Operation Silva
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| Operation Silva | |||||||||||||||||
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| Date | 6 February 2007 - 11 February 2007 | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | Kahanistan | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | Decisive Doomani - Whyatican victory, Doomani conquest of the Holy Land | ||||||||||||||||
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Operation Silva (Latin: Effectus Silvae, Kahanistanian English: Doomani Invasion), was the Doomani name of the operation to retake the Holy Land, named for the Roman general Lucius Flavius Silva, who commanded the Roman forces at Masada. The Whyatican codename for the operation was Operation Distant Early Warning.
Contents
Background
The Democratic Soviet Republic of Kahanistan was a small democratic republic in the Middle East, namely in the Negev Desert. Because of its interventionist habits, it was hostile to the Imperium Doomanum for most of its existence. Despite the name, there were actually very few Kahanists in the Soviet Republic, most of them having been killed in sectarian warfare prior to secularisation, but the name stuck. There were, however, hundreds of millions of Jews and Muslims in Kahanistan, as well as the more theologically offensive (to the Catholic monarchy in Doomingsland) atheists, pagans, and Satanists.
Imperial Whyatica's relations with Kahanistan had been declining since the formation of the Alliance for the Preservation of Civilization, which included nations that Kahanistan was exceptionally hostile to, such as Doomingsland. The political climate in the Whyatican Empire was becoming more hostile to the government, as a massive scandal had caused the indictments of sixty Libertarian Party MPs, and the opinion of Prime Minister David McMillin's government was steadily dwindling. With the conclusion of Operation Hallowed Sabre and it's spinoff operations, the Eurasian Wars, and the Annexation of Clandonia Prime, the populace no longer had any foreign distractions from domestic issues.
Casus belli
During the Whyatican occupation of Clandonia, Kahanistanian satellites detected many destructions of homes and movements of civilians. Suspicious that human rights abuses were taking place, Kahanistan attempted to insert agents to confirm their suspicions. A news aircraft borrowed from leftist media outlet Kahanistan People's Choice was shot down inserting an intelligence team under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas H. Donovan. The team survived, but were captured, tortured, and four of the five, including Colonel Donovan himself, were executed by being sliced in half with an industrial laser.
The bodies were sent home with the remaining officer, who had been lobotomised, and evidence of Inquisition-style torture was found on one of the corpses. This led the Supreme Soviet to suspect that Doomingsland had been involved. Kahanistanian Foreign Minister Margaret Delray condemned the killings as evidence of general human rights abuse.
Imperial Whyatica responded, saying that the intelligence team were irregular combatants inserted to spy on Whyatica and the other occupying powers, stating that they had no protections based on their irregular combatant status. The executions of the four intelligence agents publicly in Miana, the capital of the Whyatican Empire, inflamed public opinion against Kahanistan and caused many to call for war.
Declaration of War
Shortly after the corpses of the Kahanistani intelligence team were sent home, the Whyatian Parliament held a vote to determine whether to go to war against the DSRK. Based on a close 114-111 vote, the Parliament authorized Prime Minister McMillin and Emperor Paulus I to use any means necessary to punish the DSRK for their actions. The next day, McMillin issued a declaration of war against the DSRK.
At roughly the same time, Kahanistanian President Marcellus Valens suffered a major heart attack, attributed to seeing the mutilated corpses. Days afterwards, he resigned as President in favour of Vice President Khalid bin Abdullah al-Omari, who was widely considered a superior politician. Valens himself assumed command of the reserves, his commission as a General of the Republic Guard reactivated.
Immediately following the Whyatican declaration of war, Pope Innocent VI, head of the Doomani Catholic Church, issued a Call for Crusade in which he demanded the destruction of the DSRK as a nation, and the capture of the city of Jerusalem. Imperator Maximus III, prior to this, had been massing forces in Egypt, numbering over two million men in five armies. This suggests that the Doomani had been planning the invasion of Kahanistan for some time before.
