I bet Pakistan will invade Iran with the US only to make sure that any Baloch independence movement in Iran does not spread to its borders. Also, any pro-US government that gets established in Iraq will absolutely wanna lay claims to Khuzestan for the sake of wanting to be popular with its citizens.
Bush vs. The Axis of Evil - TL
Again outright Annexations aren't very likely. I think the Bush Administration, as incompetent in running an occupation as it was, wanted to keep countries from breaking apart. I honestly think that occupied Iran will become a battleground between different countries funding various militias fighting against each other in massive proxy wars. India would be funding the Baloch, Turkey and Azerbaijan funding Azeris, Israel possibly funding Kurds (Israel has openly supported for an independent Kudistan OTL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–Kurdistan_Region_relations), Syria and Iraq possibly funding Arabs in Khuzestan, the Saudis funding Sunnis, and so on and so forth. This, quite frankly, would be an even bigger mess than Iraq.
Don't think so.
I don't see Pakistan trying to annex land as much as they'll want to "pacify" Iranian Baluchistan. But other than that, I definitely see all sorts of countries funding all sorts of factions in the country. The US is going to deal with the nightmare of its own allies making the occupation of Iran harder for them.
That reminds me, the refugee crisis of the 2010s is going to be much worse with the shitshow in Iran.
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LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN!
Jar![1] You're a fantastic writer: you've inspired me on how I write things even outside of AHTLs and now I'm seriously considering writing my own TL because of your inspiration.
[1]: I'm part of a fanfiction writing community, and when people self-degrade we put them in a "jar". The rule (which is never enforced) is that you have to write 100 words before you're let out of the jar.
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Yep. It'll also probably be worse if the Bush Administration decides to do half the stupid shit they did in Iraq, especially disbanding the entire military like they did in Iraq. Also I'm thinking that a 2015 style refugee crisis will happen earlier it would probably make that one look pleasant in comparison. Hell given all the wars going on in this TL we could be possibly looking at a refugee crisis on par with the one post-WW2.
Turkey could use the Iranian war as a good way to push for a pan-Turkic agenda. I always wondered how an Azerbaijani-Turkish union would work out.
Got to say, I didn't know what to expect when I first started reading this, but glad I found gold. For some strange reason, I hope Iran does not fall/collapse strange as that sounds, if only to highlight the pointlessness of this entire adventure. Also, any news on Afghanistan?
Same, Hezbollah's 9/11 aside, i'm currently have my expectation satisfied, and hoping for more, of course.
Excited for the next update. Especially curious as to how you handle North Korea
They Succeeded
They Succeeded
Extract from ‘Kim’s Footprint: How the War on Terror Changed Asia’ by Saeba Ryou
Extract from ‘Kim’s Footprint: How the War on Terror Changed Asia’ by Saeba Ryou
Seoul in the early June of 2002 is a moment lost in history. Like San Francisco in 1967, or Berlin in November 1989, it lingers nostalgically in the mind of people not just in South Korea, but the whole world. The World Cup had become an escape from the appalling reality that was sweeping the Middle East, of the War on Terror and the Second Intifada. Economies were stalling around the planet, and many who thought they could go to the World Cup that year couldn’t afford to do so. They missed an atmosphere that has not been seen since in the Korean peninsula, and to an extent Japan. South Korea was, like in 1988, celebrating their astonishing progress as a society. From the brutality of the Japanese colonial era, to the apocalyptic First Korean War, and the constant back and forth between repression, freedom and deeper repression, Koreans had only begun to see themselves as integrally Western as the Japanese or Australians. And they knew it didn’t have to end up like this – they could look into the world they would be living if they lost their war just across the border.
President Kim Dae-jung was described as ‘Asia’s Nelson Mandela’ - a political prisoner of an American allied state who would go on to assume power. He had been sentenced to death both by North Korea during the First Korean War and escaped, and the South Korean government before he was saved due to an appeal by Pope John Paul II and the Reagan Administration. He was the first left-wing President South Korea ever knew, albeit on his fourth attempt. His dovish position on North Korea was controversial even at the time, nicknamed the ‘Sunshine Policy’. In addition to meeting Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang, Korean athletes would enter the Sydney Olympics under a single Unified Korean flag. President Kim would win the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work in attempting to mend bridges with North Korea. For this, he was criticised by the Right for ‘appeasement’. Yet even today, despite all that’s happened, South Korean’s can’t bring themselves to hate Kim Dae-jung. He represented the hopes of an era, the hope of peace and prosperity across Korea. In a way, they are thankful for his efforts at reconciliation, as it confirmed without any shadow of a doubt in their mind that the North Korean regime was not worth conversing with.
