Third Euran War

Third Euran War
Date 17.II.1693 AN – Location Southern and Central Eura Lontinien (Apollonia) Status Ongoing
Belligerents
Azad Eura (1695 AN –)  Free State of Constancia (1693 AN –)  Zeed (1693 AN –)  Mbasana (1695 AN –) Alleged material support:  Calbion (1693 AN –)	Raspur Pact  Constancia  Suren
Commanders and leaders
Rashid Hasanzadeh  Sergey Ilych Chernavyin  Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili  Rustam Bukhori Yazghulam  Ruslan Paskhaev  Vladim Vasyliovich Timoshenko  Papa Hickory	George Maniakes  Jaime Augusto Joaquin Primo de Aguilar / Dāryuš Shah / Azardokht al-Osman  Dāryuš of the Suren†  Mitradokht of Suren
Units involved
Revolutionary Armed Forces Revolutionary Army Glorious People's Army	Trans-Euran Command  Imperial Constancian Armed Forces Epicheírisi Prásino Liontári Constancian Expeditionary Force Nivardom Banner Command Popular Levy
Strength
Zeed Militia – 1,027,929 Infantry – 96,394 APC – 3,143 MBT – 665 SPAAD – 456 IFV – 193 MLRS – 186 Rotorcraft – 88 UAV – 49 Strike fighter – 29 Maritime light attack craft – 22 Guided-missile cruiser – 1	Constancia Constancian Foreign Legion – 16,723 Home Guard – 189,908 Support vehicles – 31,432 AFV – 1,664 SPAAD – 278 MBT – 12 Mortar – 1,256 Towed artillery – 200 Coastal patrol boat – 157 Auxiliary vessels – 56 Logistic support vessel – 36 Corvette – 27 Offshore-patrol vessel – 26 Missile attack boat – 16 Amphibious assault ship – 2 Destroyer – 2 Landing ship tank – 2 U-Boat – 2 Light-attack aircraft – 296 Ground-attack aircraft – 170 Rotorcraft – 88 UAV – 80 Strike fighter – 10  Suren Popular Levy – 216,416 Support vehicles – 25,016 Towed artillery – 202 AFV – 9 MBT – 4 Light tank – 1 Corvette – 9 Frigate – 4 UAV – 200 Light attack-aircraft – 187 Transport aircraft – 25
Casualties and losses
x1 merchant vessel sunk x14 F7 Tughra shot down	x6 corvettes sunk, x8 corvettes damaged x1 B-49 Delta shot down

"We need only to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure heaped up around Raspur will come crashing down."

—Rashid Hasanzadeh, Rusjar (15.II.1693 AN)

On 15.II.1693 AN between 26,000 and 33,000 Zeedic militiamen crossed the frontier between the Ḡur Republic and Suren dressed as Eurani natives headed for various areas within the Durranian highlands. Surenid gendarmes, after receiving warnings from tribal herdsmen and shepherds, dispatched patrols towards the frontier later the same day, with one troop of mounted gendarmes reaching the boundary posts demarcating the entrance to the Ḡur valley by nightfall.

During the course of that day, Zeed had thoroughly wrongfooted the chancelleries of the Raspur Pact when it recognised the Republic of Elwynn and Amokolia and the Republic of Tarrland as sovereign entities. Rashid Hasanzadeh, first secretary, announced that Zeed felt solidarity with the revolutionary struggle with these two new countries, and that Zeed would support them at all costs, with the first secretary declaring "We too know what subjugation feels, and how glorious it is when one casts off one's chains". In a severe breach of diplomatic protocol, militiamen from the Popular Mobilisation Brigades, accompanied by mobs of students and the unemployed, had entered the diplomatic quarter of Rusjar, Zeeds capital, and proceeded to stage violent attacks against Raspur Pact embassies located in the city. These assaults being conducted with the seemingly tacit blessing of the first secretary. The Sanaman embassy, with its mission head Yazdan Omidi ensconced within, was amongst the first to come under a concerted mob attack. The compound perimeter was soon under a continuous hail of rocks, bricks, paving slabs, bottles and flaming "Florian cocktail" petrol bombs, whilst agitators exhorted the mob to use every object and implement at their disposal in an effort to batter down the security gates impeding their access to those inside. In response to this, Sanama dispatched a naval task force consisting of the missile cruiser SNS Cisamarra, the destroyers SNS Shako Pinusho, SNS Paki Woodesham and SNS Gjanpjetro Pinucci, and the amphibious assault ship SNS Freetellya.

