For more than 23 years, the people of Bubkissia fought a fierce civil war. The war pitted neighbours against neighbours, colleagues against colleagues, brothers against brothers, sisters against sisters, brothers against sisters, sisters against brothers, parents against children, children against … well, you get the picture. So far, the battles have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and left millions more homeless. But the warring factions glimpsed a glimmer of hope with the prospect of a peace conference.
The government of Bubkissia and the multiple factions of rebels that control the southern portion of the country finally launched peace talks last week.
The meeting venue was sparse as Bubkissia is a poor country. The precise dollar-equivalent value of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is difficult to discern. Bubkissian economists do not calculate GDP using a hard currency. Instead, they issue the statistic on a number-of-goats basis.
The government’s statistics office has not yet issued the GDP report for the current year. However, publicly available information allows analysts to guess a ballpark number. Bubkissia’s two statisticians, who, due to the country’s extreme poverty, do not have computers, adding machines, or abacuses, completed this year’s goat count in less than 25 minutes. They count slowly. Analysts estimate that Bubkissia’s GDP is no more than 50 goats this year.
Peace Conference Venue
Because neither the government nor any of the myriad rebel factions could afford anything more, they held the peace conference at the country’s only retail outlet. Negotiators had a hard time clearing the venue, a public square where thieves sell knock-offs of almost-name-brand goods. But, after the negotiators bought a few Gucsi bags and Rollex watches, the vendors agreed to vacate the square for a few hours.
The negotiators promised that, if the peace conference took longer than a few hours, they would also buy some pieces of Lois Wuitton luggage.
Lunch
The peace conference began encouragingly. But it ended quickly when a dispute broke out over the lunch order.
Government negotiators insisted on tuna sandwiches with mayonnaise. The rebel leaders accepted the tuna sandwich proposal in principle. But they argued that forcing mayonnaise on their fellow freedom-fighters would be an affront to the southern culture. The rebels contended that mayonnaise, if ordered at all, should, as a point of honour, be served on the side.
The government representatives, on the other hand, argued that forcing negotiators to remove one of the slices of bread to spread on mayonnaise before replacing the condiment-covered slice back on the sandwich would be an unacceptably time-consuming hardship. They claimed that the rebels’ request was merely a stalling tactic designed to help the rebels gain an unfair advantage when the time came for dessert to be served.
One ingenious aide-de-camp suggested ordering some sandwiches with mayo and some without. All hailed this brilliant resolution of the barrier to peace.
Unfortunately, the Bubkissian sandwich-makers union refused to allow its members to fulfill a split order. Hugh Stickler, the union chief said, “Such a breach of work rules, while seemingly minor, would be a slippery slope. It would, no doubt, inevitably lead to a complete breakdown of civil society.” (Mr. Stickler skipped class the day his teacher taught the meaning of the word “irony.”)
A fistfight broke out. The brawl likely would have been quelled rapidly, but, believing that his comrades had been the subject of an untoward a remark that no one else heard, one of the rebels pulled out a knife and began slashing government negotiators. The melee soon escalated into a gun battle.
The Placement
After calling a truce in the peace conference fight and concluding five additional days of verbal arguments over the proper placement of the word “the,” the two sides issued a joint communiqué. The additional days cost the negotiators 42 Lois Wuitton suitcases of varying sizes, along with 37 Hormès scarves.
The communiqué stated that the peace talks adjourned indefinitely to allow lunch-fight survivors to recover from their wounds and bury their dead. In the meantime, the brutal civil war continues.
Often overlooked is the fact that, after all these years, no one remembers the initial cause of the civil war.
UPDATE: Late, this evening, historians uncovered the original cause of the civil war. Twenty-three years ago, some southerners took offense at the government’s use of olive-green rather than pea-green in the nation’s flag. Hostilities escalated from there. Bubkissian internal affairs scholars expect that, once all sides learn the genesis of the battle, fighting will escalate.
