NationStates Jolt Archive

Somewhere in rural Eritria

The Anotov transport was concealed under camo netting. Parked on the edge of an open field in the valley below craggy, low mountains, the soviet-built biplane transport had been sitting there for a while now. There were several more like it scattered at various parts of the valley. Some crash-landed, some in flyable condition, some not.

Around the valley were piles of wooden crates. Coarsely made, with stenciled writing, in two or three different varieties. They had rope or metal handles on them, and parties of men were carrying them from their stacks next to the airplanes, or from the large pile near the dusty terminus of the single road that led into the valley, up steep, crude stairs to the mouths of caves in the scrubby mountains.

Pup tents that once sheltered VDV paratroopers in Afghanistan or East Germans on exercise clustered together around fire-pits, where black men in mottled urban pattern uniforms and red berets sat, smoked, and waited while their greatcoat-clad, lighter-skinned officers paced, red from small, vynil-covered books.

Under the wings of one of the transport aircraft, at a folding desk, Arslan Buyruz sat and did paperwork, while men carried his baggage up to the caves.

One of the Republican Guardsmen dropped a tacky, powder-blue 70’s Czech suitcase. Arslan gave him a sidewise angry glance and kept working (nobody frankly knew what he was writing, as there really wasn’t much of a regime to run in this valley).

The People’s Marshal looked up as a small convoy of jeeps entered the valley, bumping past the hillside sentries, in their machinegun nests. Brakes squealing, they stopped in front of the impromptu headquarters. Republican Guardsmen and a commissar got out of the jeeps, as well as a black man in the typical garb of a local tyrant in the running- military uniform of indeterminate rank, red beret, aviators, impossibly clean kalishnikov.

The magazine was gone from the weapon, and Republican Guardsmen flanked him on his way to the small folding desk.

“This isn’t much of a way to treat a comrade in struggle, Arslan” spreading his hands, the man was genial in a way that belied his personal cruelty. Actually, in person both he and Arslan were pretty nice guys, when they weren’t having you killed
“Kindness is a bourgeoisie custom the struggle can ill-afford at this juncture, Abebe. Revisionism and struggle-averse thought has given the counter-revolutionists a victory.” Arslan rose and walked around the desk, close to the man in front of him. “Even the most ardent among us must admit that mistakes were made, Abebe. I think the time has come for a good deal of corrective revolutionary thought and some severe self-critique.”

Abebe looked nervously to where, a few hundred meters away, men were digging a large pit. Bags of lye were stacked next to it.

“Look, Arslan, the East African Rally for Peoples Socialism will assist you however we can. We have weapons, supplies, money.” Abebe was starting to get nervous, probably with good reason.

Arslan Buyruz reached back onto the desk, and lightning-quick, snatched up his tokarev and pistol-whipped the Ethiopian guerilla general.
“You traitor! You revisionist! I MADE you! If it wasn’t for the ASDPR, you would still be a nothing sitting around running errands for the Derg and shooting clerks! This is the thanks you give me? You offer me crates of AK-47’s and bags of rice in return for all I did for you?” Buyruz was starting to pace.
“Abebe, you are going to sign papers placing the East African Rally for Peoples Socialism under the command of the Ahzadi Socialist Democratic Peoples Republic State Defense Command. You are going to do it now, by signing those papers on the desk, you are going to use the radio to bring your commanders here, and then you are going to attend a collective self-critique session to examine your revisionism, ideological sloth, and warlordism.”

There was a long pause. Bleeding from his nose, Abebe looked at the pit.
“Yes, comrade” Abebe nodded. “I will sign the orders”


_______________________________________________________________________________

“What do you think is going on over there, Major?”
Commissar Roshan Tashkin looked up from his reading, to the soldier that asked the question, and to the distant command post.
“Well, I would imagine that People’s Marshal Buyruz is eliminating factionalism and consolidating the revolutionary movement to strike back against the bourgeoisie and their so-called ‘revolution’ as well as their colonialist and capitalist masters.”
The men around the fire all nodded at this.
“Major Tashkin….what about the self-critique?” The soldiers all looked nervous.
“I wouldn’t be worried about that at all, comrades” Roshan looked around at the circle of guardsmen. “Only traitors need to fear anything, and you have all done your duty. I actually think I may have found an explanation for the temporary setback suffered by our revolutionary movement.”
The men leaned in. Explanations were precious these days. “Because I screwed up” was not something anybody wanted to have to say when called to task. Commissar Roshan had been reading the odd little red-jacketed books ever since they had fled Sanaa ahead of General Massad’s army.
“Have any of you heard of the great school of the Kurosan revolution?”


He ended up talking for several hours, attracting more of the bored, nervous ASDPR loyalists. As the first shots cracked across the valley that night near the self-critique pit, men around Major Roshan listened to Revolution Tide Surges Eastwards, Our Nation is a Red Fortress and other Dra-Pol ballads on an old record player.

He didn’t know it at the time, but Major Tashkin’s line of thought was very much the same as the People’s Marshal. Weakness had failed the Revolution. Love of material wealth and power had replaced zeal. Great Sulo and Kurosan thought was the path to victory. Over the next few weeks of doctrinal purification and self-critique, the correct thought would soon emerge.

But for now, the struggle must be continued.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Western Military Command Headquarters

The organization, most of the men wearing the uniforms, the uniforms themselves, the units they commanded, the guns they carried, the maps and radios they used, were new. The building was not. In a former ASDPR army base, the Republic of Al-Ahzad had established the headquarters of Western Military Command. Now French-made ASTER-30 missile batteries squatted outside, and new antennae reached skywards. Sentries stood at attention by the main gates, and Mirage 2000’s howled overhead.

Very stirring. Forward progress, and all that. But in one of the conference rooms, men were very bothered.

“That’s, what? Seven attacks in the past two days.” The commander of the 4th infantry division was not happy about this. “I don’t get it. I thought the Jandarma said that something like 80 percent of Former Regime Element personell had been taken into custody. I mean, hold-outs is one thing, but we have remote bombs on the Mocha-Aden highway, Hodiengah has been mortared twice, and I have six body bags sitting on slabs down at corps medical.”
“Look, you can’t put this at the feet of the Jandarma” The regional Jandarma commander opened his notebook. “We’ve been running sweeps, and we’ve already processed three quarters of all party members in the former ASDPR. Hardcore members are dead, have taken to the mountains- which means they fall into the first category pretty damn fast, because the hill folk hate the communists more than most anybody- or have fled the country……oh.” The Jandarma commander had a moment of realization.
“Infiltrators.” the fourth division commander spat the word.
One of the naval officers in the room spoke up. Their service had recently been re-formed after it’s 1977 disbanding by the Sultan. It’s officers were either old, grizzled navy men turned fishermen turned navy men, or absurdly young graduates of Hindustani or French naval academies.
This officer fell into the latter category.
“I regret to tell you about an incident that happened earlier today…”


_____________________________________________________________

Southern Red Sea, just off of Yemen

PCM-152 was new, as were most of it’s crew. The French-built missile boat had been running patrol around the island clusters of the southern red sea as a shakedown cruise. Now it was pulling shore protection duty.

This dhow was just plain shady, no two ways about it. They had shadowed it at night, sailing with no lights, waaay too low in the water. Now PCM-152’s forward 40mm cannon were tracking the sailing ship as the 210-ton missile boat pulled alongside.

“Heave to and prepare to be boarded! This is a routine inspection, you have nothing to fear!”
The signal lamp clacked out the message, and it was repeated on the radio. Crewmen readied shotguns and FAL’s for the boarding party. They pulled nearby, and sailors readied line guns to pull the dhow in.