Even without the prospect of a Sanaman naval task force arriving off-shore, the Zeedic Central Committee for Security and Defence remained acutely aware of the vulnerability of its coast to retaliation from the Raspur Pact now that its stance on the matter of Elwynn's civil war had been announced to the world. To mitigate this, Vladim Vasyliovich Timoshenko, erstwhile leader of the United Republics, was rehabilitated and recalled to service by his successor, 1^st Secretary Rashid Hasanzadeh, as Marshal of the Army Maritime Corps of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Zeed.

Upon returning to duty on 15.II.1693 AN, Marshal Timoshenko found the most immediate problem facing him was the deplorable condition of the "fleet" assembled by the Secretary of the Central Committee for Security and Defence, Rustam Bukhori Yazghulam, for defending the coast, which consisted of one missile cruiser of Babkhan provenance, a seeming relic of the Babkhan Holocaust of 1598, six motor torpedo boats, five fast missile craft, eleven patrol boats, and a collection of confiscated fishing boats and merchant vessels. The Army Riverine Corps was not any better off, and could offer only a scant further eight patrol boats to the coastal defences.

The following day, 16.II.1693 AN, PMB militiamen entered the Rusjar Mechanical Machine-Building Plant, arresting those ESB personnel who could be found at the site, including Karl Gutzlaff, the Director of the RMMZ. In what would be a bitter irony for the Suren, those armoured vehicles and C-RAM platforms which had been ordered from the RMMZ under the Fontainebleau Accords were now requisitioned along with the plant itself for the sole use of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.

This move only contributed to the escalating war of words between Zeed and the Raspur Pact as spokesmen speaking on behalf of the organisation's Permanent Commission condemned the embassy attacks and called upon the Zeedic state to abide by its international obligations to protect foreign legations hosted upon its soil. 1^st Secretary Hasanzadeh denounced this "calumny" and in turn demanded the immediate withdrawal of Surenid forces whom he accused of crossing the frontier and entering the Ḡur Valley. This accusation prompted Fereydoun Jamshidi, the Astabadh of the Suren with responsibility for its international relations, to urgently attempt to contact his counterpart, only to be thwarted by being passed from pillar to post between the switchboards of the Revolutionary Council, the Union Presidium, and the Supreme Council. Exasperated, Jamshidi issued a demarche, copied to all three organs of state, insisting upon the immediate withdrawal of all Zeedic citizens presently engaged in the violation of the frontiers of the Suren, which had necessitated their own counter-deployment of Gendarmes to the border. Three hours after this communique had been received in Rusjar, 1^st Secretary Hasanzadeh took to the airwaves, broadcasting over the radio from the People's Palace in Rusjar to further denounce the perfidious and shameless Suren for seeking to blame their own "pathetic and decrepit" failure in containing the Ḥezb-e Tūde-ye Eura upon the noble proletariat of Zeed. Far from being cowed, Hasanzadeh assured his listeners, Zeed would live up fully to its sacred obligation to assist all partners in the revolutionary struggle, be they in Suren, Constancia, Elwynn and Amokolia, or Tarrland, until all the petty tyrants of the decaying "Raspur-system" had been cast down.

Perhaps scenting opportunity in the midst of this crisis, the beleaguered representatives of the Free State of Constancia, trapped in the Razjanian interior by Alduria-Wechua to the north and west, loyalist Constancia to the south, and the Thraci Confederation to the east issued a bulletin via sympathetic media sites on 16.II.1693 AN declaring their full support for the Zeedic position and a willingness to back it up via whatever means would be required. Having been relentlessly ground down by the forces of the Autokrator over the preceding decade, the desperate leftists and liberals of Constancia at this stage did not have much left to lose. The Thraci Confederation announced through the national media that it would remain neutral, Thraci Confederation also denied support for the Zeedic position and announced it as a trap.

Operation Green-Lion

Trans-Euran Command, surprised by the aggressive posture adopted by the Zeedic government in Rusjar, had sought to restore a measure of sanity and de-escalating the conflict by throttling Zeed's maritime trade. As the long-term plans of the Raspur Pact called for Zeed to be eventually brought into the fold, whether as a full member or as a compliant neutral state, it was considered inappropriate to initiate the sort of total war that was being waged concurrently against rebels in Elwynn. While every effort would be made to stave off a Surenid collapse, the strategy towards Zeed would be one of containment and persuasion.

