Barikalus–Hurmu war

Barikalus–Hurmu conflict
Part of the Arboric Civil War
Barikalus bombs Ghawlama
Date 10.VIII.1703 AN–present Location Ghawlama; River Glacei; Barikalus
Belligerents
Barikalus	Hurmu
Commanders and leaders
Mustafa Asada	J. K. Djupvik
Units involved
	1st Hurmudan Expeditionary Force
Strength
	117,935

The Barikalus–Hurmu conflict began on 10.VIII.1703 AN when forces under Barikalus attacked a Maerifa-flagged passenger ferry that has drifted into Hurmu waters and taken anchorage in Ghawlama. In the territory of Hurmu, on that first day of conflict, at least 350 people were killed.

Hurmudan preparations

The response to the attack on Ghawlama was an opportunity to test the doctrine of civic defence which laid at the heart of its policy of armed neutrality.

Civic defence relied upon the Hurmu Constabulary and Hurmu Peace Corps being able to hold key cities, ports, and airports, as islands of resistance that would allow civil society and contracted defence and security partners to begin to mobilise and carry on an asymmetrical resistance campaign that would ultimately erode the willingness of the aggressor to carry on their incursion by targeting their lines of communication and areas of vulnerability via civil disobedience, propaganda, sabotage, and acts of guerrilla warfare.

The particular circumstances of this conflict did not however exactly match the model as envisaged. Instead of waging a defensive war, the civil society of Hurmu had been called upon to assist in an expeditionary war launched into Arbor, with the purpose of expelling the aggressor from the watershed of the River Glacei, and more generally of bringing the purpetrators of the attack on Ghawlama to justice.

Mobilisation

The attack, unprovoked and nonsensical, had however stirred in Hurmu a widespread popular anger. The multi-ethnic communities of Lontinien found a common voice through their shared outrage. Meanwhile in the Lake District the sentiment of "Never Again", which had prevailed amongst the community of the Hurmudan since the Jingdaoese invasion and long occupation by Stormark afterwards, led to a widespread outpouring of support for the Senate of the Lakes in its decision to take a robust stand against the so-called Barikalus regime.

The upshot of this was that there was no shortage of willing volunteers, many coming forward without official prompting, as the Hurmu Peace Corps garrison in Ghawlama went onto full alert after the events of 10.VIII.1703 AN.

Civil Defence Volunteers, as civilians who wished to support the Constabulary and Peace Corps were termed, who were resident in the Apollonian territories, received directions to muster at government administrative offices in Ghawlama, Mitrovska, and Vadimbaatar. Volunteers from all other locations were directed to travel to Vesüha by their own means at the earliest opportunity.

Concurrently the eastern ulus of the Silver Yak Horde, at the instigation of Chaghagan Khoga, had held a khuruldai during the eighth month of 1703 AN, the same month as in which the attack on Ghawlama occurred. The banners of the Blue and White Bands assembled to Vadimbaatar, ahead of the outcome of the gathering. Support for the war was a forgone conclusion, with the main source of rancor being haggling being over the distribution of commmands and government stipends between the two banners.

The looming conflict would see the Hurmu Peace Corps activate its Defence Service Agreements, with the ESB-Jagdverbände and the Society of Yeshua called upon to send contingents. For the Jagdverbände, arrangements to airlift its Bitzurænhæd (Assault Unit) and "Combat Group A" from locations in Eura and Lyrica to Ghawlama International Airport was underway within forty-six hours. The Krasnocorians of the Society of Yeshua meanwhile were instructed to assemble a force of able-bodied men as a regiment at Mitrovska before travelling on to the Ghawlama region.

These various contingents began to in the region between Ghawlama and Vadimbataar during the course of the eighth and ninth months of 1703 AN. Joining up with the Ghawlama Garrison of the Hurmu Peace Corps, and coming under their discipline, they would form a part of a larger combined arms formation that would become known as the 1^st Hurmudan Expeditionary Force.