It happened quickly- figures popped up from the deck of the dhow, the RPG’s covered the fifty meters from dhow to missile boat very, very quickly. Almost as soon as the rockets were fired, the 40mm gun on PCM-152 lit up the dhow. Splinters flew, and then one of the shells found the explosives cached on the dhow‘s hold, creating a huge explosion and shattering the traditional arab sailing ship.

That wasn’t the end of the afternoon’s pyrotechnics. One of the RPG rounds found the lightly-armored front opening to one of the exocet box launchers, a freak hit that triggered the warhead of the anti-ship missile.

It’s officers dead, PCM-152 lay burning alongside the wreckage of the infiltrators ship.


_______________________________________________________________

Raysuz

“Dammit, Hikmet” Ismet Massad was a man in a hurry, and right now was no exception. “We can’t be losing irreplaceable people like this. We’re horribly short on trained naval crews as it is, and it’s not like we can just be going through missile boats like that! From now on, boarding with motor launches only- and wait, why the hell am I saying this? Shouldn’t Commander Red Sea Fleet be issuing these sorts of orders?”

“Mister, uum, interim President, he already has. They’ve started using Super Frelon’s to shadow suspect boats, and are using the Estenne D’Ovres class corvettes for patrol now. That’s really not the point, the point is we still have at least elements of the former ASDPR still operational and still working against us.”

“Look, I know where this is heading, Hikmet” Massad finished putting on his tie and turned to the wizened official. “We can’t take military action on a significant scale right now. We just can’t. It’s bad politically, it’s bad on an operational level- we have a tiny number of cadre and a bunch of clueless new guys. Furthermore….I don’t want Al-Ahzad to be the kind of country that just bombs weaker nations when it’s convenient. That’s something United Elias would do.”

He walked out, to the estatic waiting crowds gathered to attend the Revolutionary National Party rally. Elections were in a matter of weeks, and no large-scale opposition to the RNP had really emerged. It was the political wing of the Yeni Ahzad movment against a kalidescope of fringe nutcases and divide leftists and religious right-wingers. Not really a contest, but Al-Ahzad was a democracy now, and they had elections, and he would go to rallies and kiss babies and all that other bullshit.

On his way out, Ismet Massad turned to Hikmet Bektasi
“Oh, Hikmet- this infiltrator stuff. I said no military involvement, but I think using, oh hell what is it being called now? Bureau 6? Yes, using Bureau 6 would be a good idea.”

This looks excellent.

Tag.

Do you think humble old Hindustan could get involved?

tag

[tag]

Tag

Rural East Africa

The Eritrean army patrol didn't have many men. It was a few jeeps surveying the troubled border with ethiopia.

Then they fell off the face of the earth. Eritrian army command was troubled. Twelve men, just gone and this wasn't the first time, either.

The young man reading all this in a dingy hotel room in Assab leaned back on his bed, looking at the swirling fan above. He looked like a literature major, impossibly young.

Everybody thought he was a backpacker. "Finding himself."

He reached under the bed, pulling out an oblong case. His M14 and GPS equipment, and himself, were going north. He felt like "finding himself" in the mountains. Finding a few other people as well.

Eurocopter Tiger Helicopter patrol, off of Aden

"Six-Three actual is that the boat?"

The gunner was nervous. The volume of civilian shipping in these waters were huge, and dhows were all around. Nobody wanted to light up a bunch of fishermen, but Western Command had a tip-off, so they had sent attack choppers out to get the infiltrators. The pilot banked slightly to one side, looking at the suspect boat.

"I....uuuh, no idea here. Read me back that description of the suspect craft"

The gunner was about to start when tracers began lancing up from the Dhow. The pilot threw the french attack helicopter into a series of evasive contortions, the countermeaures system kicking out flares to confuse the man-portable SAM's the infiltrators very likely had.

The gunner, meanwhile, held on for dear life, before setting the reticle right onto the bow of the ship they were now being shot at from. The 20mm cannon chattered, and the ship simply came apart under the shells.

Both scared out of their wits, the crewmen radioed the nearest Ahzadi ship- a corvette this time- and it headed out to the wreckage.

It was only a matter of time before the chopper pilots lost men, at this rate- an engagement almost every day- it was only a matter of time.

While Hindustani military units had left Al-Ahzad, the HN still has a Type 12 frigate hanging out around the Bab el Mandeb. With innumerable tons of shipping traveling through the strait daily, a good deal of it headed to Hindustan, the navy likes to at least have a presence in the area. Although, a Leander isn't much of a presence these days.

But still, it doesn't take a great leap of sensors effectiveness to detect some recent fighting. The sunk Ahzadi patrol boat already put the crew on a hightened level of alert, and the Tigers' encounter did not help to calm things down either. Obviously, something was happening, and it appeared to be coming from Eritrea.

They would have to talk to the Ahzadi command...

ASDPR Base Camp, Unknown Location

Major Tashkin's lectures were taking place more often now. The Self-Critique had left the ASDPR with a handful of commissars. Towards the end, Tashkin had sat on the discussion panels to review doctrinal shortcomings. Unplesant work, but softness got you nowhere.

The valley had become more and more busy. The East African Rally for Peoples Democracy commanders had been reluctant at first, but once given an intellectual context and opportunity to study in the "education box" most had come out of the self-critique sessions with a greater understanding of the dynamics of history. Now there troops had assembled, as well as more ASDPR refugees. Apparently the reactionaries were making more security sweeps after the partisan actions of ASDPR revolutionaries struck at the new chauvinist-imperialist military of the so-called Ahzadi Republic. Several stay-behind cells had been compromised and others had been driven across the red sea to this place of refuge.

But that was of passing importance at the moment. Tashkin has more pressing duties. He had emerged from the self-critique with a bold new understanding of revolution, and the People's Marshal seemed to grasp Tashkin's reasoning. Arslan Buyruz was going to make the first speech of the new era of thought.

Mounting a stack of ammunition crates, Arslan Buyruz looked out upon the geurilla army that had massed here. Now more African than Ahzadi (and a good deal of the Ahzadi troops were from the east african Zanj minority) the absorption of the EARPD had given the revolutionary forces the manpower they would need. But now, he had to show the assembled masses the truth.

"Comrades, Soldiers" his voice boomed out over the crowd "socialism has failed!"

That drew an audible gasp.

"Socialism failed us. The softness of the ASDPR state, the personal automobiles and television sets, is what doomed us to defeat by capitalists. Socialism is NO FOUNDATION FOR A STATE. Marx said socialism was simply a transitory phase, and he was correct. The transition is over! Our defeat has shown us that communism is nigh! We must build the final society, my brothers! We must put into action here the goals of the great Kurosan revoultion! The peasant and soldier must be the only classes in the final society. We must fight with a vigor and certainty never before seen. We must forge our will and re-make human society as it never before has been! History is dead! Today is Year Zero of the Final Society!"

The men cheered, as they knew no else. It made sense to them. They were in the wild, lords bestriding the land beneath an open sky and they would do so forever

Not-so-rural East Africa

"Fuck. This. Shit." The young man was tough, but that didn't mean he had to like this. Much like the hippie backpackers he resembled, he was getting more than he bargained for in Eritriea. He labored up to the crest of this praticular ridge, but quickly dropped down the moment he saw what was over it. He opened his guitar case, and quickly had the bipod of his M14 resting on a rock as he peered through the scope to the ridge across the valley.

Men. 5-700

Battalion sized force. Road march formation.

Soviet equipment, 6-7 mortars with them on pack mules. Heading north.

