Ultra Dumb DS9 Question

[Plomeek Broth]

I am currently in Season 2, but i can't wrap my head around something (hence the dumb question). Why did the Cardassians abandon the station if they defeated the Bajorans? What was the reason to leave? Did the Federation force them out? Maybe this was tackled in The Emissary and I just blacked out, but this is really bugging me. I just keep thinking the Cardassians won, yet they left. Supposedly the Bajorans liberated themselves, but it feels like the Cardassians won. The Bajorans whine about the Occupation and the Cardassians don't complain at all. I know the races are different, but I'm confused big time.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

The Bajoran resistance annoyed them enough not to bother anymore.
Of course both sides have their own version of the story.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I am currently in Season 2, but i can't wrap my head around something (hence the dumb question). Why did the Cardassians abandon the station if they defeated the Bajorans? What was the reason to leave? Did the Federation force them out? Maybe this was tackled in The Emissary and I just blacked out, but this is really bugging me. I just keep thinking the Cardassians won, yet they left. Supposedly the Bajorans liberated themselves, but it feels like the Cardassians won. The Bajorans whine about the Occupation and the Cardassians don't complain at all. I know the races are different, but I'm confused big time.

I think if you watch the TNG episode CHAIN OF COMMAND it might help. I think it aired a week before DS9's pilot aired. I maybe wrong, but I think it would help.

Rob

 

[Smiley]

It has to do with Cardassian politics and the end of the easily exploited resources. I don't think the series ever said plainly why the Withdrawal happened. We do know for sure that it was not Dukat's idea to leave.

The Terok Nor trilogy has an interesting take on the Occupation era, so you may want to check that out.

 

[Myasishchev]

How the Cardassians were ever defeated on the ground by the Bajorans remains dubiously elucidated upon. How they were expelled from its local space is a true enigma.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

If it helps, the "Terok Nor" novel trilogy explores the situation.

 

[Myasishchev]

^Does it explain why the Cardassians didn't exterminate every Bajoran on the planet and use machines instead of slaves to move carts of ore around on DS9?

 

[Deranged Nasat]

^Does it explain why the Cardassians didn't exterminate every Bajoran on the planet and use machines instead of slaves to move carts of ore around on DS9?

Bajorans are cheaper than machines.

 

[Smiley]

Extermination would have been hard to justify to both the Cardassians themselves and the interstellar community at large. Atrocities were committed during the Occupation, but that does not mean that everyone involved and everyone back home is an evil being. Stalin did horrible things, but the entire Russian population did not agree with his views and actions.

 

[TheGodBen]

My understanding is that Bajoran refugees flooded into Federation space and because of this the Federation tried exerting political influence upon the Cardassian Union to withdraw. During the later years of the occupation Bajoran terrorism rose along the Federation border and it became a greater concern for the Federation council so they increased pressure on the Cardassians to withdraw. The Cardassian failure to secure Minos Korva in Chain of Command, mixed with continued attacks by the Bajoran resistance and the fact that they had already mined most of the resources on the planet made Bajor too costly to justify both politically and militarily, so they begrudgingly withdrew.

 

[Myasishchev]

Extermination would have been hard to justify to both the Cardassians themselves and the interstellar community at large. Atrocities were committed during the Occupation, but that does not mean that everyone involved and everyone back home is an evil being. Stalin did horrible things, but the entire Russian population did not agree with his views and actions.

Yeah, but the Federation wouldn't do jack.

However, it is possible that Cardassian public opinion mattered. That would somewhat conflict with the military government as established--I can't recall if civilian/democratic government always existed and had been marginalized by the CC and OO or didn't exist at all until the revolution in WotW.

 

[Jono]

^ The Detapa Council existed since the 19th century and was meant to be the one in control but by the time of DS9 it had no real control over the military. According to MA it managed to convince Central Command to abandon Bajor.

 

[Anwar]

I'd assumed that it may have had something to do with the Peace Treaty they negotiated with the Feds including the border change and the DMZ. Maybe on the new borders they decided they needed more of their forces there to guard it, and since Bajor wasn't so important to them anymore they pulled their occupation forces from it for redeployment. Then after they found out about the wormhole they realized what a bonehead move it was and had been trying to retake Bajor since.

 

[Deckerd]

I can't believe Terok Nor was placed where it was without knowledge of the wormhole. The Bajorans must have known it was there and could not have kept a secret like that from the Cardassians.

 

[Anwar]

Terok Nor was in orbit of the planet first, then the Feds moved it to the wormhole.

 

[Xerxes1979]

The situation is obvious. The Bajoran occupation turned into Vietnam for the Cardassians.

The benefit of staying was outweighed by the negatives.

Terok Nor really was nothing more than a giant lump of metal that was not designed for travel at warp or even interplanetary speeds. Until the discovery of the wormhole it was a structure without purpose for the Federation and Bajorans.

Any Cardassian salavage operation to reclaim material in the station would have been cost prohibitive and dangerous. The Bajorans did have spacecraft and explosives afterall.

 

[barnaclelapse]

That's not a dumb question at all.

I sure as hell didn't know that.

 

[CorporalClegg]

For the same reason the United States left Vietnam and will eventually leave Iraq.

 

[Captain Fine]

This is a question that I'm always wondering whenever they mention Terok Nor and how the Cardassians left and such. The only thing we know for sure is that Dukat didn't want to leave at all. So the order came from Central Command. Whether it was political pressure from the Detapa Council (probably influenced by Federation prodding) or pressure from the civilian populace, I guess we'll never know. It may have been a combination of both. It's a good point that the Cardassians had basically strip-mined Bajor and left her resource-less. They did say that in one of the early episodes.

 

[Anwar]

Also, as a final "F*** you" they poisoned most of the fertile lands and ravaged the place a bit more as they were leaving.

Dukat didn't want to leave because it would have damaged his career being the Prefect of Bajor when it got so bad they had to go.