Composition of the Expeditionary Force

1^st Hurmudan Expeditionary Force

Formation	Volunteers
Allied Tribes of Lontinien	19,435
Blue Banners of the Eastern Ulus of the Silver Yak Horde	12,619
White Banners of the Eastern Ulus of the Silver Yak Horde	6,816
Civil Defence Volunteers	39,944
Civil Defence Volunteers - Ghawlama	22,775
Civil Defence Volunteers - Mitrovska	13,605
Civil Defence Volunteers - Vadimbaatar	3,564
Defence Service Contractors	7,878
ESB-Jagdverbände	2,777
Mitrovska Regiment	5,101
Lontinien Division of the Hurmu Constabulary	44,318
1st Demi-Regiment	459
3rd Division, Special Auxiliary Constabulary	6,004
Marine Support Unit	145
Rivermen (impressed)	37,710
Ghawlama Garrison of the Hurmu Peace Corps	6,360
8th Port and Maritime Regiment	572
33rd Inshore Patrol Regiment	547
43rd Regiment of Peacekeepers	655
47th Regiment of Peacekeepers	1,178
61st Signals Regiment	309
67th Depot & Logistics Regiment	554
87th Medical Regiment	455
99th Field Engineering Regiment	512
103rd Electrical & Mechanical Engineers Regiment	327
112th Basic Training Regiment	290
118th Aviation Base Regiment	290
131st Air Policing Regiment	152
139th Air Transport Regiment	167
148th/3rd Cohort of the Peace Academy	352
Total	117,935

Of the 117,935 men assembled in the Ghawlama-Vadimbaatar concentration area, only 15,597, including the Constabulary, were considered to be wholly profficient under arms. From these were established six regimental battlegroups. While the Peace Corps had only two regiments of peacekeepers rated for combat operations, every other regiment of the garrison had been asked to contribute a cadre of volunteers, allowing for the six ad-hoc battlegroups, of roughly 1,200 men per instance, to be formed. On the stretch of the River Glacei between Vadimbaatar in the north and Ghawlama in the south, three armed encampments were formed, while the Allied Tribes of Lontinien formed their own encampments north of Vadimbaatar, as far as the border with Lac Glacei - so as to afford a sufficient range for their grazing herds.

For the civil defence volunteers, a two month period of basic training in drill, physical fitness training, weapon familiarisation, and fieldcraft was mandated, under the supervision of the 112th Basic Training Regiment. At the end of this period a third of this body of men, enough for a furrther eleven regiments, were sent out of Ghalwama to tne encampments, whilst the remainder were placed under the authority of the 67th Depot & Logistics Regiment and used to form a "commissariat" which would provide labour detachments and foraging parties for the main force, as well as staff the growing number of field bakeries, fuel depots, and munition dumps, that began to appear at dispersed locations to the west and north of the main encampments.

The chosen men who were now encamped as part of the Expeditionary Force along the western shore of the River Glacei, marked their initiation into the force through a peculiar custom. They shaved the top of their heads down to the temples, passing along both sides of the head. They shaved also the temples and the back of the neck, and the forehead as far as the crown of the head, on which they left a single tuft of hair which would fall down between the eyebrows. They left the hair on the sides of the head untouched, save for braids around the ears.

This peculiar style was adopted, after the fashion of the Silver Yak Horde, so that all of the diverse forces who had pledged to cross the River Glacei would know one-another during the assault, and after, as brothers-in-arms.

Equipment and provisions

Over the space of three months (VIII – X.1703 AN) the 1^st Hurmudan Expeditionary Force amassed at its area of concentration between Vadimbaatar and Ghawlama, a stockpile of armaments without precedent in the history of the peoples of Hurmu. The number of aircraft alone assembled by the Peace Corps and its contracted partner, the ESB Aviation Group swamped the capacity of Ghawlama International Airport and necessitated the creation of a number of dispersal airfields, little more than landing strips between Ghawlama and the Forward Operating Base Longstreet outside Mitrovska.