The young man slid back down into cover and unfolded a map. North. What was north? A pass with a horribly not-pronoucible name, protecting a fishing town from the Ethiopian border. A strategic border pass that was guarded by large elements of the Eritriean army.

The young man turned on his satilllite phone. Something was going on here.


North Pacific Ocean

With a sickening, slow grind the worn-out ship beached itself. Out of fuel for days now, it had drifted aimlessly before finally grounding itself on the craggy rocks. The hungry, tired crew looked out at the mist-shrouded mountains of the shore.

It was very quiet.

Then one, then more, then a few dozen skinny, small people trickled out of the forest, clutching ancient-looking carbines and japanese submachineguns. Once before people from outside had come aground near here. Then the villagers were ignorant, thought they faced demons. In a sense they did. Those outsiders were the Christians. They brought a terrible war. But these foriegners carried the same weapons as the heroic soldiers the villagers both respected and feared. The uniforms looked familiar, their flag was red, something the villagers knew to be good. They rounded up the taller, swarthy men as they stumbled ashore, and sent a boy back to the village. They needed to tell the army, and the army needed to tell The Leader.

(Just a tag for now, as I haven't had time to read everything. I will catch-up.

A note: In Dra-pol, Kurosite and Suloist ideologies have come to clash with bloody result and official victory for the Kurosites under Hotan, devoted follower of the late Kurosian I. But then, Kurosian I himself learned of the revolution and made his name serving under Sulo, so it's quite possible for people not directly watched by the Banat to take what they may call a more original view of the ideologies before -one might say- revisionism lead them to conflict and to Suloist defeat. Sulo was the most violently isolationist and ruthlessly destroyed any foreign influence, and was responsible for the population's forced ruralisation, as he saw cities as largely western constructs for the implimentation of capitalist ends. He advocated (and forcibly carried out) a return to traditional Drapoel ways of life with an element of collectivisation and with the Party replacing the feudal nobility.

Kurosites -Hotan especially- are more recognisable as east Asian 'communists', as Kurosian was apparently much more deeply affected by revolutionary war-era encounters between Suloist guerrillas and Chinese Maoists. They're more modern in most senses, but not much less firm in carrying out their ideas. (Still, if you want absolute wackjobs, follow Suloist thought :) )

This would all only ever be a problem if the Banat turned up to help and found people praising the wrong Suloists, such as Kurosian II, who is presently in Quinntonian custody.)

Arslan Buyruz is leading towards a very khmer rouge-esque form of Suloism, and considering his present activities, I think he'd be very happy to have some Banat come over and make sure everybody is praising the correct Suloists.

North of Nakfa, Eritrea

The Eritrean soldiers were probably tougher, man for man. They'd fought off the Ethiopians for years on end, losing tens of thousands of their numbers and soldiering on.

But then again, they didn't know what the hell they were doing. The newly minted Bureau Six got to read all of the after action reports from the Revolutionary War, and the record of the ASDPR army was simply horrible. Hideous junior officers, a politicized command structure, formulaic and rigid tactics. But in tactical terms, whoever was running things over the other side of this ridge was a blossoming napoleon compared to the Eritrean commander.

The young Ahzadi agent lowered his binoculars in disgust, looking for a moment with the naked eye over the valley before him. They ASDPR geurillas plus their newly recruited east african allies had taken out a few Eritrean army outposts and patrols that were blocking their efforts at sending infiltratiors via dhow into Al-Ahzad, but nothing like this....

The simple pin-then-flank infantry tactics of the ASDPR had worked wonders upon the Eritreans. A fient from the ridgetop with EARP rebels in battalion stregth incited the Eritreans to charge the "failed" attack head-on, exposing them to enfilading fire and the flanking attack of a small unit of ex-republican guard who swept in on jeeps. Between them and the hilltop mortars and mountain guns, they had dissasembled and torn apart a force twice their size in an afternoon.

The Bureau Six agent watched as the Communist forces marched southwards to Nafka.

Over northern Eritrea

The Mirage IV reconissance model was capable of going very fast and very high- it had been developed as a strategic bomber in the early 60's- and right now it was doing both of those. Technically it wasn't in Eritrean airspace, but that wasn't on the minds of the crew. They busied themselves, rolling the big side-scanning cameras as they passed over Nafka. The big plane rolled away, descending slowly as it crossed the red sea and made it's way back to Raysuz.

Raysuz

"Look, President Afworki, I have full faith in your army" Massad actually rolled his eyes while saying that "and I know you are very confident that you can defeat the insurgents. No, no it's not the Ethiopians. Look, I've got recon photos I can send to you, and.....just listen to me here President Afworki, I can send weapons and assistance. Oh, I dunno, the kinds of things you would need to fight the insurgents. Wh- no, no I don't think you'd exactly need the F-4I variants to fight the insurgents...I...well, alright, but I hope you keep an open mind about this. Don't underestimate Buyruz!"

President Massad put down the phone and sighed. The Eritreans either viewed help as an insult, or wanted things the Ahzadis weren't able or willing to provide. Massad shuffled papers, trying to find out what happened to the ASDPR's transport helicopter fleet. That they could give away.

Sitting back, Massad thought for a moment, glancing over recon photos of Eritrean army units destroyed by the rebels, as well as the reports from Bureau Six about the situation over there. Massad picked the phone back up, but dialed a different number.

"General Headuarters? This is the President. Call a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I need some contigency plans drawn up."

He had a feeling this would all get worse before it would get better.

A relatively common shilouette appears over the Bab El Mandeb. Painted in a drab grey color scheme more suited to the frigid waters off Lyong than the bright, sunny Arabian Peninsula and its inviting seas, an Alouette III putters around, taking pictures of the various ships around the straits. Massive container ships and small Dhows alike are photographed in detail and archived. The HNS Quetta, the Alouette's parent ship, sits at anchor off the Eritrea/Djibouti border, and does a good deal of photography on its own.

While Hindustani intelligence is much less, shall we say, action-oriented than perhaps their Ahzadi counterparts, they are no less curious. With sources all over Africa, South America, Asia, and Oceania, the Popular Congress knows when something big goes down. Of course, when dealing with fairly well-established nations with their own established intelligence networks information could be non-existent (as was the case with BG's New Caledonia excursion), but that's another story.

Bureau six isn't the only thing aware of certain shady things happening in Eritrea, and out in the back country the Ahzadi agent isn't alone.

Ibrahim Marley, a Jamaican/Iranian ecologist and intelligence observer, jots down some notes in his scratch pad from atop a prominence. Figures in the distance, armed and not moving. He could be on the verge of Buyruz's camp...but no such luck. Scouts, he figures. They've got scoped rifles, anyhow.

Raysuz

With President Massad gone off to France to consult with Louis XX, the responsiblity for the east african situation has fallen to Hikmet Bektasi, official foriegn minister and unofficial head of the unofficial Bureau Six. His last instructions were that hightened world tensions would make a deployment of conventional troops impossible.

So he sets to work the way he knows how. A few private helicopters are leased, and four hindustani-made hind helicopters are written off as crashed in accidents.

Hodiengah

Secure Horizons, Inc. is a company that "provides safety solutions to a variety of international clients" and is operated out of Hodiengah. They own several helicopters and pay their taxes with clockwork regularity, have the mandated quota of Ahzadi-owned stock, and have never had any labor complaints of disputes. Their offices are small and nondescript.


Secure Horizons is also a mercenary company based in Al-Ahzad and currently delighting over their (suprise suprise) new contract with the Eritrean government.

South of Nafka, Eritrea

The people leaving Nafka now were either the paranoid or the very, very smart. People had been streaming into the city from the surrounding countryside as Ahzadi socialist forces move ever closer to Nafka itself. Nobody expected Nafka to fall, though. Unless you happened to take the accounts of the villagers seriously.