[…]
During the World Cup Opening Ceremony on May 31st, France would play Senegal in Seoul. What was not seen during the celebrations was the South Korean air force and army on high alert making sure North Korea did nothing to spoil the event. That day, North Korea moved its troops to the borders and began making preparations that were kept silent by the South Korean government so as not to cause panic. When the first games went off as planned without incident, the South Koreans breathed a sigh of relief. The North Koreans had not done anything and it looked like yet another ruse by the Hermit Kingdom. The biggest controversies of the World Cup before June 29th involved an underperforming France, dissension in the Irish team, scattered boos greeting the Americans, Germany beating Saudi Arabia by eight goals to nil and a quite suspicious string of positive referee decisions for the South Koreans (or so other fans are quick to claim). In a world where Kim kept his sanity, perhaps these would be the only things we remember the World Cup for. But ultimately, there’s only one sad reason why the 2002 World Cup has and likely always will go down as the most shocking in the tournament’s history.
Extract from ‘Saddam’s Shadow: The Legacy of Baathism in Iraq’ by Michel Farooq
The Southern No Fly Zone in Iraq was substantially larger than the one in Kurdistan, reaching up to the 33rdParallel and subsuming a large portion of the country. The primarily Shia region was considered relatively easy to clear while the more Sunni section above was considered a tougher nut to crack. To complete the liberation of the southern zone from Saddam, a slapdash American/Australian/British force now charged up the Tigris and Euphrates with nowhere near the air support or scale required on a conventional invasion. The vast majority of American forces continued their march to free up the Gulf for oil tankers. A multinational force charged up to two targets: Najaf and Amara. Samawah and Nasiriyah were initially ignored. Saddam’s threats against the Shia uprisings (despite his erstwhile alliance with Iran) convinced large sections of the Shia population that a massacre would befall them if the Coalition didn’t take over soon. Mercifully for the Americans, the population were generally relieved to see them, unlike in Iran.
While the Iraqi army itself was in disarray in Southern Iraq due to the collapse in command structure and shock of the invasion, the Fedayeen Saddam proved to be a ferocious enemy, often used as a Blocking Corp, executing Iraqi soldiers caught fleeing. To a large extent they already put down the Shia insurrectionists before the Coalition arrived in Amara. The Republican Guard likewise were no easy foe, and they ground the underprepared Coalition to a halt on more than one occasion. During the Battle of Amara, the Coalition would see the Fedayeen in their full force, sometimes using the Shia population as human shields. Ultimately, with the need to take Najaf and prevent a massacre growing, the Americans would divert resources and leave the Australians and British to take the city. With difficulty, British forces under Colonel Tim Collins were able to take the airfield and land British paratroopers in order to overwhelm and break the local defence. Unlike in Basra, this had been no picnic.
The main battle of the initial phase in Iraq was for Najaf, the third holiest city of Shia Islam. The Americans had done their best to try and save the city from armoured prongs and missile attacks raining in from up north – one missile coming perilously close to hitting Ali’s Tomb. Iran would, perhaps surprisingly, say nothing of the incident. The Americans, with nothing to lose, now tested their ‘Thunder Run’ technique one more time, charging like madmen up Highway One in Iraq. On the way they played all the old classics: ‘Thunderstruck’, ‘Rock the Casbah’, ‘B.O.B (Bombs Over Baghdad)’, and perhaps the most honest track of them all, ‘In Too Deep’, which became to American troops in the War on Terror what ‘We Gotta Get Outta This Place’ or ‘Fortunate Son’ was to the Vietnam War.
They faced almost no resistance along the roads as resistance seemed to have broken down among the Iraqi army. Finally, they swung off the road and into Al Diwaniyah, a town just 10km away from Najaf, and soon faced intense opposition, not from Saddam’s army, but the now turned Shia insurrectionists who had succeeded in their purpose of dragging America into a new conflict. While this reality had slowly dawned on the White House, it was generally covered up, and most didn’t care anyway as it was a chance to achieve American control in a hostile country anyway. However, the next day the Shia groups surrendered. It was not for pleasant reasons.