Item	Quantity
Aircraft
Ground attack jets	93
Helicopters	44
Multi-role strike aircraft	19
Patrol & reconnaissance aircraft	26
Training & light attack aircraft	414
Transport aircraft	112
Artillery
Direct-fire guns	212
Mortars	450
Recoilless rifles	40
Land transport
Horses for the Commissariat	19,435
Horses for the Silver Yak Horde	97,175
Requisitioned carts for the commissariat	9,810
Requisitioned land cruisers	23,413
Requisitioned trucks	2,200
Riverine transport
Barges and assorted rivercraft	1,886
Weaponry
Florian cocktails (petrol bomb)	589,675
M1610 7.9 mm rifle (7.92×33mm)	40,513
M1686 assault rifle (7.62×67mmB)	12,823
M1693 medium machine gun (8x80mm RP)	510

The commissariat, hastily formed from the logistics and supply regiment, augmented by civil defence volunteers rejected for frontline duty, had been obliged to obtain 176,892 sheep across three months and two loaves of bread per day, per man, (16,982,640 loaves!) across the same period. Moreover the government had felt obliged to impound the entire stock of tea and coffee held by the Köping Tea Company in Hurmudan territory so as to sufficient provision to the force assembled at Ghawlama. Some lucky soul, or an unfortunate one depending on perspective, was also obliged to tour the Blackfriar's District of Tiegang in an effort to lock down deals with the breweries and distilleries of the International Mandate, and their contacts in wider Apollonia, so as to procure the industrial quantities of alcohol that a perennially thirsty and bored army in being required to sustain itself as it prepared and waited.

The equipment of the deployed force, distributed amongst the three forward encampments, and their supporting depots, consisted of much more than weaponry and requisitioned vehicles. The necessary materials and hardware for clearing the route of march, constructing emplacements, and keeping everything in good repair, made for catalogue of implements, all of which had to be stored, guarded, and maintained. The quartermasters, adjutants, and pursers, who had spawned out of ranks of the commissariat, were dully obliged to maintain lists of every necessary article, along with their cost, making the enterprise an exercise as much in accounting as in defence.

All of this, combined with the vast quantities of aviation fuel, diesel oil for the land cruisers and trucks, and stores of munitions that would soon be called upon to feed the hungry guns, served to turn Ghawlama, for a time, into one of the busiest ports on the continent, with shipping commissions being greedily snapped up by the so-called "big three" shipping companies (ESB Logistics, Kerularios & Company, and SATCo). All these commercial vessels, constituting a trade fleet in their aggregate, would have been accutely vulnerable to enemy interdiction, being protected by only the three lightly armed cutters of the 30th Offshore Patrol Regiment as they approached the harbour situated at the mouth of the River Glacei. However, were the enemy to consider striking at this vulnerable traffic, it would run the risk of antagonising the Raspur Pact, whose members would not take kindly to seeing the merchant vessels of their various conglomerates burning on the ocean, at a time when the foe had already strained the patience of the Great Apollonian Empire in recent months with the careless use of chemical weapons in its own civil war.

International reactions

•  Akhidia: On 14.VIII.1703, Akhidian kings Prince Edward and Neil I think that the conflict should end because they said that their civilians were harmed during this time and that they would distribute coffee for motivation to both sides.
•  Benacian Union: Osman-Spiik Accord, negotiated at Botha on 9.IX.1703 AN – the Benacian Union undertook to provide Hurmu with surplus weaponry inherited from the Black Legions and the UDF, as well as to grant exit visas to any subject of the Union-State who would enlist to the Hurmu Peace Corps for a five year term of service. In return Hurmu would undertake to resettle recusant religious dissidents, particularly of the Umraid community in the district of Transprinitica.
•  Mondo: On 14.VIII.1703, Fort Ermingander released a statement expressing concern at the rising tensions and calling upon all belligerents to take measures to avoid exporting the conflict to neighbouring states. A personal message from Mondo offered free prosthetic limbs and emergency cake rations to civilian survivors of the ferry attack.
•  Sanama: On 12.VIII.1703 AN Piter Oreya and Muqana Soke issued a statement on behalf of the Federal Coordination Committee. In the statement they condemned the attack on civilians, called for moderation from both sides and offered to mediate in the conflict in any way possible. They also expressed their hopes for a ceasefire and talks between the parties. As a nation with positive relations with both Barikalus and Hurmu, the Sanaman officials hoped that their invitation could mitigate the volatile situation.
•  Senya: 10.VIII.1703 AN, the government issued a statement criticising the unprovoked attack on a Hurmudan civilian vessel, and called on all sides involved to broker a peace deal to establish stability and security in the former Arboric Emirate.