The real panic hadn't started yet, though. By then it would be too late. The people leaving Nafka now had done this sort of thing before. They took only what they would need, and climbed into the overcrowded busses to safer territory. Among them was what seemed to be an Ahzadi backpacker caught up in all the activity. Nobody paid him much mind.

Near an army base, he called a stop and got off. Generally people thought he was crazy, first for backpacking in eritrea, second for carrying that silly guitar case, and third for choosing at all to place himself near the eritrean army. The people feared them almost as much as the rebels. The army was cruel, corrupt, and brutal, enforcing it's conscription policy in a manner (torture!) that disgusted most of the world, and most eritreans. But the Army they knew, and this rebel group that came out of nowhere they did not....

Camp Tarkan

A photo of the turkish pop singer adorned the command room of this ludicrously named facility. In it, the Bureau Six agent- not yet out of his birkenstocks and phish t-shirt- conversed with several clean-cut Ahzadis and Europeans who wore oakley sunglasses and top of the line outdoor clothing. The Eritirean army Colonel who kept trying to buy weed from him, he tried to ignore.

They all fell quiet as the rickety building shook under the rotor blades of an incoming helicopter. Peeking out the window, the young B6 agent saw the unmarked Hind settle it's landing gear into the gravel airstrip. It was the last one to arrive at Camp Tarkan, and it meant that Secure Horizons could soon begin to "facilitate security solutions" as the brochure said.

The agent turned his attention to the conversation between two Secure Horizons managers.

"Personally" said the taller man- a white guy, in terrible french-accented Ahzadi- "I theenk ze local armee ees fhuucked" He paused to light a cigarette.

"Zhey are deployed all wrong, trained to fight in, aah, fossés, aah, how you say- trenches. The reds, they move fast, they move smart..."

"Plus their units don't melt away and desert the first chance they get" the shorter man, an Ahzadi, interjected "whatever the rebels are saying, it's working, or at least sounds better than the crappy alternative the Eritreans are providing"

The Eritrean officer- obviously intoxicated- looked up for a moment and then went back to looking at porn.

The Bureau Six agent pondered the map for a moment before speaking. "Look, I'm gonna get dressed up in ASDPR uniform, get some Republic of Al-Ahzad POW documentation, get my dog tags, and make like I came over the red sea. I'm going to get inside rebel-controlled territory, stay low, stay quiet, and get what sort of on-the-ground info I can. I want Secure Horizons to ride shotgun and provide recon to the indigenous forces defending Nafka. Be sparse with the helicopters, because we don't quite have the reserves of spares or weapons we would like. I've got people looking into deals for more weapons in Afghanistan and the usual Eastern European hellholes. Don't try to save the day just yet, because we have no idea what exactly is going on."

Then, casually, he picked up a folding chair and walked over to the TV where the Eritrean was watching the porn come to its (noisy) conclusion. Calmly, the Bureau Six beat the television until all that was left was a plastic shell and bits of broken glass.

In Afar, he spoke softly to the now-quiet Eritrean officer; "It's about time you do your fucking job."

Outside, thousands of children walked to school, weaving in and out of work details taking-down gigantic billboards and banners celebrating the previous day's significance. Inside, the office too had been made bare, stripped of its decoration by a local official desperate to hide his corruption before the Director-Secretary arrived to over-see yesterday's parades in the Republic's largest city.

One of the room's few luxuries, a television, aired a documentary picked-up from a southern broadcast. It was a collection of half-truths and speculation based on accounts gathered across Africa from people claiming to have witnessed the strange expedition. Several years ago, the largest over-seas deployment of Drapoel troops since Vietnam had attempted to influence revolutionary movements in Sub-Saharan Africa, and had come horribly unstuck and then attempted to fleet -over land- from the Congo to Libya. The documentary gave a fantastical account of the trail of destruction left by a few score Red Bamboo commandos as they cut across Lusakan Tanzania, the Commonwealth territories of Burundi and Rwanda, Roycelandian Uganda and Sudan, and the Central African Republic, reportedly leaving a few of their number dead at each stage before all were lost short of Libyan sanctury.

Hotan resented the documentary's association of those Suloist Red Bamboo with his Kurosite Republic of today.

The Director was pulled from contemplation by an aide's delivery of news on a reported violation of Drapoel territory somewhere on the sensitive east coast.

Somalia

Somebody had made a mistake, and in the course of a morning gone from warlord to headless corpse. Others had made the mistake of complicity, and militiamen lay bloody and disfigured by brutal combat.

Sub-Lieutenant Seung-kyun was now the ranking officer in a group of seventeen surviving Red Bamboo in Africa. When ten stronger, they'd given their services to General Tendyala's campaign of counter-colonial fixing (the ethnic cleansing of whites in Lusaka that many Igomo-era Lusakans would have no part of) before fleeing during the counter-coup and landing of Soviet troops and hiding out in the chaos of Somalia. Finding it impossible to keep their heads down while always seeming to be on somebody's claimed territory, the unit was driven to explaining its position.

The well made argument was now ripe for the worms and birds to digest, but carving out a sphere of warlord-like influence in Somalia was never something the Red Bamboo hoped to get bogged-down in. They were in Africa to foster right-thinking, especially if it might support Drapoel interests in any way. There didn't seem much chance of that in north east Africa, but the notion of revolutionary support remained... especially in Suloists isolated for several years, totally abandoned by the Kurosite government that had re-taken power since their deployment.

Seung-kyun's men were now players in the arms markets in their locale, though they had not touched on the drugs trade that was increasingly important to the Kurosites back home. Their state-issued weapons had long since run out of ammunition, and nowhere outside Korea could one find a reliable supply of knee-mortar grenades or 6.5mm intermediate assault rifle rounds based on the old Japanese bullet, so it had been important for the seventeen to acquire arms more familiar to this part of the world. They took rather well to the old Russian equipment available, considering that most of it seemed to be bad copies of Drapoel equipment. They came from a regime isolated enough that its best soldiers did not know that their D-Type-86 bullpup rifles copied the AK action and that their RPG-69s were marginal improvements on the RPG-7.

But there was no use to having re-armed if the mission was doomed to live out its days in Somalia. It was there now- if its fate was to die there, then all else had been achieved and the men may as well kill themselves today. They were of course quite prepared to do that, if a new purpose would not reveal itself.

"Comrade Corporal!" Barked the Sub-Lieutenant, and presently there departed a five man team, on a fishing boat bound for Eritrea, keen to learn the truth behind rumours of revolution. They took with them AK-47s, RPG-7s, a 12.7mm machinegun, their traditional short-swords -those did not run out of ammunition- and a Susong-Po (Sagger-copy) ATGW launch post and missiles, for this had found little use in the force's combat with militia lacking armour. And of course a total disregard for international law or of respect for anybody else's rights or abilities.

Nafka, Eritrea

The jet ranger made a long, slow bank over the main road over the city. The helicopter was unarmed, but all Secure Horizons was doing right now was looking. What they saw wasn't nice. The road was obscured with smoke for the most part, and the rest was clogged with fleeing people on foot, in animal-drawn carts, or in over-crowded trucks. From the helicopter, it was obvious things were only going to get worse, as the view from the air afforded the Ahzadi mercenaries a view of the Communist troops rapidly moving behind the cover of ridges adjacent to the road, racing ahead to set up mortars and cut off the last line of escape.

They'd seen the assault on Nafka earlier this morning. The Communists had come out of the surrounding hills in dispersed columns, with the now-familiar mortar teams racing ahead to begin to lob shells at the Eritrean garrison. East African troops rushed the Eritrean fortifications while ASDPR field guns disrupted any effort (there were some, however feeble) at a counter-attack.

