Hammish Civil War

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Hammish Civil War
Local TV New Kirrie station picture of the Prime Minister's Residence bombing
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

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 assassination 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 many massacres. Over the course of the war some peace initiatives have been launched, including the Geneva peace talks led by Alexandria, but fighting continues.

Background

Disappearance of the Seneschal and Prime Minister, National Provisional Authority

Hamland entered a period of chaos and instability with the disappearance of the Seneschal Juan Teaodir and Prime Minister Lewis. The country has enjoyed an uninterrupted period of peace and stability until the disappearance of key national and regional leaders led to a power vacuum.

At the behest of all the political parties in Hamland, the military and regional governments, the sole surviving member of the Hammish Government, the Minister of the Homeland Donat Ravaillac, issued a state of emergency across Hamland and suspended the Constitution.

While there was some armed opposition over what some groups believed to be a coup d’état, Ravaillac’s state of emergency was welcomed, and it established the Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland. The Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland was folded into the National Provisional Authority, which would act as Hamland’s new government with Ravaillac as Interim Prime Minister.

Under Ravaillac’s brief tenure as Interim Prime Minister, unrest broke out in parts of Haifa, Israat and Neo Patrova. Through mediation, the unrests in Israat and Neo Patrova were quelled. Ravaillac assured that new elections for Parliament and constitutional reforms would be proposed to replace Juan Teaodir as Seneschal, which was not provided in the Hammish Constitution, and ensure that the state would never again be endangered.

Ravaillac soon encountered fierce resistance from military leaders, notably General Augustus Eliphas, on the promises made to hold new elections. Ravaillac’s government survived a series of armed revolts by the Order of Rochefort, secretly funded and instigated behind the scenes by a misinformation campaign by Hammish top military brass under the direction of General Eliphas to bring down Ravaillac.

However, when Ravaillac met with the Order of Rochefort in New Kirrie, the revolt came to an end after assurances were made that elections for a new Parliament would move forward. The Ravaillac-led government opposed the heavy-handed tactics of the Hammish military in the securing of Haifa and other parts of the country, which led to severe clashes inside the government.

The delicate balance between civilian and military leaders in the government was undermined with the suspicious death of Gerardo Lopez, a popular leader from San Luis de Hamlandia, who was serving as one of the top negotiators and advisors to Ravaillac. After the death of Lopez, the cadre of military officials were really the ones running the country with Ravaillac serving as the unwilling face of the operation.

Assassination of Donat Ravaillac, Rise of General Augustus Eliphas

A smaller wave of unrest began in Anglia and Israat after the death of Gerardo Lopez. The Hammish military had been obstructing Ravaillac’s independent investigation of Lopez’ death, which increased political tensions throughout the country.

The wave of unrest in Anglia and Israat threatened to reignite tensions around the country, and discussions on how to handle the problem became a point of contention inside the National Provisional Authority, especially inside the Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland.

Ravaillac and his loyalists in the government advocated for a measured approach consisting of negotiation and speeding up the promised elections and constitutional reforms. Hardliners in the government, led by General Augustus Eliphas, advocated military action and postponing the elections until the security situation in the country was stabilized. They also advocated for a new Constitution, to be written by the National Provisional Authority and approved by the future Parliament.

At a military review held in New Kirrie to commemorate the pacification of Haifa and to send off troops to ensure peace and safety in the country, Ravaillac was protected by four layers of security and twelve bodyguards. As Air Force jets flew overhead, distracting the crowd during his speech, [a sniper shot Ravaillac]. Several bombs detonated throughout the city of New Kirrie that destroyed the Prime Minister’s Residence and took out some of the roads leading outside of New Kirrie.

Ravaillac and ten others were killed outright or suffered fatal wounds, including the Alexandrian ambassador to Hamland, Josef Droz. Security forces were momentarily stunned but reacted within 45 seconds. Ravaillac was airlifted to a military hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival.

The Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland met at a secure location in the city of New Kirrie and declared General Augustus Eliphas as the new Interim Prime Minister and leader of the National Provisional Authority.

