Striking the Balance: Approaching the Decisive Phase of the GSW
The Battle of Thermopylae
The naval front during the war as a whole was crucially ignored, with the notable exception of Madagascar. While the French, Italians, and to a lesser extent, the South Africans, had good enough navies to fight in battle, their counterparts did not, and only had the capabilities for defensive actions, not offensive. The Concordat could not take advantage of this imbalance, as attempts to shell Lagos and Benghazi had shown. (This was of course, notwithstanding the fact that the French and Italians were planning a naval attack on Tripoli to coincide with the surprise inland attack coming from Algeria.)
Forgotten by most was the Serbian Navy, mostly made up of ships inherited from the former Yugoslavia, though with a couple of subpar ships bought from Indian and Nigerian shipyards added on to this. Central command on the Balkan front wrote off this in most of their battle plans, seeing a blockade of the Strait of Otranto as being enough to keep the Serbian Navy stuck to the Adriatic Sea. It was continually reinforced, stopping the Serbs from doing much besides quick shock-and-awe attacks on coastal positions in Italy and Croatia, especially Trieste, Rijeka/Fiume, Bari, and Ancona.
With the Italian stranglehold over this chokepoint, Rear Admiral Nikola Ercegovic proposed an unconventional method to circumvent the blockade. Even more than that, it would allow the Serbs to take the fighting to Athens itself.
Simply put, his plan was for the Serbians to transport many of their ships overland, covered in tarp to prevent identification from above. Once they reached the Greek region of Macedonia, these ships were to be floated along major rivers draining into the Aegean, namely the Haliacmon and Vardar rivers. Neither river was very deep, and it was estimated that the former only had a depth of nearly 4 meters at most, which limited the types of ship that could easily be transported to those of that draught (depth). This still allowed the Serbians to bring their solitary destroyer, (a converted Indian cruiser), to aid their invasion force. From there they could catch the Greeks off-guard and attack the south.
While slow, inefficient, and limiting the types of ships which could be transported, transporting ships overland allowed the Serbians the utmost of secrecy. The plan was quickly approved. By luck, these ships were not spotted even as they were transported by truck through the Serbian region of Macedonia to the outskirts of Thessaloniki (The port and the city proper were still technically under Greek control, weathering a siege campaign). This took place over the course of months, and while the Concordat had discovered that these ships were beginning to show up in the port of Thessaloniki, their true intent of forming an amphibious invasion was not discovered. The barebones fleet would be supplemented with commandeered civilian vessels, allowing for greater numbers to be transported.
The first objective in their naval assault would be clear, securing the island of Euboea and the Sporades archipelago, both off the coast of the Peloponnese peninsula. Control of these islands would make for perfect jumping off points for operations in Attica and the Peloponnese.
This phase of the operation, as expected, went off without a hitch. Their only resistance came in the form of light fire from elements of the Coast Guard and citizen militiamen, though with low casualties to the Serbians. Euboea was a harder nut to crack, but was accomplished with the help of prisoner battalions. These battalions, largely made up of Bosnians and Croatians would be used as fodder in clearing out resistance or carrying the brunt of attacks.
Now the hard part was to come. Landing back on the Greek mainland itself...A beachhead was established at the city of Stylida on the northern shore of the Euripus Strait a day after the landing in Euboea. A smaller landing on the southern shore came a couple hours later. Both were headed to the city of Lamia, a regional hub. Resistance was now heavier as civilians in the area now had warning of the imminent Serbian landings. Militia movements organized to resist much faster than expected, leaving the invasion plan behind schedule while immediate resistance was crushed.
The Greeks used this time to their advantage, and began calling up reserve elements across the country to deal with the sudden landing just 80 miles away from Athens itself. The Serbian battle plan stated that they would maintain their position for nearly two weeks as they waited for additional reinforcements to trickle in and keep up their beachhead. They (correctly) made the assumption that the number of troops on shore, by then some 25,000 men, was not enough to hold anything besides their current holdings. They also knew that despite the fact that the Greek army was beginning to mobilize men nationwide to oppose this new landing, they could weather the assault if they just waited.
But some were not patient enough.