In Karbala, just north of Najaf, the Fedayeen Saddam had successfully put down the Shia uprising and did so in a fashion bordering on genocidal. As the stragglers were rounded up, they were interned and led to the Imam Husayn Shrine Mosque on May 13th. It was one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, a commemoration of the Grandson of Muhammad, Husayn ibn Ali, whose death at the Battle of Karbala in 680AD galvanised the nascent Shia movement and whose shrine was visited by millions annually. The circumstances of Husayn’s death were considered tragic even among Sunni Muslims – this was why the shrine had stood so long and without incident. That’s why the world was stunned and horrified to read that Saddam had led prisoners into the Shrine while it was laced with explosives and not only killed 500 prisoners (most simply family of the Shiite paramilitary members), but destroyed a priceless piece of global, Iraqi and Islamic history in a moment of sectarian pettiness. The shock was so great, that even Iraqi Shiite units tied to the Iranian regime could not justify their resistance to the Americans anymore. They did not want to risk a similar fate befalling the Shrine of Ali, giving open way for the Americans to occupy Nasjaf and put a protective perimeter around Ali’s Tomb. Unfortunately, some Americans actually cheered Saddam’s destruction of the Husayn Shrine on the basis that it was Shia, since Shiite terrorists did 9/11. In a poll that June, 37% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 and 32% thought Saddam was Shia. The perception of the Shiites as a more radical branch of Islam still lingers in the Western imagination today.
While Saddam was supported by a handful of Wahhabis (who consider any form of these tombs to be idolatry) Saddam was globally condemned as a madman, apostate, and monster … except in Iran. Owing to the awkward alliance the two had found themselves in, the Iranian government would issue a press release that spent two lines condemning Saddam for destroying the mosque and an entire page condemning the United States for creating the circumstances that led to it – a particular irony since it was Iran’s own uprising that convinced the US to enter Iraq. This ironically convinced the US of the general sanity of the Iranian regime (that they were still trying to be diplomatic despite the worst affront) and of Saddam’s own utter madness.
To the Iranian population, while millions were furious, it didn’t matter. No one (even the religious) were fighting for Saddam or even the Ayatollah - they were just fighting to kick the Americans out - after they kicked America out they could go after Saddam again for all they cared. The Iranian-backed militia in Iraq would be interned by the Americans after their surrender but would have clean consciences – even if the Ayatollah didn’t care, they would. The shrine’s destruction simply further divided Iran from Iraq, which was apparently one of Saddam’s intentions as he worried being seen as together with Iran for domestic and Arab-diplomatic reasons. For this reason, many scholars dispute the ‘Axis of Evil’ label since Iran and Iraq never considered themselves official allies, although both would claim alliance with North Korea while North Korea claimed alliance with both, hence breathing life into the designation. Sunni scholars by contrast had no restraint, with most calling for Saddam to be labelled an ‘apostate’, becoming a pariah in most of the Muslim world even more than he already was.
However, despite the claims of vengeance against the Shia, the Iraqi army would actually begin a broad retreat from many parts of the south. Indeed when the United States army actually pushed towards Karbala, reaching it on May 23rd, that’s where they found something remarkable in the ruins of the Shrine. The zarih (the enclosed section containing the grave itself) was miraculously intact and had preserved the grave. The explosives that had been encased around it had failed to go off while the ones on the building itself had worked and covered the site enough to preserve it from ruin by Saddam’s men. It was a veritable miracle, and led to great rejoicing among all Muslims and lovers of history alike. Iran would release a statement arguing that ‘God has protected Saddam from folly’ while Saddam put out a press release saying that the failed bombing was deliberate and it was a loyalty test to catch out those who would betray him. The Shrine has since become an even more popular pilgrimage location in recent years, particularly among religious Shia but also among Sunni.
The Americans had found the intact tomb (the shrine itself quickly rebuilt with much of the prior material ask an American priority with extensive help from international Muslim groups) but they found that the Iraqi army had just … left. The Pentagon concluded that Saddam had effectively conceded the No-Fly Zone of Southern Iraq and he was preparing for a ‘Mother of All Battles’ in Baghdad. By June 2nd, the vast majority of Shia areas south of the No-Fly Zone designation (those that hugged the Euphrates and Tigris while the Sunni areas in the far west remained Saddam’s) had been taken by the US. This was good for the United States on two counts (ignoring the various problems it created). For one, they had indeed made operations in the Persian Gulf far safer without the threat of Iraq blowing up reconnaissance planes while simultaneously forcing the Iranians to divert more troops to mind the now extended front. The other reason was that it provided a significant morale boost to see Saddam’s rule in the south shrivel so quickly, though many other problems in Iraq would soon emerge to wipe the smile off of Western planners’ faces. For now, they simply and naively hoped that the loss of so much territory in Iraq would fatally undermine Saddam’s position and lead to a more compliant Iraqi government. All the while, US soldiers could see Baghdad almost in walking distance ahead.
