Second Icarian Civil War
The second Icarian civil war is a conflict in Icaria that has been ongoing since 2010 to the present day. The second Icarian civil war is one of the largest conflicts in the 21st century, causing trillions in economic damage and millions killed or displaced, and causing one of the largest refugee crises in the 21st century. The war has had far reaching effects across the world with the emergence of the short lived Icarian pirates and the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops from all across the globe.
The second Icarian civil war grew out of an attempted coup by the head of the Federal Intelligence Agency(FAI) Herman Keitel who was supported by the FAI and a limited number of high ranking members of the Army and Air Force. After failing to secure the presidency of Icaria, Keitel went into hiding in the Aegina Province in northern Icaria while several FAI backed militia groups, chief among them being the Icarian National Liberation Front, began attacks on government property and military bases. As a result of these attacks, the government began instituting harsh crackdowns on the population in an attempt to end the attacks. The crackdowns did not work however and within a few months several unrelated groups had risen up in rebellion against the government and the FAI backed militia groups, gaining widespread support among the lower class population for promising to protect them from the violence. The largest of these new groups was the Icarian Peoples Front which was most prominent in the southern regions of Icaria bordering Klathu, and was led by many former members of the communist guerrillas of the first Icarian civil war along with members of the Icarian Communist Party.
Due to the open rebellion by the FAI and the compromised nature of a number of the high command of the Army and Air Force, the Icarian Naval Intelligence Office(INIO) ended up taking over the role of the FAI, and by June 5th 2011 they had located Keitel in the outskirts of Nienhagen. The Icarian Marines would launch a disastrous raid in the city resulting in two helicopters lost to Manpads and over twenty marine casualties. During the chaos Keitel managed to escape along with other high ranking members of the FAI to an unknown location in Aegina. This raid would mark the escalation of the war from low level conflict to a full blown civil war as in the aftermath Keitel would form a German fascist ethnostate in Aegina called the Military Dictatorship of Ostreich. Using resources he had gathered over the years he armed the Ostreich army with captured and hidden tanks, aircraft, and firearms leading to the most destructive battles of the war up to that point.
In response to the Icarian failure to control the spread of fascism in Aegina, many antifascist militia groups allied together to stop them, gathering support from the local populace and in secret, support from the INIO and some local army and air force units. This alliance became known as the Aegina Alliance and would be one of the largest stumbling blocks for Keitels expansion in Northern Icaria. The militia groups that made up the Aegina alliance varied widely in ideology with their main similarities being a hatred of fascism and a desire to stop the expansion of Ostreich.
Pre-War Military
Due to high tensions with Kerthenia following the Forgotten War, the Republic of Icaria(ROI) had an extremely high military budget of 7.5% of its GDP($150 billion) and a highly militarised society where the military had a large influence on domestic politics.