Just 5 days after the landing, one young commander, a young 30 year old commander named Ivica Dacic, decided to ignore orders to solidify the holdings that they already had. He was rather eager to prove himself in the cutthroat world of the Serbian armed forces, and decided to pull a daring move to capture several crucial towns between Lamia and Athens, preventing the city from being able to be resupplied by land. It would be the type of maneuver to jump-start his career, if he could pull it off. Without the blessing of his commanders, he ordered those under his leadership to advance south right away, to gain control of important highways and towns up to the opposite side of the peninsula. Excluding the fortifications immediately around Athens itself, the Serbs already likely outnumbered the defenders along the stretch of land between them and the capital. To him, it seemed like they would easily win.
This plan, to put it simply, was not thought through.
Even ignoring whether it was possible for his thrust to have the legs to carry itself through that distance, the Serbs hadn’t even put up proper defensive fortifications in the places they DID hold. Despite this, there were many other like-minded commanders with the same ideas as Dacic. Who wouldn’t want to be known as the hero of the Battle of Athens? After all, in the Third World War, Matanzima was the hero of the Battle of Thessaloniki, and his fame in his military career made him their president.
Dacic’s men blitzed through Attica, stopped by a mass of Greek troops stationed in the city of Livadia, a crucial city along a major highway to Athens. Meeting their first organized resistance in the campaign, however, was a different beast from the fighting that his armies had faced before. Many of them were veterans of World War Three or had experience fighting in Africa earlier in the war, but now in defense of their home country. After a skirmish with this more experienced force, Dacic’s army was left in full retreat, his green soldiers panicking. A similar situation occurred in Euboea when stay-behind troops attempted to capture the city of Chalcis, the largest on the island and the closest jumping off point for any potential invasion of Attica. This mistake wore the Serbian defenders thin, forcing them to retreat even further than before.
The Greeks were able to deploy their ability to use the mountainous terrain to their advantage. Unlike the plains near the city of Lamia, northern Attica was hilly, allowing for regiments to force Serbian troops into valleys where they were surrounded by all sides by artillery or soldiers. Artillery had greater range from the high ground, allowing the Greeks to strike without bringing their troops into harm. This made retreat painful for the Serbs as they bled soldiers. Their army became increasingly disorganized, splintering into fragments as they made it back into territory they controlled. With only makeshift fortifications, they could not beat back the Greek force of nearly 17,000 men back. Trying to hold them back before the commencement of a full scale evacuation, the Serbs under, Ivica Dacic, put everything they had into defense of their beachhead.
Thermopylae Pass
The coup de grâce would be near Lamia, where at a narrow mountain pass poetically near the spot of the battle of Thermopylae, the Serbs fought to keep control of a highway leading to port. Motivated to defend their homeland from the invaders, and with the power of their momentum behind them, they continued on against their larger, though thoroughly disorganized foe. While many Serbians were able to escape, they found the situation worsening in Euboea, where local Greek partisans were also kicking out occupation forces there.
Unlike the other Battle of Thermopylae, which ended in a Greek defeat, this battle, which took place near the same plain ended in an outstanding Greek victory. The Serbians hastily left defeated after the battle, though only 1,000 were able to escape. The other 20,000 survivors of the (before the battle) 30,000 men force on the mainland were captured as prisoners of war.
As for Dacic himself, the Serbian government found him to be the perfect (though not undeserving) scapegoat for the failure of the campaign. For his role leading to the abject failure of the Battle of Thermopylae, he was sent to military court for it. He was also charged with trumped up charges of treason. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. Many more heads would roll. Other generals were luckier, being dishonorably discharged and shunned as supposedly “racially-impure”, as was Dacic in court. (A Kosovar Serb, some purported he was actually an Albanian.)
For the Greeks, the battle was cause to celebrate. Tens of thousands of enemy soldiers were made prisoners of war, leading to a crushing blow to morale in Greater Serbia itself. Protests in Sarajevo and Split made it clear that ethnic tensions were beginning to rise. Especially after rumors came that most of the casualties of the battle were Croats and Bosniaks. The people were growing tired of a war fought for the Serbians/Montenegrins/Slavic-Macedonians. And the ranks of Western backed resistance movements were beginning to gain steam. The German and Italian air forces began mass bombing campaigns over Serbian territory, bringing the war to the homefront. The tide was turning against Serbia and not a moment too soon.