The helicopters had to leave the air over Nafka at that point, as the AA fire was getting far too heavy. The last glimpses they got were of Communist forces cutting almost all routes of escape off- they seemed rather intent on capturing as many civilians as possible.

Later in the day an Eritrean Air Force MiG had tried a ground-attack mission against the rebels. It was now in flaming pieces scattered across a hillside.

As the Secure Horizons chopper made it's last circle around the now-trapped refugee column, the 20 kilometers to Camp Tarkan didn't seem so far away.


Dra-Pol Coast

The villagers had rapidly detained the dazed outsiders. They were very certainly socialists of some kind, but just to be safe the militia had them kept in bamboo cages. The runner they had sent to the nearest party headquarters had been gone for a while, so they were expecting news of some sort soon.

These outsiders were strange folk.


Nafka

The Bureau Six agent now wore an ASDPR uniform stripped of rank tabs, and carried Ahzadi POW identification cards. He'd met up with the ASDPR forces and (so far) they seemed to be buying his cover. As a (supposed) former radioman, they were assigning him to sort captured eritrean equipment into that can be repaired and used and that that can't. Not bad work, really.

It was a good cover to pick, because the agent did not want to have to pick up an AK and take part in what was going on here. As he entered the Eritrean army compound it became very clear that taking prisoners was not on the agenda. The things he had glimpsed in the streets, though, those were what disturbed him.

They had been planting explosives at the power stations, the water-treatment plant, the schools. The ASDPR troops- and most of the East African ones- were all sporting new armbands with a shovel-hoe-AK-47 design on them. They had been pulling people out of the crowds, people with neckties or eyeglasses....

There was talk filtering down the ranks of "things" that were going to happen, and he'd heard the phrase "final society" more than once.

Suddenly this infiltration thing didn't seem like such a hot idea.

Ibrahim Marley also happens to witness strange events taking place in towns visited by the rebel factions. It was eerily reminiscent of a certain southeast asian regime's program.

But he watches all this through a spotting scope, Vz. 58 rifle slung across his back. Marley wears what are essentially civilian clothes, although with the proliferation of Kalashnikov-pattern rifles civilian could be a very subjective term. In the distance, he watches a small helicopter flutter about, apparently pushed off by rebel fire, and the wreckage of a MiG-23, well, that's probably what it was judging by the nose cone, isn't far off.

As the rebels start to get close to his position, Ibrahim picks up his spotting scope, unslings his assault rifle, and begins to run. Bureau Six isn't the only one interested in keeping tabs on Buyruz and his considerably dangerous movement. After all, it was two Hindustani ships that already fought the ASDPR in Al-Ahzad.

At the same time, the Quetta begins to intercept ominous radio signals. They're ominous enough to prompt the captain to move the frigate into position off mainland Eritrea, and radio the small Hindustani embassy there. If the government needed, oh, say...some troops, MiG-23 'instructors,' they don't need to look further than Hindustan.

The Secure Horizons Jetranger isn't the only helicopter aloft near Nafka. Not more than twenty kilometers distant, an Alouette cautiously picks its way through the countryside. Obviously a dangerous place, as evidenced by numerous corpses and burned-out wrecks of this and that. Unlike the Jetranger, the Alouette bristles with armaments, although it doesn't quite know what to do with them yet. But before too long, one can expect Eritrea to play host to a number of Gwadar-registered fishing boats. Involvement couldn't be too heavy, though. Even in spite of 'victory' in Colombia, Hindustan has a growing commitment in Western Sahara and a wide array of aid recipients in Africa, as well as Central Asia. Granted, many former prop-up states were getting themselves off the ground, like Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgystan, but the aid chest is visibly growing shallow.

(You may want to keep one eye on this (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=417771) thread for political and theoretical conflicts in the home of Kurosite and Suloist thinking, though it may not be terribly fast-paced.)

Kangwon District, the Choson People's Republic

The Yónglan 14th of December Co-operative was not all that much changed from the community near Hungnam that had been so infamously disturbed by the first Quinntonian expedition years earlier. Some of its members who were alive then were burried now, or vapourised with the advance units of the 100th Assault Division subjected to nuclear attack in the south. Others had grown-up and joined the Unified People's Army, while more had retired from service and come home to serve as reservist officers and work the community's vegetable plots.

The foreigners caged here were guarded by an old ex-soldier with a Type-99 bolt-action rifle and his grandson clutching a wooden-furnished sub-machinegun. The boy rested the gun's little bipod on what appeared to be some sort of small coal bunker and watched the strangers intently with the weapon pointed always directly at them while his grandfather rested against the side of a near by shed, taking out a cigarette after having waited longer than expected for reinforcements to arrive.

T'ongch'on City

The young girl arrived in town relatively little tired from her frantic cycling, which was eased by the recent paving of roads leading up there. But she had in spite of this locomotive aid been delayed by some commotion. There was a gathering of angry young men in town, dressed in traditional style but not dirtied by work in factory or field. Obviously members of families rooted in the favoured parts of the Intellectual or Administrators classes, that they chose to dress in ancient and distinctivly humble Drapoel manner better fitted introspective Suloist thought than the Party's expansive Kurosite regimentation.

The men, as the girl from Yónglan 14th of December Co-operative observed while astride her adult-sized bicycle with her one foot on the ground and second suspended short of it, were striding about like they had nothing better to do. This, she thought, wasn't very productive at all, and she rode on with a muttered condemnation sounding like their mother's complaints over her eldest son's time spent at football.

But the girl found another strange scene at the local UPA consultation office. It wasn't obviously remarkable, but there was something odd about the behaviour of the man attending, who appeared without even full uniform and twitched and laughed without obvious cause. Still, he was a clerical officer in the People's Army, so the youngster was satisfied when she eventually rode for home with a promise of coming military support.

In fact, she didn't get home, because somebody was yet to decide whether foreign intruders would prove a liability or an asset to their cause.

Yónglan Kangwon 14th of December Co-operative

In their cages, the foreigners came to hear across fields and obscured to sight by trees and small buildings the sound of trucks or a truck arriving and then halting in bad breaks. Next were Drapoel voices, some raised in barked military demands; and then was the crackle of 8mm sub-machinegun fire. Before then the prisoners' guards were vanished, though it was unlikely that anyone of the captives noticed their sudden and silent departures.

Men in working clothes with the barest of organisational uniformity -badges and other insignia- soon mustered about the cages and -given no information themselves- the foreigners were bombarded with demands for identification and such, first in Drapoel-Korean then the standard sort, then Japanese, Chinese, English each delivery translated more poorly than the last.


(I'll have to wait until next time before addressing Red Bamboo in Africa again)

Camp Tarkan

The infiltrator had come back a few days ago, swearing that he'd never try anything like that ever again. Apparently, the whole former ASDPR movement had a good deal of popular support among rural Eritreans, if only because it let them kill the townsfolk that had lorded it over them for so long. Villages were well-supplied and well cared for, but Nafka...Nafka was a hellhole. He hadn't stayed around for long. First day in there he'd split. Apparently Arslan Buyruz was even more paranoid than before about traitors and being an enemy agent, the infiltrator had decided it was time to get the hell out.

The rest of the mercenaries listened, made their notes, and lamented the fact that the Eritrean army had simply blocked the south-bound roads out of Nafka and were currently waiting in trenches.

Given the data on more Communist recruits pouring in from northern eritrea- and a few isolated sightings of asian soldiers of some sort- as well as the total inaction of the Eritrean army, secure horizons made plans to move it's operations southwards.

