Hammish Civil War

Hammish Civil War
The Prime Minister's Residence bombing, via local TV station in New Kirrie.
Date 27 January 2017 – present Location Hamland, Sea of Storms Status Ongoing
Belligerents
National Provisional Authority Weanburg Militia Imperial Republic of Shireroth	Hammish Republican Army Ravaillac Loyalists United Monovia Congress Samerican Militia Hammish Trade Association Council of Free Nations Alexandria Stormark	National Salvation Front Israat Loyalists Order of Rochefort National Labour Association Passio-Corum

The Hammish Civil War is an armed conflict taking place in Hamland. The unrest grew out of the sudden disappearance of multiple government officials and leaders across the country, namely the Seneschal Juan Teaodir and Prime Minister Lewis. It escalated to armed conflict after the Minister of the Homeland and Governor-General of Monovia, Donat Ravaillac, and various supporters suspended the Constitution and installed themselves as the new government of Hamland. The conflict was nearing its end until the assasination of Donat Ravaillac led to the rise of martial law under General Augustus Eliphas.

The war is being fought by several factions: the National Provisional Authority and its various supporters and groups throughout Hamland; an alliance of rebel groups from Israat, Anglia and San Luis de Hamlandia (including the National Salvation Front); groups loyal to the Ravaillac family led by Regina Ravaillac, daughter of Donat Ravaillac (including the Hammish Republican Army and the National Congress of United Monovia).

The NPA, having begun the war with control of the National Armed Forces and the state security apparatus, appeared to enjoy an overwhelming advantage in personnel and military hardware. This advantage however was offset by low morale in the regular army, the hostility of a large part of civil society and the inherent advantage of surprise and the initiative enjoyed by guerrilla fighters amongst the rebel cadres.

Within the first month of the uprisings and civil war at least 10,000 personnel defected from the armed forces to the HRA, with still more deserting and elsewhere units serving with such reluctance that they were deemed non-effective and unsuited for counter insurgency operations. Instead the NPA increasingly relied upon the paramilitaries of the Home Guard and the ruthless application of air power.

The Hammish Air Corps was a large, albeit increasingly tending towards obsolescence, air arm by Micras standards, comprising of 919 3rd generation jet-fighters and 1,094 Canberra bombers and Tornado strike aircraft, in addition to which were a motley assortment of maritime patrol and transport aircraft, some of which, such as the venerable Short Sunderland flying boat, belonged in the scrapyard or museum.

The factions receive substantial support from members of the international community. Shireroth has provided support to the National Provisional Authority. Traditional Hammish allies like Alexandria and Stormark have provided only humanitarian and medical aid to the National Provisional Authority, but has also extended some funding to the Ravaillac Loyalists. Passio-Corum is providing support to the National Salvation Front. Humanitarian organizations have accused the National Provisional Authority, the Hammish Republican Army and the National Salvation Front of severe human rights violations and of many massacres. Over the course of the war a number of peace initiatives have been launched, including the Geneva peace talks led by Alexandria, but fighting continues.

Macsen campaign

In early February, the National Salvation Front (NSF) began an offensive to take the city of Macsen. The attack combined infiltration tactics with a campaign of sabotage and car bombings that targeted hospitals, schools, and a civilian neighbourhood, killing 1,645 and injuring 780, including children. This had the effect of unhinging the Army of Attirus, whose regiments of light infantry were neither appropriately trained nor sufficiently equipped to offer a timely response.

On the 4th of February, the Hammish Police Service's Counter Terrorism Task Force (CTTF), led by Brigadier Ormonde Johnie Paul, cornered NSF field commander Fabio Dukes, near Macsen. Dukes blew himself up and Brigadier Paul reported to General Eliphas that the brains behind the Macsen offensive had been removed from the equation. However, at 4 in the morning on the following day, NSF convoys of pickup trucks, each carrying eight fighters, entered Macsen by shooting up the city's police checkpoints. Although Macsen's outer defensive perimeter was supposed to have been manned by 4,000 soldiers from the 41st Regiment, the rate of desertion had soared since end of January and only about half that number were available. Worse still, the majority of the armour and artillery assigned to the defence of the city had been pulled back across the Caledon River to defend New Kirrie against the rising of the Hammish Republican Army (HRA) in the west of Hamland proper. The Land Forces left in the city therefore had little more than light machine guns and grenades with which to repel a determined assault.

Additionally the tactics of the NSF were designed to engender fear and panic amongst the defenders. At the first outpost overrun by attackers carrying the NSF's oriflamme banner they hanged, burned, and crucified the terrified soldiers they had captured during in the assault. These atrocities were all filmed on hand held devices and clips were sent by the militants to the entire contacts list of the mobile cellphones belonging to the murdered captives. The effect on the moral of the remaining defenders was preciptous and dramatic. What remained of the 41st Regiment dissolved into a panicked rout, with officers leading the headlong flight northwards or across the city to the river ferry terminals.