Extent of the Serbians some days before the Battle of Thermopylae, (the site of the battle shown in green)
The Xinjiang Dual Revolt
Forgotten by those in Nanking (which was the new capital of the CDRA’s China, with a new romanized name thanks to the switch to a simplified Wade-Giles romanization), was the fact that discontent continued in areas in the country’s outskirts. After the army coup in China, most of these regions had rebelled in some way or another. While Tibet and Inner Mongolia were crushed swiftly, Xinjiang, in particular, is of note as it became clear that there was more than an ethnic undertone to dissent. Although, the region of Xinjiang, (or as the CDRA would call it, Sinkiang), was forgotten after the failed ethnic revolt, another threat was lurking on the horizon in that region. The aging members of the Gang of Four, along with victims of Madame Mao’s and Li Peng’s past waves of purges, were resentful at the Chinese government for locking them out of power. For a couple of years, they laid low and built their power bases, hoping to strike when times of instability came to China. With China now fully embroiled in its war against Pakistan, as well as (anticipated) discontent among communist-leaning remnants in the military, they found their opportunity to strike. Led by ultra-Maoist elements of the provincial party and the elderly old guard of the Gang of Four, the Provisional Maoist Republic of China was founded. It declared itself the true China, establishing a pure form of communism compared to the current regime, ran by revisionists, corrupt military bureaucrats, and capitalist influence. They hoped that the rule of the new “democratic” Chinese regime would prove unstable. Just as the CCP was overthrown for the abject failure of the third Sino-Japanese war, losing their men on the fields of Pakistan would sour the people to this new government which had yet to prove itself.
At least that was the plan. If it worked would be another issue.
The flag of the Maoist Rebels
The CDRA knew about this problem looming on the horizon, but ignored them, expecting them to be little more than a nuisance. Xinjiang was far away from their powerbase on the coast, and the odds of army commanders defecting en masse to join the Maoist pretenders, or the heavens forbid, a recreation of the Long March, were implausible. Both were ignoring the other for a while, although the provincial borders on both sides became more guarded in case the other tried making any movement. Policy in Nanking was to ignore the conflict for now, and hope that they would fall under internal power struggles or ethnic revolt. Any other way would not be possible for the moment. They were in the midst of a massive campaign in Pakistan and were not in any position to redirect troops.
While the CDRA had a point in this, sympathy for Maoist Xinjiang was higher than expected. Though most would stay on the sidelines unless they broke out of the province. They had widespread support amongst the army in the area especially, something which they hoped to exploit for further gains as their enemy weakened itself in war. If not, they would be able to consolidate their holdings and become like a second Taiwan, a haven for Chinese communists.
However, the locals were beginning to despise the new government even more than they did the “democratic”, army-led state that they had rebelled against a few years before. Marshal Chi, wanting to secure stability for his newly founded republic, decided that the first thing he needed to do was “take care of” the native Turkic population. They were placed under 24/7 surveillance, with their every move monitored for possible seditious activities. Random arrests were common and police brutally beat up those who they thought were attempting arrest.
One man, angry after the police beat his father to death for this reason, took out his anger publicly. Going to a busy intersection in the provincial capital of Urumqi, he took one look at the he doused himself with gasoline and lit a match. Onlookers attempted to save him, but to no avail, and he died of his injuries before he could be sent to a hospital.
Angry at the new Maoist government’s draconian (and in their opinion, racist), policies, many young people took to the streets, demanding the overthrowal of the government. Soon the war would end, and the national government would eventually intervene with more than a token force to restore order, but until then, they had the opportunity to break away from China and try obtaining international support for it. They had their luck with their neighbor to the west.
The Timurid Empire gets Involved
While the Tamerlans (Tamerlan being the demonym of a citizen of the empire) had good relations with their fellow Central Asian and Turkish nations, and had access to plentiful energy resources, they were rather isolated compared to the rest of the Muslim World. Wanting to further their Pan-Turanistic vision and gain the support of the Muslim world, they began championing the plight of the Uyghur population.