While the war in the Southern No Fly Zone was over for now bar Sunni hold outs in the West, the Kurds would continue their slow-burn Battle of Mosul with the help of the Polish, who had enthusiastically attempted to prove their zeal to stand with the US to help with their European security concerns vis a vi Russia. Shortly after the US invasion on April 30th, the entirety of Iraq was put under a No-Fly Zone, with the US still advancing no farther than the old Southern zone. However, the Kurdish Peshmerga militias would still be given the might of US air power to try and help with their mission. After nonstop bombing from the Americans lasting for weeks, a detachment of Green Berets and Polish forces were able to enter Mosul on May 28th before eventually calling the city secure with the help of the Peshmerga on June 19th. This has since been deified in Polish drinking holes as a tale of Polish Rambos blowing up Baathists just by punching them. But as Kurdish occupation began (a resented one by the locals) the Peshmerga’s real goal continued to be along the Iraq-Iran border, in order to maximise the territory Iran would need to defend as well as cut off the two potential allies. From the Sulaymaniyah region, Kurdish forces fought a tough campaign to head south and reach the Coalition forces. They had fought for years in the mountains, and now they worked their way down the desert in old Soviet jeeps taken from the Iraqi army with the US air force overhead making sure they were not picked off from above. On June 3rd, the Elbe Moment finally materialised as British forces just north of Kut shook hands with a detachment of Kurds riding south. When the British soldiers said that the Kurds would get a state for sure because of this, the Kurds jokingly replied, “Well you did promise us one the last time.”
Elsewhere throughout Northern Iraq, the Kurds seized the Kirkuk province, and everything north of Kirkuk that was west of the Tigris. They also seized areas as far south as Badra beneath even Baghdad. They also linked up to the Sinjar province, thus creating a contiguous de facto independent Iraqi Kurdistan. To say the least, Turkey was not impressed by this course of events, and how they were too distracted in Iran to do anything about it. The problem was that, like Finland during World War Two, the Kurds had achieved practically everything that they wanted in Iraq. There was no interest in sending troops to Baghdad in what everyone knew was an Arab city. Even Mosul was ultimately to be used as nothing but a bargaining chip. The real focus for the Kurds now was to press their advantage – they had liberated themselves in Iraq, now it was time to do so in Iran. Both the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (who were in coalition at the time despite being in Civil War during the 1990s) now swung their troops around towards Iran to fight in their specialty – the mountains.
Meanwhile, Saddam fortified Baghdad with all he could. Taking inspiration from the worst element of the regime he hated more than any other, his ironic allies of Iran. During the Iran-Iraq War, rumours spread that Iranian troops were distributed plastic keys that the fallen would use after they died to open the doors to Paradise. While there is scant evidence of this in anything but a few isolated incidents and certainly not as a general policy (perhaps a misunderstanding of a prayer book by Shiekh Abbass Qumi given to Iranian troops entitled ‘Keys to Paradise’ inside a metal/plastic box), Saddam thought that it was a wonderful idea and officially distributed them. In the Great Terror, people did and said everything they could to reduce suspicion on them. Some declared Saddam to be the Mahdi (the figure in the Islamic End Times who will lead the forces of good to victory against the Dajjal, the Islamic equivalent of the Antichrist) while Shia would, in order to preserve their children’s lives, proclaim him the Twelfth Imam (the Imam in Shia Islam who has been kept alive by God since the Seventh Century and whose return and victory in the End Times will lead to equality and prosperity on Earth).
While he had once invaded Iran in 1980 in the name of secularism against barbarianism, now he embraced the apocalyptic rhetoric of his old enemies, only for his own sake. All the while, the food and fuel situation in Sunni Iraq deteriorated to the point that deaths from malnutrition were escalating. Needless to say, Saddam never missed a meal while living in a level of opulence that was the precise thing the Prophet Mohammad and the earliest followers of Islam rose up against; the debauchery of Mecca’s merchants. Saddam had multiple palaces around Iraq that he sometimes would never visit except for once while still demanding the palaces be ready for his arrival at any moment. Despite Baghdad being majority Shia, no Shia thought about rebelling. Saddam had ordered the execution of parents, children and spouses in the event of rebellion. The Thunder Runs would simply no longer work given the intense fortifications that were erected around Baghdad, with many critics of the Bush Administration arguing that if they were going to invade Iraq they should have just charged to Baghdad. But this ignores just how desperate the US were for troops at this time considering the situation in Iran – even a Thunder Run required too many troops for what the job. Instead while Baghdad prepared for the final battle, US troops wandered around the ruins of Babylon just south. There they could see the bricks that Saddam had carved his own name into in a level of grandiosity that many of the troops would later think no different than the Neocons who thought they could turn the whole world into America.