As dawn rose on the 5th of February, martial law and a curfew was imposed on the city. Outraged, General Eliphas personally ordered the attack helicopters of the Riverine Forces to strafe the militants with rocket and cannon fire and to sink any boats seeking to cross the river, resulting in the sinking of four boats, the burning of the ferry terminal and the death of at least 105 fleeing civilians and deserters. Even with the collapse of the 41st Regiment, at least 27,500 employees on the Ministry of Security payroll remained in the city, these being:
36th Regiment (Army of Attirus): 4,000 infantry
110th Regiment (Corps of Logistics): 4,000 soldiers
Counter Terrorism Task Force (Hammish Police Service): 1,800 officers
Macsen District Police Force (Hammish Police Service): 11,045 officers
Macsen Detachment (Facilities Protection Service): 700 guards
Macsen Civil Defence Brigade (Civil Defence Corps): 5,955 watchmen

The attacking column of militants however only totalled 2,000 fighters, outnumbered by the defenders by 14 to 1. Two car bombs exploded, in Tanworth, a village near the city, killing twelve civil defence watchmen. After that attack, the fighters retreated into the countryside before reinfiltrating the local population in an adjacent district.

On the 8th of February, a column of one-hundred vehicles entered Macsen, carrying at least four hundred fighters. Sleeper cells hidden within the city were activated and began to rally the disaffected in the city, taking over entire neighbourhoods and leading mob lynchings and assassinations of known police and civil defence officers, leaving the city's defenders leaderless and terrified.

The attackers followed up on the 9th of February with a bomb attack on the police barracks of the CTTF. The attack itself was a novelty, the bomb was delivered by a hydraulic excavator whose driver's cabin and engine compartment had been covered in improvised steel armour and the bomb itself was packed into the bucket attached at the end of the excavator's hydraulic boom. Under heavy, but ineffective, small arms fire from the barrack's desperate defenders, the excavator rammed its payload of acetone peroxide into the barrack's gatehouse, triggering a detonation that demolished the gatehouse, killing eight CTTF officers, burying dozens more and killing the driver of the excavator, who had been decapitated by flying debris as he had panicked and jumped from his armoured cab as the bomb detonated - creating, unintentionally, the NSF's first suicide bomber, who would subsequently be lauded in the movement's propaganda and be held up as an example to emulate.

On the 10th of February, the NSF executed 15 captured police officers. Concurrently, NSF fighters armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers, stormed the provincial government offices in the city. Lacking plans and ammunition, the surviving officers of the CTTF, by now the last remnant of the security forces not to have defected or run away, under the leadership of Brigadier Paul, made preparations to retreat northwards out of the city. On the same night as they began their evacuation, the NSF began their final assault, causing heavy fighting as fleeing security forces were pursued by exultant militants. The Hammish Land Forces had crumbled in the face of the militant assault, behaving so cravenly as to, in many reported instances, abandon their weapons and attempt to disguise themselves as civilians in order to blend in with the population.

By midday on the 11th of February, the city of Macsen had fallen entirely under the sway of the NSF.While capturing the city, the group freed nearly 1,000 political and civil prisoners, some of whom were subsequently recruited by the fighters. The oriflamme was flown over government buildings. Numerous accusations of war crimes followed the takeover. The accusations included targeting and killing civilians, public executions of political opponents and captives, throwing prisoners off high-rise apartment buildings, fighting in hospitals, the execution of suspected government soldiers found in hospitals and clinics and using ambulances to move militants around the city whilst avoiding attack by government helicopter gunships.

The humiliating collapse of a garrison of nearly 30,000 men facing a force a fraction of their size, was a desperate humiliation for the regime of General Eliphas and the NPA as a whole, emboldening the various rebel groups throughout the Commonwealth. In retaliation, from the 12th of February through to the 23rd of the same month, the city was subject to day and night bombing sorties by the Canberra bombers of the Hammish Air Corps, as well as marauding overflights by Apache helicopter gunships of the Riverine Forces, which would shoot-up vehicles moving on the streets, including ambulances once the militants ruse became common knowledge. The bombing sorties would typically leave behind a mixture of incendiaries, delayed action fused explosives and cluster munitions, all designed in combination to make entire neighbourhoods uninhabitable.

After the 23rd the rate of air attacks would begin to slacken as assets were called away for the developing battle for control over the Lordship of the Islands in the delta estuary of the Caledon river.