The Timurid Empire promised the leaders of the budding protest movement that under Timurid rule, they would be given a large degree of autonomous self-government similar to the rest of their provinces. This would be impossible under the traditionally centralized Chinese system, but already existed under their political system. Mitt Romney, during a diplomatic visit, would call the Timurid Empire, “A bizarrely decentralized, multi-ethnic autocracy,” and “a rare example in history.” The Tamerlans had a large cache of ex-Soviet equipment, and had many veteran troops that had experience fighting in WWIII. They would be facing off against local garrisons, and troops of local men with unreliable loyalty to the new government or to China as a whole. Meanwhile, China’s elite troops, those with the experience to stop both the provisional communist government and the Tamerlans, were all but being thrown into the meat grinder that were the hills of Pakistan. East Turkestan already had the best militia force in the region, tied around their loyalty to their Khan and their common heritage on the steppes.
Chinese leadership in Nanking was aghast. They did not want, under any circumstances, another front that could delay the collapse of Pakistan, or any following invasion of Concordat-controlled Africa.
Invasion of Xinjiang by Timurid Forces using American Equipment
Fortunately for the Timurid Empire, the Chinese were not looking to intervene directly in Xinjiang for the moment. Instead, in a sudden about-face of policy towards the Maoists, backup was provided to their effort against the Tamerlans, in the form of monetary support and arms shipments. Private negotiations between Urumqi and Nanking also began, as it became clear that it would be more efficient to work together to beat back their common threat. As is, the Provisional Maoist Republic of China could not survive as a viable entity, and sandwiched between two major powers, they worked to reach a common accord with the current regime in exchange for some policy concessions and amnesty for their leaders. However, local troops would still maintain actual frontlines until China was able to supply troops. The battle was stacked in favor of the Timurid Empire from the beginning. With the Chinese having one hand tied behind its back, the unshakable loyalty of the Tamerlan army to their country, and guerilla tactics of local militias, the frontline seemed more like an organized retreat if anything. The Uighurs were not the only ethnic minorities in the area. They shared the province with Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and even Mongolians, all of whom supported the rebellion in one way or another. The tide may have changed in favor of the Chinese if the other fronts of the war closed faster. Unfortunately, that time would not come quick enough. With the Tamerlans closing down on the provincial capital, Urumqi, both sides were forced to negotiate.
Uighur rebels hoping to enter the Timurid Empire
None of China’s leaders liked the deal of ceding any territory, but it was seen by the Central Military Commission as a painful necessity. The dumping of the mostly Muslim population of the ceded regions would cool tensions considerably, and the land was pretty much worthless anyway given that the Tamerlans refused to cooperate with the Chinese in any serious way, and ethnic troubles would continue making the province worth less than it could have been. They did lose areas with rare earth deposits oil and gas deposits and refineries, but with the terms of the peace, a significant amount were left in the eastern half of the province. The borders of the province were also largely geographically defensible, hopefully enough to prevent further incursions from the west. Moreover,
While the new borders still left the majority of the Han population in China, and more than half of the Uyghur population in the Timurid Empire, and also included nearly all of the other major Turkic groups in the region, there were still people on the “wrong” side of the border. The Timurids were willing to accommodate the Chinese population with autonomous measures, with the ethnic Russian population as an example of how they would be tr. While they were oftentimes harsh in their rule, this was applicable against all ethnic groups. Despite this, the Chinese that had now found themselves in the Timurid Empire, especially those that migrated to the area recently, mostly returned to their “home country”. Meanwhile, the Uyghurs still left in China had no reason to believe that the new Chinese regime would treat them any better than the provisional Maoist government had. By the beginning of the new millennium, half of their remaining population in China, centered around the oasis towns of the southeast, had left. What was left of Xinjiang was thoroughly Sinicized.
The Chinese had put an end to the revolt at the cost of losing territory. The military high command reasoned that this mistake would have to be rectified with geologically rich gains North (Mongolia), East (Taiwan), or South (Nepal or Bhutan), but that these campaigns were not of immediate importance. Meanwhile, they were looking to prove themselves fighting with the Indians, despite heavy casualties. The front was beginning to heat up, and who won on this front had a crucial role in determining the end to the entire war. But besides that was something which would potentially raise the stakes.
What no one but a select few in the know knew was that there was trouble brewing in Pakistan, soon to be revealed...