But Saddam found at least one unlikely guest in Baghdad. It was Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who had come through Syria to try and rally Iraq to victory on his June 8th arrival. He had refused to give a similar speech in Iran due to their alcohol prohibition but Iraq was more liberal on that front so he went. His drunk declaration that night threatening the United States has since become an iconic quote on the Russian (and eventually Western) internet. In the company of his visibly confused and uncomfortable Iraqi escorts, he would proclaim: “You have the bald eagle? Well Iraq’s an eagle! The Eagle of Saladin! It’s an eagle far stronger than your cocksucking eagle! When the bald eagle is pecking at the Iraqi Eagle’s ass he thinks that he’s winning, then the Iraqi Eagle will clench its ass so tight that the ass will be in the ass. Then we can measure the eggs [balls], and then, everyone will know everything.” He predicted ‘Iraq will win like Russia did against the Nazis, because we speak the same Russian language. All Iraqis speak Russian – they read Dostoyevsky’. He would allege in his rant that President Putin had already developed gravity reversing technology and the United States would ‘Fall up into the sky’ while ‘England will return to the bottom of the ocean’. Various unprintable racially-charged pornographic illustrations involving Condoleezza Rice subsequently proceeded. That Zhirinovsky acted like this was perhaps not surprising, but subsequent research revealed that his trip had been supported by President Putin, in what is now seen as one of the first signs of the Kremlin using the War on Terror to cement Anti-American credentials and using Russia’s resident clown as a cat’s paw. [1]
While Putin had his machinations abroad, Saddam’s son Qasay himself had his own hidden agenda. Saddam’s mental deterioration since Uday’s death had unnerved him. Qasay was hardly a humanitarian, but Saddam’s destruction of Iraqi heritage shocked him and had him fearing for his own safety. Reportedly on the same night as Zhirinovsky’s tirade, Qasay would meet with members of the Republican Guard to plan the assassination of his father.
Extract from ‘The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Iran’ by Zoreh Rahimi
The speed of the invasion of Abadan had come as a surprise to the Iranians as well as the Americans. Iran had prepared for an amphibious assault and had primed the waters with that intent. Instead, it turned out that the invasion would come overland, but while expecting a stalemate in Basra, the Americans simply charged through it, attacking into Abadan on May 9th. Abadan played a key role in the formation of the Islamic Republic when the Cinema Rex theatre in Abadan was burned down in August 1978, the twentieth-year anniversary of Mossadegh’s overthrow. The fire was blamed on the SAVAK, but it later turned out to have been done by Islamists who considered it a centre of American cultural imperialism and to further discredit the government. Abadan never fell during the Iran-Iraq war, although it had gotten extremely close to doing so. By 2002, it had barely reached the same level of crude export that it was doing under the Shah.
For the Americans, Abadan was the big prize, as if they could bring it back on the global market, they could help relieve the agonizing global economic standstill. For the Iranians, it was a symbolic point of pride that they never lost it during the Iran-Iraq war, and they feared a morale collapse if the US ended up taking it. To that end, the regime sent some of the most fanatical members of the Revolutionary Guard into the city to give the Americans the fight of their lives, which they certainly did. Basra this was not. American troops fought practically for every brick in a city that still hadn’t fully recovered from the chaos of the Iran-Iraq war. On June 1st the city would finally be declared secure. Roughly 600 US troops would die in the battle, a grizzly toll that reminded America of how brutal this war was going to be. At the Iranian losses were exponentially higher, leading to the nearby port of Bandar Imam Khomeini being seized relatively easily on June 4th. Navy Seal David Goggins participated in the Seal infiltration into the port and saw the incoming US troops moving up from Abadan who had fought in the battle, going on to say, “They looked at you but you could tell all they could see was what went down back west – they couldn’t focus their eyes on anything. I told one of the guys ‘Looks like you spent a year or two in Hell’, and he replied, ‘Worse, I spent a week or two in Abadan’.”
At the same time, American forces that had successfully taken Bandar Abbas now crawled their way along the coast with the intention of reaching the American troops who came overland. By the time Abadan had fallen, the Americans from Bandar Abbas had taken Bandar-e Lengeh. The plan was for both movements to meet up in the battle for Bushehr – a name often jollily retitled to ‘Bush Here’. If they could do that, then the Persian Gulf could finally be declared secure and global trade could hopefully, hopefully reopen again. Anti-American sentiment had already noticeably increased in Europe, with protests in Germany and London utilizing the high energy costs to demand peace with Iran and the reopening of the Strait. It was hoped a union of the two prongs in the south would mean the Gulf would be safe, petrol prices would fall, and the Anti-War sentiment would dissipate. It was a decent, if slightly naïve plan.