Elias Naval presence in this critical straight was more or less constant. Ever since the Army had launched its offensive on the ASDPR, the usual patrol cycle of a single Barracuda class low-observables missile corvette had been doubled, and in addition to this, there was nearly always a larger formation of ships returning or leaving for a deployment to the Indian Ocean, or simply transiting from the Persian Gulf to a port on the Red Sea or the Med. Furthermore, Arabia - South West Military Command at Jizan had made sure that regular signals intelligence sorties were flown to monitor Massad's buildup on the western side of Ahzad. The net result was that the omniscient Elias intelligence services were well informed as to the emerging situation in Eritrea. Again however, it posed problems as exactly what should be done, after all Massad was apparently no longer persona non grata but at the same time Arslan Buyruz could potentially be useful as a thorn in the side to Ahzad, as it had been before. As usual, the solution to this question of foreign policy would rely on a plan using illegal, immoral and downright dishonest activities, resulting in massive escalations of violence and suffering.



Ethiopia

A black man sat in the middle of the room, and whilst being tied to a crude wooden chair, recoils from yet another blow to his head. The air is foul with the stench of urine, cigar smoke and diesel, the only light is from a gas lamp suspended in the air on a rope. In the cellar of this shoddy brick house, deep in the hills of the Afar Depression in Northern Nigeria, Ali bin Saleh Al-Fulani interrogates a suspected smuggler. Using a splintering wooden stick on the man's face he hopes to gain information on a shipment of Qat apparently being shipped through Djibouti and across to UE. He had to admit that an element of the torture he imposed arose from his inner anger, after all he didn't exactly join the Federal Intelligence Bureau's Jihaz al Khas (Special Apparatus) unit to bust mild narcotics dealers.

Just as he contemplated going outside to get the car battery with a pair of crocodile clips, hoping that inflicting electrical burns to this criminal's groin region would help him reconcile being relegated to a useless assignment, with a secondary conseuqence of maybe yielding something vagule useful, a knock on the door interuppted him. "Ali, its me...is that useless bitch dead yet?"

"No Hamad, he's not that lucky...what is it, is something wrong?"

"You have a phone call, encrypted line...from Baghdad."

Ali's dark hooded eyes glowed with excitement, "Yes, yes, I'll take it upstairs...watch this thing...maybe you can find a dead rat for him to eat...or better yet...a cockroach." Ali ascended the stone staircase into a more or less empty main room, save for a few sleeping bags and a collection of firearms littered about. He reached for the satellite phone, larger and more cumbersome than its civilian counterparts and spoke into the reciever, "November Golf Three Niner Five, codeword 'Babylon', go ahead."

After eight minutes speaking to his superior he hung up and returned to the cellar to see his partner, "Hamad, we need to leave, we have a new mission."

"The prisoner?"

"The assignment's aborted so....kill him."

"Right." A minute went past before the distinctive sound of a discharging 12 gauge shotgun reverberated through the house.

Within twenty minutes, the two FIB operatives had loaded their equipment onto an anynomous looking Land Rover and were driving along the hilly roads, heading west north west.


***

Later, in the dawn hours of the next morning, a series of explosions racked the border village of Badme, the contested settlement that sparked the last war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The devices, all grenades similar to those issued to the Eritrean Army, were used with timed fuses to explode simultaneously, blowing up at several points around the village, and killing several ethnic Ethiopians including five young children on their way to the primitive elementary school. In addition a land mine was placed on a main road, destroying an Ethiopian Army truck on its way to the scene, taking the lives of a soldier and badly injuring three others.

It would take several hours for the news to reverberate all the way to Addis Ababa and then the next step would be predictable. This was just the excuse Ethopia needed to start a fresh offensive, and given that the Eritrean troops were otherwise distracted, the timing was serendipitous to say the least.

OOC: Geez, UE, you seem to love starting wars in Africa? The Nigerian Itsekiri-Ijaw conflict, this...

Camp Tarkan

Colonel Ozden was at first jovial as he listened to the Eritrean president. He had actually authorized a pull-back from the fixed positions around occupied Nafka. The newly-minted addition to the Eritrean army became quickly horrified when he was informed that they were not pulling back to the main line of resistance reccomended by Secure Horizons consultants.

"You can't do that, Mister President! I mean, Nafka was home to your whole national movement! You can't just give it up."

The voice on the other end of the phone got louder.

"Well I know you consider the Ethiopians more of a threat, Sir, but Arslan Buyruz and the EARPS soldiers he's commanding are actually moving southwards right now!"

There was more yelling, and the Eritrean president hung up.

Colonel Ozden looked around the command room to his staff. The collection of Ahzadi and European mercenaries along with a few second-rate local commanders were visibly tense.

"He's left us with one brigade. He tells us the rest of the troops are pulling out and re-deploying westwards. We don't really have much of a choice- we have to pull back to....Keren. We can't possibly stop them here. Somebody call our Aden office, too. We need more men."

One of the french mercenaries spoke up "so we're just going to run? is that it?"

Colonel Ozden threw a map over the folding table in the middle of the room.

"Not quite, Roland" the colonel began to study the map intensely "not quite."

South of Nafka

Arslan Buyruz hadn't felt like this in decades. He'd been complaining to all who would listen about stomach problems in the months before the reactionary attack. He couldn't sleep well, had stomach problems. It was terrible, awful, the stress of it.

But crouching in a foxhole, shouting orders into the backpack radio of one of his elite Special Republican Guardsmen, he felt like a young man again. In many ways, he was doing the exact same thing- descending out of the hills with a pesant army at his back, delivering blow after blow to the corrupt system of capitalism.

Except this time he wasn't going to let himself be weak. This time he wouldn't have his tanks batter down the palace gates and set up ministries and headquarters and all that. That was socialism. That time had passed. This was communism, what was laid out in front of him. He had forged it. The men crouching around him, facing outwards with wary eyes and ready AK-47's were the complete product of the Socialist era that had fallen away: the Soldier class. It was them, along with the Pesant classes that would forge the Final Society.

The Pesants here were rather more receptive to his message than the diluted mumbo-jumbo spouting religious dupes back in Al-Ahzad. They had been sufficiently brutalized to see the corrupting influence of the cities and of their spawn. The error of Nafka was well on it's way to being corrected. One look behind him to the north let the eye drift over the columns of smoke rising from useless, decadent structures, and a man with good binoculars- such as those Arslan himself had- could see the columns being marched out into the countryside to form the new order.

But Arslan Buyruz was looking to the south. East African socialist troops- ranks swelled by recruits from the countryside- were surging forwards in waves at the retreating government forces. The Eritreans were retreating in good order- for now. Buyruz's forces had disovered a mountain road that wasn't on government maps. Right now Ex-ASDPR troops were moving over it as fast as their pickup trucks could allow. He would be in the enemy rear any time now.

_________________________________________________________

The machine seemed too ugly to fly. The Russian Hind pilots that Secure Horizons had hired were all Afghanistan vets, so the nervous Ahzadi passengers guessed they knew what they were doing when they took the blocky Hindustani-made attack choppers through these sorts of insane manuvers. Over one ridge, down a valley, then over another steep cliff. The mercenaries in the cramped troop compartments of the Hinds could see small settlements flashing by beneath them. Flying as low as 20 meters, the Hinds suddenly found themselves over the battlefield.