Seeking of a Political Solution
Since Whyatica and Kahanistan were both democracies, Al-Omari and Delray decided to continue to seek a peaceful resolution, taking advantage of Praetonian outrage over Whyatican Prime Minister David McMillin's comments that he was glad of the recent death of Praetonian monarch Sarius I and the clearly disproportionate response of the Whyatican government to galvanise domestic opposition to the war.
Against Doomingsland, the response was far more hostile; the Doomani considered it their religious duty to hold the Holy Land, and not expecting negotiations to succeed, the Kahanistanians dug in to fight.
The War
The war was an unmitigated disaster for Kahanistan; the Doomani MAD.IV Imperator tanks had longer range and superior firepower to the Merkava IV tanks of the Republic Guard, artillery had a faster rate of fire to the Kahanistanian 210mm Al-Fao guns, attack aircraft outranged the Kahanistanian Stinger SAM's, and Kahanistanian F-35's could barely see the ACI-73 Aquilas before being shot down.
The Invasion of Kahanistan initially began with a massed artillery bombardment from the Doomani armies in Egypt, and the Whyatican armies in Arabia. This was followed by both armies crossing the borders in force and quickly overwhelming the defenders they initially faced.
The Doomani offensive consisted of three separate drives: CXV and XXVI Armies, consisting purely of mechanized and armored formations and commanded personally by Caesar, formed the central thrust towards Najaster, the capital of Kahanistan. XII and VIII Armies, meanwhile, formed the northern offensive, moving along the Kahanistani coast and cutting off all major ports. Finally, CVIII Army was divided, one legion, Legio XIII, moved south to cut off the few urban centers located there, while the remaining four drove towards Jerusalem.
The Whyaticans were initially blunted by the Valens Line, a massive series of fortifications protecting Najaster. The Doomani were countered by a Republic Guard army group. CXV Army was left to deal with the DSRK Army, and, in the massive tank battle that ensued, routed a Kahanistani army group numbering 350,000 strong to a force of only 200,000 Doomani, who suffered fewer than 4,000 casualties, mostly to enemy artillery. The Kahanistanis, after beginning their retreat, were cut off by Doomani attack helicopters and faced total annihilation. The Whyaticans, at the same time, began their assault on the Valens Line, breaking through at the cost of approximately 3,000 men.
Also, the grounding of the Kahanistani Air Force prevented Kahanistani planes from attacking Doomani and Whyatican ground forces, allowing the advance on Najaster to proceed quickly and unimpeded by aerial attack. It is widely regarded by Imperial military scholars that the fixed defensive lines of Kahanistan at the Valens Line and the Al-Bahr Line were not sufficient to halt the advance on the Kahanistani capital without aerial power, which the Kahanistani air force could not provide.
Civilian infrastructure fared better than it did in the Pwnage war; even with the water treatment facilities bombed and the water poisoned, the cities had enough reservoir water to last for years, and most people had filters that Civil Defence had distributed during the Pwnage bombardment. Kahanistanian defensive tactics had improved significantly, but in the end were no match for superior technology.
Caesar's army, along with the Whyaticans who had arrived earlier, laid siege to Najaster, during which a Kahanistanian civilian, Laila al-Majani, printed highly inflammatory cartoons of the Virgin Mary. She and her associates then flew them from kites into the Doomani lines or tied them to helium balloons to be released over the world. Enraged, Maximus ordered retaliation against the city's populace. In a two-hour long bombardment, Maximus' artillery fired over five hundred thousand chemical-laced shells into the city, along with another few million explosive and incendiary rounds, killing off a large portion of the population. General Marcellus Valens, after recieving a demand for surrender from Caesar Maximus following the bombardment of Najaster, surrendered to the Doomani and Whyaticans, marking the end of the war.
Results
Millions of Kahanistanian civilians fled to Transylvania and Haven, where they proceeded to set up a government in exile and a new country. Others decided to live under Doomani occupation, or fight as insurgents. Doomingsland now held control of the Holy Land. An estimated 3 billion Kahanistanis were left behind to endure the occupation; of these 3 billion, it is speculated that up to 2 billion were enslaved or executed in the purges that immediately followed the Doomani taking control of the cities. Of the one billion survivors, experts believe that over half have been tortured and or executed by the Doomani.