In the north, the coalition was locked in two major battles. The first was Tabriz, the second was Lahijan. The Coalition had fought a bloody trail to Tabriz, which was the first city of over a million people that they encountered. The Turks played an outsized role in this operation and were sensitive to the casualties. Once Coalition forces reached the outside of the city by April 21st, they came to a halt at the suburbs. The Turks wanted strong air support for any operation on such a large city – however, the unexpectedly difficult situation in the Gulf had meant less planes operating over Tabriz. Then once Iraq was invaded, the Turks were even more furious, especially since the Kurds in Iraq were also getting critical air support in a way that would potentially endanger the security of the Turkish state. It seemed America didn’t care as much about Turkey’s own War on Terror – leading to multiple screaming matches in NATO centres between Turkish and American military planners. The focus of planes in the oil producing south of both Iraq and Iran would catapult the populist theory that the entire war had actually been a smokescreen for an imperialist oil grab – a theory that remains popular today, especially in a more bitter Turkey. Instead, the Coalition simply fought to secure the supply lines (hammered by IRG guerrillas), while they waited for the situation in the south to improve itself, and for better relations to form among the Turks and Americans.
The case of Lahijan proved slightly more amendable. A large chunk of supplies to the Coalition were actually sent over the Caspian and were thus unmolested by guerrillas. The terrain, however, while passable was also extremely narrow, leading to chokepoints that could easily ground to a halt. Once that happened, artillery could open up from the nearby hills and inflict brutal casualties. The crawl south was thus helped out by mountain-troopers clearing away in the nearby hills ahead to help get Coalition troops through. By April 5th, Coalition troops had entered Bandar Anzali although most of the port infrastructure had already been detroyed. On April 18th, Rasht was found almost empty. This was because the Iranians had simply plugged the two routes for the Americans. They could either go over the mountains now twards Qazvin and get brutalized there, or keep crawling along the coast through Lahijan where they could get brutalized there. Ultimately, since Lahijan was closer to the Caspian and could therefore be more easily supplied by the sea, it was considered the better way to go.
On May 3rd, the Battle of Lahijan commenced, and would gain the reputation around the world it has today. The city was practically in the hills themselves, with everything visible to Iranian troops staring down from above. It was a brutal situation, made worse by the fact Iranian troops had pulled from Rasht to fight there. Coalition troops struggled to keep their supply lines functioning given the amount of ammo needed and the difficulty in transferring so much of it through the Caspian or overland. Due to the pauses of Coalition troops, the city lasted longer than even Abadan or Bandar Abbas, only falling on June 15th to an exhausted Coalition who looked ahead to Tehran, saw the long way there, and wondered what in God’s name they got themselves into.
Excerpt from ‘Broken Dreams: How the War on Terror Changed America’ by Linda Reins
Following the 9/11 attacks, Congress would pass the PATRIOT Act, which would radically increase the abilities of the Federal Government to spy on its citizens, authorizing detention without trial for non-citizens and the ability to search records without a warrant. The ACLU immediately declared it unconstitutional, though even if it was the demand on the streets for such a law was through the roof, not just from the intelligence agencies but the populace. After having come through 9/11, no one wanted a similar incident, thus leading to wide-reaching changes that seemed common sense (not allowing boxcutters on planes) to the not-so-common sense (taking off your shoes before going on a plane). The immediate reaction of civil society was muted.
Adverts encouraging people to join the military initially weren’t needed. Everyone wanted to join the army to get back at the people who did 9/11. The problem was that an escalating amount of Americans couldn’t pass the requirements for entrance, often as a result of obesity – something that would ultimately and perhaps ironically make the Bush Administration the first in American history to seriously grapple with the issue and temporarily coding the issue as Right-wing. Iran was a huge country and required a lot of troops, and the US certainly had many more commitments around the world that weren’t going away. This had led to talk of the ‘five-letter-word’ as Bush told his aides: ‘Draft’.