The partition of Xinjiang
The Race to Pretoria
Surprising nearly everyone, the soldiers in the Tsumeb pocket were able to last nearly five months after its creation. The successful command of the united Pan-African force under Abel Chivukuvuku managed to envelop thousands of Concordat soldiers there, but progress stalled after that. The situation at the front remained tense. Despite their need to maintain the will to fight and many airlift campaigns on their behalf, the soldiers trapped in Tsumeb suffered a severe decline in morale. This was offset, however, by a similar decline in morale among the Entebbe Pact soldiers, mostly Angolans and Congolese men who were frustrated that they could not tighten their enclosure further. The withdrawal of Nigeria from the war forced even more soldiers maintaining the encirclement to withdraw, and took the Nigerian Air Force out of the equation. The soldiers in the Tsumeb pocket were still in danger of breaking out of their encirclement, and fortifications in Windhoek were proving tough to crack. Mobutu and Savimbi, (the latter being the ruler of Angola) were frustrated. They were supposed to be at the outskirts of Cape Town by now! And yet they were still slogging through the desert, having captured nothing considered crucial to South Africa. Because of this lack of progress on this front and similar problems in arguably more crucial areas, it was decided to divert resources to other fronts, particularly the eastern front in South Africa. There, they could at least threaten the populated areas near the capital.
A general retreat was called, confusing military planners in Pretoria. Considerable manpower was required to make the additional effort to reach Pretoria, so the Joint Supreme Military Command of the Entebbe Pact approved the decision to withdraw from the front, keeping only the Caprivi strip, (which was after all, the casus belli for the whole war to start with), and a narrow strip of territory 10 miles south of the Angolan border as buffer space.
With the withdrawal of so many troops to aid the Pretoria Front, progress came almost immediately. A single assault from Lourenço Marques/Maputo led to the country of Swaziland falling within mere days. The city of Durban proved to be a tougher nut to crack. A crucial port of supply to Pretoria, it was also a major city in its own right and a transport hub of the region. Nicknamed “The most Indian city outside of India”, many suspected that the civilian population would turn over in favor of the Entebbe Pact. The Indian Air Force even dropped propaganda leaflets from the skies, trying to convince them to surrender. However, just like every other group in South Africa, the local Asian population resisted conquest as hard as the rest of their nation. Their patriotism for their country outweighed any sympathy for India because of their heritage. A siege of the city commenced, cutting off most road paths to the capital region and to the ocean, leading the city to eventually fall within months. By July 1998, Durban would finally fall to Entebbe Pact’s hands. The famous Kruger National Park, home to all of the “Big Five” of Africa - that being the most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot- would also fall to Entebbe Pact forces led by the Central African Gen. François Bozizé. Their attack was finally met with resistance at Nelspruit, just 190 miles from Pretoria. By this time, the Concordat’s Supreme Military Command had finished to redeploy their own forces along the Namibian front in defense of Pretoria.
They also had another ace up their sleeve. Private military contractors.
After WWIII ended, and the Soviet Union was fully partitioned, several of the Russian states saw a sudden drop in standards of living, which did not return to pre-war levels. This was especially true in states ruled by ethnic minorities in the Caucasus or the Volga. This left these regions full of young, unemployed men, with no purpose and nothing to lose. Perfect recruiting ground for soldiers.
Corporations like Blackwater and the Pinkerton Security Agency took full advantage of this, recruiting heavily in this area. Russian soldiers were deemed better than other potential areas of operation such as South America, as many of those who volunteered were likely to have been veterans. (This was not to say South Americans did not serve under these companies on the front.) These PMC’s would also recruit a smattering of American veterans, thugs, and violent (some might say mentally ill) young men looking for an outlet, but they were not common on this front. The PMC most in the field was the South African-based Executive Outcomes, working with ex-military men from the growing Russian-South African diaspora to find connections to their counterparts in their former motherland. The company had recruitment offices in most of the ex-soviet states, taking advantage of the corrupt nature of their corrupt nature and most notably the state-sponsored WWIII veteran associations. After being shipped to South Africa, these troops, wherever they came from, would be moved to the company’s training grounds and barracks. Most of them were located around the Limpopo river. When the situation on the front worsened, the company’s executives offered to use their vast manpower of over 10,000 men to help with the defense of Pretoria. For a price of course. Desperate for anything to stop the tide of enemy combatants headed towards their capital, they took up that offer.
In the areas where they were put into action, they helped act as a stopgap along the lines, allowing the South Africans to better handle the threat at hand. Unfortunately, they were too little too late to stop the Pact until they reached Pretoria itself. Things were shaping up for the decisive battle of the campaign.