 60,000 people gave heed to this warning, and left the old town unarmed, although a good percentage of this number are most likely residents fleeing the old town. An estimated 40,000 people stayed behind, 75% of them thought to be rebels.

At exactly 12 minutes past 5 the next morning the Dutch Army attacked the old town of Amsterdam, being free to use potentially deadly force to anyone who would resist them. At first the rebels, being coordinated by Frederik van Roswinkel put up a good fight and managed to keep the Dutch army east of the river Amstel for most of the day, but being largely undefended in the western side of the city, they quickly lost ground as the army group led by Joran van Offenbeek managed to enter the old town from the side of Museumplein. What added to the demise of the rebels was the fact that when they started running out of ammunition there was little to no replacement available. In the early hours of the next morning, the sixteenth of October 90% of the Amsterdam old town had been captured by government forces, leaving very few pockets of resistance left. Frederik van Roswinkel himself was arrested in the early afternoon in an occupied building at the Utrechtsedwarsstraat, in the south side of the old town. He was quickly taken to The Hague, where after a short show trial, televised on national television, he was summarily executed for treason at 17:20 in the afternoon. Wilders himself then appeared in Amsterdam, and gave a one-hour ultimatum to the remaining rebels still active to disarm and disperse, anyone caught armed after 19:00 would suffer the same fate as Frederik van Roswinkel. Seeing how hopeless their situation had become, almost all active rebels gave heed to this warning and gave up fighting the very same moment.

That very same evening, many rebels who managed to leave the city of Amsterdam immediately fled to Germany, many of them ending up in the city of Kleve, which population almost doubled over the course of a week. The political consequences in the Netherlands itself turned out to be grave as well, as most people disillusioned with the Wilders government now saw any hopes for a political resolution of the conflict shattered by the orgy of violence commenced by their government. The EU strongly denounced this action and on the 20th of October sanctions against the Netherlands were put in place.

October Riots
As a result of the Battle of the Amstel, on the 17th, small-scale rioting broke out in Groningen, and two days later in Utrecht. Local police forces dealt with these riots, trying to avoid the events that took place in Amsterdam from happening in their cities. Then, on the 23rd, the first bomb went off in Amsterdam, targeting the police headquarters which had been seized by government forces the week before. The next day, the Amsterdam Liberation Army took responsibility for the bombing, and promised that many more attacks would follow if Wilders did not step down from power and would issue new elections. On the 24th and 25th similar bombings happen in Groningen and Utrecht, and the rioting there quickly span out of control for the local authorities to deal with. Government paramilitaries were sent to these cities to assist the local authorities in dealing with these riots, which became more violent every passing day. Then, on the 27th, rioting in Nijmegen commenced, and quickly rebels in Nijmegen outnumbered government forces 5 to 1. For the first four days however, the events taking place in Nijmegen were of a very disorganized and ad-hoc nature, and the by now daily bomb attacks in Amsterdam, Groningen and Utrecht kept most of the government paramilitaries occupied in these places, especially as there were daily firefights between rebels and government paramilitaries taking place there.

On the first of November, the situation in Nijmegen however quickly deteriorated for the government forces, as the rebels started to become more and more organized, and the next day the rebels in Nijmegen started seizing key positions in the city itself, as well as on the roads leading into the city. it was also on his day that the Wilders government noticed the threat in Nijmegen and started pulling forces away from the other cities to send to Nijmegen. This turned out to be too little and too late, as on the morning of the third of November, the free city of Nijmegen was declared for the second time, and rebels held all lines of communication into the city. while enjoying covert supplying from the east, out of Germany.