Talk of the Draft had begun as early as November 2001 as talks about the logistics of invading Iran got underway. Everyone in the Administration knew it was a political third rail and would repeatedly stress in the strongest terms that there were ‘no plans’ to use the Selective Service Structure. Instead, the US simply pulled as many troops as they could from Germany, Japan and, yes, Korea. After the sinking of the USS Abraham Lincoln however, the Administration realised what they got themselves into. By mid-February, the Selective Service were given instructions to ensure they would be ready for use in a ‘worst-case scenario’. Once news of this hit the press, genuine concerns were raised that the Administration had gotten more than they could chew in Iran. Bush would once again announce on February 20th that there were ‘No intentions to use the Selective Service at this time.” [Emphasis added]. Once the invasion of Iraq began, there were already Anti-Draft movements on college campuses, laughed at by many in the media but especially Fox since there wasn’t actually a draft at the time, though many jokingly stated there should be one. Even then there was resentment, as the agonizing pump prices brought life in many cities to a halt. Speed limits were dropped in some jurisdictions, and others began price controls that made the problem even worse.
In the White House, however, it was no laughing matter. The invasion of Iraq when combined with the invasion of Iran, not to mention the occupation of Lebanon, had taken the US army to breaking point. The reckless decision to invade Iraq had resulted in an equation that did not add up. There were simply not enough Coalition forces to everything the Administration wanted, and no one was going to contribute more troops after the US recklessly went into Iraq. Rumsfeld even began suggesting the creation of a ‘Free Iraq’ army from the Shia south, harshly opposed by Powell as he knew it would become a sectarian war. By June, the Administration spent most of their days trying to untie this Gordian Knot of trying to fight this war without a draft – until the day that it turned out there had to be a draft anyway.
Extract from ‘Date with Destiny: The War that brought Korea and Japan Together’ by Kaori Makimura
Kim Jong-Il had two strong pushes to get into the war and two strong pulls holding him back. The pushes were the knowledge that this was the weakest America would ever be in the Korean Peninsula, and that hints were coming in that the Neocons considered North Korea next on the list of places they wanted taken out. In addition to the initial Axis of Evil Speech, Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld had said on May 7th ‘After this war, we’ve got to deal with North Korea – the previous administration made the mistake of letting Kim Jong-Il get away with his extortion and blackmail, and it’s not going to stand. We will take all measures to ensure the safety of the American people’.
On the other side, the pulls were the threat of South Korean/American military response and the extent to which China would allow them to get away with it. China was North Korea’s biggest trade partner and potentially had the power to cut the country off at the knees. China had pursued a more cooperative policy with the Americans, but the sudden invasion of Iraq had altered the calculations. Now the Chinese became increasingly suspicious of America’s real intentions as the Politburo began to suspect the Americans of a neo-colonial project to eliminate its rivals.
Many also believe the success of South Korea in the World Cup was what finally made Kim decide on his plan. Many suspect that the success of the South Koreans, especially after they had rejected all North Koreans from joining the team for not being good enough, was a deep personal wound to Kim. Kim had previously blown up an airliner for Seoul simply holding the 1988 Olympics – that the South Koreans were now doing great in the contest is hypothesised as a reason ‘Operation Father of the Nation’ was ultimately decided on. Indeed, it’s suspected that it was brought forward one day from June 30th to June 29th to not be on the day of the World Cup Final, but the Third-Place match in Daegu between South Korea and Turkey to ensure maximum disruption. Taking a page from the Tet Offensive and the Yom Kippur War, Kim had decided to strike at a moment when all of South Korea would be doing something else, but not after giving just enough suitable cause for others to turn away.
On the morning of June 29th, two North Korean patrol boats wandered into the Northern Limit Line close to the island of Yeonpyeong, a maritime boundary between the Koreas that North Korea had never recognised. Despite the invasion, the two boats proved remarkably passive for North Korean ships, well known for harassing and even shooting at South Korea vessels at any chance. A cautious South Korean squadron then approached the patrol boats and ordered them back – they were pleasantly surprised that the North Koreans were being so unexpectedly cooperative. They could get back to thinking about what actually mattered, which was the Third-Place game that night in Daegu. While security had been stricter in the earlier stages of the tournament, South Korea had gotten more complacent as the tournament went on without incident – the North Korean army had been on high state of readiness since the Iraq War and so their posture was nothing new.
Then, almost as soon as the patrol boats were brought over the Northern Limit Line, the South Koreans were rocked by two almighty explosions. They scrambled to battle stations before realising they were unharmed. It was the two patrol boats who were in flames before sinking to the bottom of the ocean. What they had just witnessed was a North Korean False Flag operation undertaken by a fanatical cadre of believers in Kim and Juche. A suicide mission undertaken to give North Korea an excuse for what would soon come.