Tracer fire reached up at them from the hills around the main road, but the machinegun fire was ignored. Forming up into two four-chopper pincers, the Russian pilots took their helicopters in on the distinctive envelopment attack. Lashing the ASDPR lines with unguided rockets and cannon fire, the Hinds (moving even lower, and even faster, if such a thing was possible) emptied their rocket pods and sped back over Eritrean lines. Quickly jumping out of what were proving to be RPG magnets, the Secure Horizons platoon rapidly formed up and moved off to the front line. The mercenaries hoped they could shore up the Eritreans long enough for something like an organized retreat to come together.

"This is it! This is just not going to happen!"

One battalion of parachute-sappers...not even marines...is granted for the Eritrea operation in the end, for fear of provoking the French with a larger force.

If they were about to stop some terrible things, they would have to act fast.

The battalion of remarkably multi-ethnic parachute-sappers boards the freighter Omar Kayyam, escorted by three HN ships. The Omar Kayyam and its escorts will hopefully be employed as a kind of floating base to support the operation, and will ideally be resupplied fairly often.

So, in late afternoon, the Hindustan Eritrea Expeditionary Force sets sail towards the Bab El Mandeb, intent on stopping Arslan Burynz and impending war with Ethiopia.

Raysuz

"So the Hindustanis are sending peacekeepers?"

"That appears to be the case, Mister President."

President Massad nodded at that. "Good, that's damn good. They may tend to be bleeding hearts sometimes, but nobody does peacekeeping better than they do. They'll keep the people happy- or at least keep them from starving. That'll prevent people from going over to the- what the hell is it called now?"

Hikmet Bektasi glanced down at his papers.

"He's calling it 'First Dawn" now, mister president. So says our most recent humint sources." Bektasi seemed to heistate for a moment. "Uuh, Sir, I hate to break it to you, but I don't think the Eritrean President would be too happy with foriegn troops entering his country. I don't think he'll let the Hindustanis in."

Massad nodded at that. "Well, refugees are flooding the southern part of the country, he's called up his army to face a vague Ethiopian threat instead of the very real First Dawn movement, and it looks like general order is about to break down in the country. He'd damn well better accept peacekeers."

"I'm going to parliment, Ismet. Then get me Air Force command on the line."

Ahzadi Parliment

"And so I move to ask the Parliment for permission to send the 1st Jandarma Field brigade to Eritrea to safeguard distribution of humanitarian aid, with the caveat, as put forwards by the Progress and Democracy Party, that they not engage in any combat operations except in direct self-defense."

President Massad paused for a moment before continuing.

"It is important that we provide assistance to the suffering Eritrean people. The Jandarma brigade will simply assure law and order and the distribution of aid. It will work in full concert with Hindustani peacekeepers that are also on the way. I can be assured that we have the Eritrean government's full support in the matter."

Asmara

"You arrogant pig! You're sending troops over here?"

Massad's voice rose on the other end of the line.

"I don't care if they are just jandarma- I don't need them! I am in full control!"

Massad continued to yell.

"What? You want me to look out the window?"

At that moment, as the Eritrean president moved to the window of his office, the whole city shook as a squadron of Ahzadi Air Force Mirage 2000's broke the sound barrier at very low altitude overhead.

"I....see, Ismet. I really don't have much of a choice in the matter, do I?"

The Eritrean President slammed down the phone in disgust.

Massawa Airport

The first planes touch down later that day. Blue-uniformed Jandarmas- the paramilitary federal police of Al-Ahzad- begin to disembark from the plane. Their first task is to secure the city of Massawa and prepare it's port for the arrival of Hindustani peacekeepers as well as aid supplies.

OOC: You guys will want to check this out:

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=419342

Before very long, the distinctive outline of a Type 42 destroyer appears off Massawa. In tow are the two Type 12s dispatched from Gwadar and the Omar Kayyam.

A small Alouette III lifts off from the Diu and lands at the city's modest airstrip. If the need were to emerge, the HAF could operate a number of fighter squadrons from the place quite easily thanks to the ruggedness and STOL charactersitics of the major HAF planes, but at present it might not be totally necessary.

The Alouette sets down near the Jandarma transports and a HDF officer emerges, wearing the standard all-service tropical uniform, British-style with short sleeves and shorts, colored a kind of light green. The officer is a navy man, a captain judging by his shoulder plates, and he approaches the nearest Jandarma.

"Pardon me, soldiah, whea's your CO?"

Offshore, the parachute-sappers aboard the Kayyam come up onto the deck for a look at their new environs. Nothing they aren't prepared for, having been trained in the Hindu-Kush mountains and Thar desert, among other places. They are also dressed in the all-service tropical uniform, and wear the regular wide-brimmed slouch hat. Denison smocks and long pants are also in abundance, should the weather in the mountains prove frigid.

If the Jandarma expected a massive force, they will be dissappointed, at least in the short term. While there has certainly been talk, quite serious at that, of deploying a member of the HN's modest amphibious force, HNS Magar, to the region, it will still be a few days' time before the appropriate forces can be summoned and properly equipped.

The airborne contingent of the Hindustani Eritrea Mission is en-route as well, consisting of ten An. 26 transports loaded with humanitarian supplies. Massawa will likely be used as the primary port for humanitarian shipments, from which they can be distributed throughout Eritrea by air.

Two Mi-8s are brought by the Type 12s, lashed to the helipad, and another four Gazelles are stowed in the Kayyam's hold. Massad also recieves a communique inquiring into the availability of airstrips in the former ASDPR, possibly to host a few HAF attack squadrons. Hunters and Jaguars could be very useful patrol and interdiction platforms, and the Hunter especially is a respectable light fighter.

bump

The Jandarma paramilitaries welcome the Hindustani peacekeepers, grumbing to themselves about their miserable rules of engagement that preclude them assisting Eritrean forces. The Hindustani troops are directed to a now vacated Eritrean army barracks, empty now that more troops are moving westwards to stand off against Ethiopia.

The Jandarma- now numbering 3,000- will be drawn down to about half that once food routes become reasonably secure. In their French VAB wheeled troop carriers, the Jandarma area already securing the region around Massawa and cracking down on general crime and banditry.

Most of the Jandarama, however, are in the process of digging wells and stringing fence for a series of huge new camps constructed to accept the refugees that are now streaming before the advancing First Dawn forces- who are nearing Keren, having met little opposition save occasional spoling attacks by Ahzadi mercenaries.

The request by Hindustan to use fighter bases in Al-Ahzad is turned down. Al-Ahzad is trying to keep a very low regional profile for now, and sending a few thousand peacekeepers to guard humanitarian supplies is the largest conventional commitment President Massad could wrangle out of his parliment without serious arm-twisting.

Unconventional support.....well, Secure Horizons has been chartering ever-growing numbers of flights with Air Ahzad- a charter freight company out of Muscat- and ever larger numbers of employees are being sent to the Eritrean branch.

The Para-Sappers quickly unload their equipment, mostly nothing heavy except for a handful of Scorpion light tanks. The Sappers are still reasonably mobile, being furnished with WC. 1 (Saracen) and WC. 2 (BTR-152) APCs. When the Magar arrives, it will bring ten TC. 3 IFVs.

As soon as the Gazelles are unpacked and given a thorough checking-over, they are readied for a mission. Armed with four AT. 40-series missiles and a sensors pod, two of the four scouts and an Mi-8 with a squad of Para-Sappers are sent to the Eritrean-Ethiopian border, with the intention of setting up observation posts near the recent incident in nearby Badme.

An. 26s begin to arrive at Massawa, escorted by a squadron of Hunters, and prepare to make drops of humanitarian supplies. Prefabricated shelters will be deposited both around the Massawa refugee camps and at concentrations of displaced people on the border with Sahil province. Food and medicine will be dropped throughout the country. At the same time, diplomats are hard at work in Asmara. Mumbai's plan calls for much more than a simple food delivery. If Parliament has its way, the Eritrean President won't hold the office for much longer. What is underway is nothing less than a full Ahzadification of Eritrea.