To this end Aqabah Command dispatched a flotilla of eighteen corvettes, supported by a single Type XXV U-Boat, to intercept Zeedic trawlers and coastal shipping in the southern waters of Eura. As Zeed's fleet comprised of a single, century-old, Babkhan missile cruiser supported by armed merchantmen, and its air arm reported to be a similarly decrepit collection of resurrected Babkhan air frames, the Návarchos Cyril Phrantzes who assembled his flotilla at Arak in mid-1693 was instructed to press his voyage as far south as onboard fuel supplies would permit, and to return with captured prizes. If the enemy's sole warship came out of port to give battle, the corvettes were to double back and to decoy the cruiser into the path of the lurking U-boat that would be following at a distance behind the main force.

Failed peace negotiations

In spite of the conflict turning against Zeed, the All-Union Revolutionary Party refused terms for a cessation of hostilities predicated upon the occupation of Zeeds's population centre by Raspur Pact forces.

The march on Suren

Emboldened by the failure of Operation Green-Lion, and scornful of the peace proposals received by the Trans-Euran Command, Rashid Hasanzadeh was encouraged to assume a more offensive posture. Continuing the strategy of sending proxies into battle, the 1^st Secretary dispatched revolutionary "volunteers" under the command of his wife to occupy Vey. Whilst these revolutionary forces waged their struggle against the remnant population of the Euranikon Theme, the former Constancian heartland, to establish the Republic of Vey, Secretary Hasanzadeh commanded Rustam Bukhori Yazghulam to gather together the bands of the Ḥezb-e Tūde-ye Eura for a march on Surenshahr to distract the Raspur Pact forces from contemplating an intervention on the southern shore of Lake Erik.

While providing labor and materiel support for the war effort, the Republic of Malirusenia declined to provide manpower or troops to serve on Suren territory, but provided personnel for internal deployments to relieve other troops of the Union of the Republics of Zeed to serve on the frontlines.

Occupation of Vey

To be written (Republic of Vey est. 7.III.1695)

The war on the frontier and in the green

A frankly tedious and incessant round of border skirmishes, guerrilla ambushes, and reprisal raids, carried on across the frontier between the Suren and Zeedic realms, and across the ungoverned spaces on either flank. So far beneath the notice of the rest of the world that in many respects it was scarcely as if there was a war at all.

For the most part, Trans-Euran Command left matters in the hands of those local commanders, posted from the Surenid Popular Levy and the Constancian Home Guard to the frontiers, to handle as they saw fit. The comparative lack of external support and interest did not, it must be said, do wonder for the morale and initiative of those on the ground whose job it was to curb the enthusiasm of the revolutionaries and their allied tribesmen for cross-border raiding.

Red Konil

Following the coup known as the Red Konil in Zeed, the Surenid forces, bolstered by the supply of a large number of light attack aircraft of Alexandrian provenance, began a series of offensives to clear the province of Surenshahr of the remaining insurgents. Although not without setbacks, the guerrilla fighters in the highland regions being particularly adept at picking apart columns of Surenid conscripts along the winding vertiginous roads between mountain passes, the majority of the province bordering onto Zeedic territory had been pacified and a new forward policy of air strikes into the Ḡur Republic and the Republic of Vey.

Although Zeed could have been crushed at any time, the Trans-Euran Command wished to avoid the "endsieg" strategy employed by their Benacian colleagues which had so roiled the international community, not least because they were still living with the consequences of the last round of an equivalent destruction carried out a century previously. Moreover the long term aspiration of the Pact had been to reintegrate Zeed into the regional economic and security structures envisaged under the Fontainebleau Accords. While the insane pride of Rashid Hasanzadeh had prolonged the war needlessly, it was hoped that the new administration headed by Sergey Ilych Chernavyin would be more amenable to reason and agree to a restoration of the status quo antebellum, with adjustments to reflect Zeed's role as the wrongful aggressor in the conflict.

Until that time came however, the cross-border air-raids would continue and the proposal for a resumption of Constancian attacks on Zeedic shipping, combined with amphibious "descents" upon its vulnerable coastal communities, was presented to the General Staff for consideration.