After the false flag mission had been completed, Kim would send a message to the Politburo in China. In his megalomania, he had written a 20,000 word essay on the historic rights of North Korea and of the inevitability of Western treachery and the confrontation between good and evil, in addition to recommending a viewing of Pulgasari, the Kaiju film he had produced back in the 1980s with the help of two kidnapped South Korean film stars. Of the essay which was relevant to current proceedings, Kim would give a carrot and stick – if China kept sending supplies to North Korea after violence began he would not unleash the much feared carpet shelling of Seoul (since there were thousands of Chinese people living there), and if they stopped sending supplies then he would unleash his WMD arsenal upon the peninsula. He said he would be willing to countenance an independent South Korea ‘that so dastardly blew up our patrol ships this morning’ (while no one stopped to ask Kim why he would write a 20k word justification if the attack happened only in the morning since they’d be killed) only in return for ten nuclear weapons and a functioning nuclear program that could replace the nukes if needed. Incidentally, there were no references to alleviating the material situation of malnourished North Koreans by reducing sanctions, something Kim obviously didn’t care about. What he wanted was nukes, and he was prepared to take South Korea as a hostage to make it happen.
That the message was sent before North Korea’s invasion and not immediately after was always denied by China until proven by a defector in 2018, further straining China’s ties with the West though they continue to deny it. The reason this is controversial is that while China gave no explicit greenlight to North Korea, they simply did not respond at all, meanwhile not informing South Korea of the information that would have certainly reduced the initial North Korean success. While China insists that their decision was always motivated by the blackmail of WMDs and preserving Chinese citizens in Seoul, the same defector argued that such a conflict would badly stretch and weaken the Americans while even a ‘victory’ for the Americans in the peninsula would result in nothing more than perhaps a slightly revised northward border and no more Kim-related headaches for Beijing.
While confusion rang through South Korea’s military command about the Yeonpyeong incident, the lack of casualties on the South’s side resulted in no real sense of urgency. Many joked that the North Korean ships were just death-traps that blew up, or maybe they were defectors too scared to make the final move. The lack of North Korean response further kept tensions down, as the incident was not even mentioned in North Korean afternoon news. The South Koreans returned to the festivities of the World Cup in what would be their swansong at the tournament on their own home soil. At the Third-Place game itself, a record was technically broken since the Turks scored a goal in less than eleven seconds. Debate still rages about whether this record should remain recognised since the match itself was called off. After the first goal was scored, the South Koreans equalised, only for the Turks to be back in top at the thirteenth minute. It was certainly shaping up to be a good match as far as third-place contests were concerned.
Then, at the nineteenth minute and twelfth second (corresponding to the birthyear of Kim Il-Sung), just barely visible on the hard-cam, a blast shook the stadium from inside. The cameras quickly cut to studio or to nothing at all. No one wanted to point a camera at what had happened. An explosion had come from inside the spectators, ultimately killing twenty-five people, all of whom were South Korean, eight of whom were children. The match was immediately called off, with at least three members of the South Korean team ultimately retiring from football altogether as a result of the appalling scenes. Like the Yeonpyeong incident, this had been a suicide bomber, though many in the first few minutes thought it might have been a Kurdish suicide attack. This had been the sign that the North Koreans were waiting for. Those who watched the game and were anxious to see it return from the technical difficulties would eventually see the technical disruption signal relent and live coverage return. But it wouldn’t be to the football studio, but the news studio, accompanied by the headline ‘BREAKING NEWS: NORTH KOREA ANNOUNCES INVASION OF SOUTH KOREA’.
[1] Based on a real speech he gave in Iraq with some alterations of my own.
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As a fan of the South Korean national team, I am quite sad that war had to start on the day it did.
I was thinking that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana would also fit, as I saw this Iraq War video showing the Marines fighting in Fallujah with the song on the background.
Other Iraq War videos I've seen have "Enter Sandman" by Metallica and "Bodies" by Drowning Pool, but I do feel "Smells Like Teen Spirit" fits more due to the depressive emotion of the song, considering the troops to fight in Iraq were people either fresh from BootCamp or in their early 20s.
Not only will North Korea draw the wrath of the U.S., but also the countries who have nationals playing in the World Cup.
Kim Jong-Il shot himself in the foot. The Hermit Kingdom is on their final countdown.
Meanwhile, everyone to North Korea ITTL:
As a fan of seeing sports with friends, this will also sadden soccer enthusiasts regardless of what nationalities they root for.
Most sane political decision in North Korea indeed.Kim Jong-Il shot himself in the foot. The Hermit Kingdom is on their final countdown.
Meanwhile, everyone to North Korea ITTL:
Considering his insanity at this point with how he triggers a war in the middle of a football match, I'm surprised he didn't somehow blame the Finns for issues that the DPRK was facing.