A Type 12 frigate deposits a 40-strong contingent of Hindustani Marines at Ed, intended to oversee and protect the influx of Humanitarian aid in Denakil province and along the Ethiopian-Eritrean border. Addis Ababa is also contacted by Parliament and urged not to take action just yet. The Ethiopian government is assured that Hindustan is on the job. The tiny HDF contingent in Ethiopia, left over from the 1980's war with Eritrea, begins to pick up recoilless rifles and light guns from the Ethiopian army, and prepares to move towards border areas. While their assignment is officially to protect refugees and humanitarian aid shipments, they could be called upon to do heavier fighting. Another 40 marines, doubling the Ethiopia mission's strength, arrive by air.

The Jandarma are soon joined by HDF troops on the roads, and protected by HDF airplanes overhead. The first shipload of Para-Sappers doesn't intend to engage in direct combat with the New Dawn movement just yet, like the Jandarma. However, if nothing is heard from the rebels after Mumbai asks for a peace settlement, the future could very well see Hindustani soldiers traveling further northward.


Meanwhile, a number of new faces appear in Camp Tarkan, arriving in a column of fairly generic ZIL trucks and elderly jeeps. Two squadrons of para-sappers might go quite a ways in reinforcing the government lines.

The Roycelandian Government will be monitoring the situation closely, bearing in mind the proximity to Roycelandian East Africa...

Keren

The Eritreans were second-line troops, and ragged ones at that. 15 year olds with AK-47's who had been caught up in the re-mobilization. They had all been too young to fight the Ethiopians, so they really had no idea what the hell they were doing.

On the plus side, the fact that they were totally ignorant about what was about to happen made them rather enthusiastic. The rest of the 2,000-odd Eritrean soldiers were older, ragged veterans who had been chased down from Nafka by the First Dawn rebels.

They were bolstered by about a battalion of Secure Horizons mercenaries, who were vainly trying to organize some sort of larger overall defense. Unable to do anything like motivate or inspire the Eritreans, they had resorted to simply giving them money to stay and fight- a prospect that was getting more and more expensive, as the Eritrean troops realized they could simply up their bids.

Colonel Ozden is present in Keren, and is currenly on the radio begging the Hindustanis for help of any sort. Air support, para-sappers, even using diplomatic pressure to get artillery assigned to fight the First Dawn.

Near Nafka

Ten thousand men. The first classes were already graduating from the camps. The Soldier class of the final society was being forged in the hills surrounding Nafka. The disposessed, angry, poor subsistence farmers that made up 80% of the Eritrean population were learning to shoot, learning to fight, and learning to forge their hate into something Arslan Buyruz could use. There were enough AK-47's floating around to arm the whole country, and they were already turning out mortars and shells in the small workshops in the valley.

Buyruz was starting to wonder, though, about those 13 asians that they had found on the coast. They were Dra-Pol, no doubt about it, but they seemed to have been here for some time now.

Arslan wondered, for a brief moment, whatever happened to that ship he had dispatched to the east in the days before they fled the cities....

Over Nafka, a pair of unfamiliar shapes loiter in the morning light. At high altitude, the two aircraft circle lazily.

Radios on the ground soon start to recieve a message from Mumbai.

Attention New Dawn fighters...we urge you to lay down your weapons...a peace settlement is on the table...negotiations are being prepared...Buyunz is a mass murderer...he will not give you what you desperately need...refuse violence....

The Canberra and Hunter continue to loiter for a few more minutes before departing for Massawa.

On the ground below, Para-sappers start to deploy. Intending to hold the current government lines, they set up their R. 130 rocket launchers and dispatch foreward observers. Light tanks also start to appear, covered in applique armor to protect against RPGs. They are ready to help plug any gaps should they emerge.

Many kilometers west, six An. 26s fly low and slow into Sahil, coming in from the relatively un-embattled Baraka province. Escorted by a flight of five Hunters, they open their cargo doors. As soon as they sight a dwelling or human being, the loadmaster cuts the holding straps and drops the aid packages. Slowed by parachute, they float for some distance, hopefully making for a wide dispersal and large effect. Off the coast of Sahil, a frigate lands a contingent of marines at a small fishing village. Before long, freighters start to appear on the horizon, and fishermen are offered considerable sums to aid in unloading their contents.

Near Nak'fa, the government forces finally get air support. HDF foreward observers fire off smoke rounds from 51mm knee mortars and radio the squadron of Hunters assigned to them for CAS duty. Before very long, the jets begin their attack...

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Eh, bump Mk.2.

Keren

The Secure Horizons troops are having a harder and harder time keeping their Eritrean counterparts on the line. Many of the rural-born Eritrean soldiers are seeing First Dawn as a more fulfilling career option, and the city-born troops are simply too young, too inexperienced, and too badly led to care very much. For the time being, First Dawn rebels are launching small probing attacks and the standard mortar/rocket strikes on the city itself. The small attacks are usually countered by Secure Horizons mercenaries- the company has been hiring and now has about 3-4,000 Ahzadi and European employees in Eritrea. Mercenary helicopter gunships and Hindustani airstrikes are the only thing keeping First Dawn from launching a final assault on Keren.

In fact, this sort of long, ongoing, totally unclimactic action is a tactic by a First Dawn movement short on supplies and men, that has advanced perhaps too far in too short of a timeframe and needs time to rest and re-group. However, in a happy accident, it also is the perfect tactic for breeding apathy and discontent in the ranks of the Eritrean army. Every skirmish and inconclusive week around Keren results in another handful of deserters.

Asmara

In the capital, as well as in many surrounding towns and villages, draft riots are becoming common. Discontent with the government- both for it's re-mobilization of the military and for failure to deal with the refugees swelling the population of the capital- is rising to crisis levels. The mysterious and pseudo-messianic First Dawn movement really doesn't seem all that bad to many Eritreans (probably because they have no idea what they are about), but most everybody knows that the present government is failing to do anything effective about the various problems it faces- the tensions with Ethiopia, the First Dawn rebellion, as well as the refugee crisis it has spawned.

In the back rooms of smoky cafes, groups of Colonels and Majors start to meet, and grumble, and yes, perhaps, to plot.

In Asmara, Hindustani marines, clad in tropical white uniforms, begin to appear on the streets. In part to keep order, and in part to threaten the current Eritrean government, the marines wield their Sterling L2A3s and L1A1s, discouraging any major moves just yet.

Meanwhile, diplomats from Parliament 'consult' with the President daily. Arriving via Canberra bomber, they aim to steer President Afworki (I guess we'll use the real one?) in the right direction, so to speak. To further these ends, marines close a number of draft offices and order government troops and police off the streets, during clashes with protesters. There is even word of a new draft constitution, and of special quarters aboard HNS Cadiz...

Aid shipments arrive constantly, and are distributed throughout Eritrea by Andover and An. 26, and by Mi-8 helicopter where the distances and road conditions discourage truck transport. Units of the Electrical & Mechanical engineers also start to arrive, via both Massawa and small towns protected by contingents of sailors and marines. They get to work on major infrastructure improvements, both in towns and in the countryside.

Off Sahil, a Magar LST moves towards land. Its deck sandbagged and GPMGs at the ready, the ship makes for its target beach at a stately 12 knots. If any New Dawn fighters are present, they might be in for quite a disappointment. As the clamshell doors open, a battalion of Parliamentary marines (light infantry) disembark, followed by no fewer than eight TC. 3 IFVs plus ten FV101s.

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