Socioeconomic Inequality

Socioeconomic inequality increased significantly after the disappearance of key government officials like the Seneschal and the Prime Minister. Government policy was set on an “auto-pilot” during the time, placing an emphasis on the service sector. These policies benefited a minority of the nation's population, mostly people who had connections with the government, and members of the merchant class of New Kirrie and other large Hammish cities.

This has coincided with the most intense waves of droughts and heat ever recorded in Hamland that have resulted in widespread crop failure, increases in food prices and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers.

Through the Alliance Fund established by the Council of Free Nations, Hammish allies like Alexandria and Stormark have been supplying humanitarian aid consisting of medicine, food and other supplies to ensure that the National Provisional Authority can cope with the mass migration of farming families to urban centers.

Armed Insurgency, Sectarian Divisions

Territories held by the government and opposition groups at the start of the conflict.

After the assassination of Ravaillac, a small paramilitary force that provided support and assistance to the National Provisional Authority defected, aiming to remove General Eliphas from power with united opposition forces, abolish the monarchy and create a United Republic of Hamland. Hammish Air Force units at Kirnoa Air Base defected to the HRA in what was a crushing blow to the National Provisional Authority. This was followed by a nationwide crackdown nicknamed “the Bloody Massacre", which resulted in the death of at least 142 people and hundreds of injuries.

National Salvation Front was created in response to the creation of the Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland, initially as a political organization that hoped to serve as a check and balance to the CSSH and help usher a restoration of democracy and normalcy. Defiance to the martial law heightened and the group formed a strong military wing, supported by incoming fighters and assistance from the neighboring Green. Other Armed Forces defectors, encouraged by the unification of efforts to bring down General Eliphas in the east, joined the National Salvation Front, with support from the Greater Pallisican Trade Assocation, the National Labour Association and a newly emboldened Order of Rochefort.

Initially the Hammish Republican Army and the National Salvation Front were working together in their common goal to take New Kirrie and remove General Eliphas from power. Infighting and regional rivalries ended what was dubbed the “Grand Hammish Alliance” and both groups split from each other.

Led by Regina Ravaillac, the Ravaillac Loyalists and the National Congress of United Monovia aimed to be a peaceful political group that would attempt to bridge the sectarian divides between the National Provisional Authority and opposition groups, and between the opposition groups themselves. The Ravaillac Loyalists wanted above all to implement the Ravaillac Plan. The Plan would call for national elections for a Constituent Assembly, draft a Constitution, ratify it by a national referendum, and begin a transition back to democracy and stability. The Loyalists draw on vast financial resources, mostly from the massive Ravaillac family fortune and access to Alexandrian financial markets.

Weanburg Conference

Representatives of the National Provisional Authority, the Hammish Republican Army and the National Salvation Front met in the city of Weanburg for a peace conference that was mediated by the Alexandrian ambassador to Hamland, Josef Droz, and Regina Ravaillac.

The Weanburg Conference descended into bickering and disunity. Soon, the groups attending the conference began to prepare to withdraw. In the last night of the conference, a member of the Weanburg Militia, Gene Letdorff, attempted to kill Regina Ravaillac and the Alexandrian ambassador to Hamland, Josef Droz.

The Weanburg Militia was formed by a self-declared Generalissimo Ignace Denueve. In the chaos that ensued the Weanburg Conference, they seized control of the city and chased out weakened government forces. Fearing an insurgency at the heart of the pacified territories, the National Provisional Authority entered an accord with the Weanburg Militia where the Militia would provide assistance and intelligence to the National Provisional Authority in exchange for impunity for its looting and criminal activity.

Operation Morning Dawn

National Provisional Authority forces stormed major urban centers and regions under opposition control in the east and the west in what was dubbed “Operation Morning Dawn”. Soon the Hammish Navy became involved in the military crackdown for the first time in the Siege of Ersoy. Gunboats fired heavy machine guns at waterfront districts in Ersoy, as ground troops and security agents backed by armor stormed several neighborhoods.

After the launch of Operation Morning Dawn, the National Salvation Front started to receive active support from the government of Passio-Corum, and it mounted an offensive to take the city of Macsen, a weakened government stronghold.

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 the 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 precipitous 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 were 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 totaled 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 armor, 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 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 while 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 neighborhoods 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.