Haifan Nationalist Army
- Not to be confused with Haifan Nationalism, the political ideology.
| Haifan Nationalist Army | |
| Active | Late Hammish Civil War to 1652 AN |
|---|---|
| Country | Hammish Haifa, Commonwealth of Hamland |
| Allegiance | Haifan nationalism |
| Type | Nationalist militia |
| Size | Unrecorded |
| Engagements | None |
| Disbanded | Destroyed by the Alexandrian Flu, 1650 AN to 1652 AN |
The Haifan Nationalist Army was a nascent Haifan nationalist military force that formed among displaced Haifans late in the Hammish Civil War, in the autonomous territory of Hammish Haifa. It was destroyed by the Alexandrian Flu between 1650 AN and 1652 AN, before it ever saw action.
Background
Haifa had passed to the Commonwealth of Hamland as the autonomous territory of Hammish Haifa in 1620 AN, and for two decades it kept no armed force of its own, relying on the Commonwealth's military establishment. The collapse of the Hammish government in 1644 AN brought military occupation and the Hammish Civil War to the territory. As the war ran on, refugees and demobilized fighters gathered in the strait corridor, and Haifan nationalism took root among them. It was from these displaced Haifans, concentrated around Keybir-Aviv, that a nationalist army began to form.
The force was distinct from the other armed bodies active in the territory during the war. The National Provisional Authority carried an Army of Haifa, a regular formation of some forty thousand under the Hammish Land Forces, on its order of battle, and the Order of Rochefort operated partly from the territory as one of the groups under the National Salvation Front umbrella. The Haifan Nationalist Army answered to neither, drawing instead on the nationalist sentiment of the refugee districts.
Destruction
The force did not survive to take the field. The Alexandrian Flu, a biological weapon developed under General Augustus Eliphas at the Bureau of Research and Defense Technology inside Iron Point Base and loosed in transit to the eastern front, spread through Haifa between 1650 AN and 1652 AN, killing between 30 and 60 percent of the eastern Commonwealth's population. Local authorities resorted to mass graves, and the Hammish Humanitarian Council, the Commonwealth's relief body, made its greatest effort of the war in the territory's towns as the graves filled. The epidemic wiped out the Haifan Nationalist Army and severely degraded the National Provisional Authority and the National Salvation Front as well. The force's end came shortly before the Geneva Peace Agreement of 1653 AN, which closed the war and carried Haifa into the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia.
Legacy
The Haifan Nationalist Army was the first attempt to give Haifan nationalism an organized military form, and its destruction left the movement without an armed body of any kind. The nationalist current itself survived among the refugees and demobilized fighters and passed with Haifa into Caputia. Under Caputian rule it took political rather than military form in Hatnuah, the Haifan nationalist party led by Leia Clemens and based at Keybir-Aviv, where the nationalist army had first gathered. Hatnuah's nationalists looked back to the flu-destroyed army as a forerunner of their cause.
