by Chris James
Writing in A History of Warfare in the 21st Century, Victoire Tasse used the available evidence to draw salient historical parallels: ‘… in the subjugation of Turkey in February 2062, the invaders utilised the most extreme barbarity that would not have been out of place in the wars of the previous century. Witnesses spoke of Caliphate warriors bartering captured girls as young as ten, deciding which should be kept to be abused as spoils of war, and which should be sent to the Caliphate as slaves. Men of military age were often burned to death out of hand, first having been forced to dig shallow ditches. Vehicle-mounted lasers were used as the cheapest method of execution. The invading forces did not even require slave labour, as construction replicators arrived in the follow-up waves and proceeded to rebuild roads and buildings destroyed in the invasion.’
Thus, as the Caliphate assimilated Turkey in its dark, all-encompassing embrace, so did the available data shrink to almost nothing. US satellites made forays over the region later during the war, with some success in determining the number of casualties, but as soon as Caliphate ACAs took control of Turkish airspace, a cloak of blackness descended over a once-proud country. Nevertheless, to fully understand why Turkey’s plight unfolded as it did, it is necessary to return to that fateful Monday, 6 February 2062, and to the chaos into which the Caliphate’s assault had plunged NATO leaders.
IV. ISRAEL IMMOLATED
An emergency NATO meeting was hurriedly convened and commenced before the last ship in the Franklin D. Roosevelt carrier group had settled on the bed of the Arabian Sea. Various country leaders, chiefs-of-staff and heads of security rushed to take part. This meeting was fraught, disjointed and disorganised. The suddenness and fury of the Caliphate’s attack on the navies and Turkey had NATO’s leaders in disarray, and comprehensive shock punctuated urgent suggestions met with damning rejections.
Various NATO scenarios called for a comprehensive nuclear attack on Caliphate territory, but all super-AI projections estimated the likelihood of success of using this last, desperate option at less than a tenth of 1%. Each scenario of war with the Caliphate had forecasted a conflict lasting months or years. Now, however, within a few hours of the initial assault, Western leaders were faced with the imperative to stop Caliphate forces by any and all means available to them. Frenetic diplomatic activity surged as the NATO powers contacted Moscow and Beijing to try to establish what they knew of the Caliphate’s actions. Despite the accusations and counter-accusations hurled around the world’s media at the time, there is little evidence to suppose that Russia or China had any foreknowledge of events. In 2069 a series of communications between Beijing and Tehran were leaked which showed the shock and confusion among the Chinese at the initial attack on the Western navies and Turkey. Although a few commentators questioned their veracity, English files recently released under the thirty-year rule demonstrate that these and many more similar communications were provided to the NATO powers at the time, and thus on balance can be considered authentic.
As the morning in Europe progressed, various countries’ super AIs spat out probabilities and theses regarding how the Caliphate could have produced such devastating military power, and a range of potential responses. In all offensive scenarios, the conclusion was a full-scale nuclear attack on the most populous Caliphate cities, unless and until the location of its arms manufacturing facilities could be identified. English Prime Minister Napier and President Coll both rejected the nuclear option outright assuming, correctly, that global opinion would then fall too much in favour of the Caliphate. In In the Eye of the Storm, Gen. Sir Terry Tidbury conveyed the sense of frustration: ‘I wanted to smash the damn super AI for its ridiculous suggestions. This thing was supposed to be cleverer than the sum of human knowledge. None of the politicians had studied military history, and it seemed the computers hadn’t a clue, either. The Caliphate had made a textbook-perfect surprise attack, and it would take it weeks if not months to consolidate its position in Turkey. The politicians really needed to calm down: for now, our enemy had the initiative, and we had to think clearly as to what defensive measures we could take. Until we knew something more of his intentions, or in fact anything beyond the new reality we had that day, we’d remain a long way off taking any offensive steps.’
At 09.21 GMT on the morning of 6 February, the Caliph made his announcement from Tehran, which for all its asininity bears repeating in full here: ‘The Persian Caliphate announces the assimilation of the nation state formerly known as Turkey. The government of that territory had requested its accession for later this year, however it has been necessary to act now due to pre-emptive steps taken by the war-like, infidel states of Europe and America. The Caliphate regrets having been forced to neutralise the aggressor infidel, which he brought upon himself. Nevertheless, the Caliphate reiterates its commitment to regional and global peace, and will continue to expand only to those Muslim states who freely request to join.’
While bordering on the ludicrous given the events that would follow, this statement gives an important indication of the Caliphate’s standing in the world at the time. In addition to China and Russia, many countries around the globe, including the economically strongest such as Brazil, India and Japan, regarded the Caliphate as a success story. For twenty years it had brought stability and peace to a Middle East which had suffered decades of strife. The well-known Brazilian diplomat Vinicius Novo, writing in a leading Brazilian media outlet, said the day after the attack: ‘While no one approved of the violence, the Caliphate enjoyed a great deal of goodwill for the way it had managed its affairs, and although there was concern, obviously, for this clearly aggressive action to assimilate Turkey, I sense at the UN that NATO really has brought these problems on itself. It was provocative, to say the least, to station navy battle groups so close to Caliphate territory. Yes, the Caliphate could have given fair warning to NATO, but if it felt threatened, it’s also understandable that it acted in the way it did - after all, we don’t have to look too far back into history to a time when, whenever NATO felt threatened, it acted with the most extreme violence against its perceived enemies even though such violence was seldom justified.’
In a similar vein, a member of the Indian Defence Minister’s staff said contemptibly to his superior: ‘The NATO countries shouldn’t go around behaving like they’re still the most powerful militaries in the world. Europe simply doesn’t get it that it’s a backwater and has been for at least twenty years. The only people who want to go there are tourists.’
It is relevant to the beginning of the war to note the global perception of NATO at that time, as its leaders were obliged to keep one eye on public opinion in more populous countries. For example, when the US tabled a motion at the UN to condemn the Caliphate’s aggression, thirty-four countries rejected it and a further fifty-one abstained. For many billions of people in Asia and South America, Turkey’s assimilation was a local issue which the country had brought on itself. This was one more problem which President Coll and Prime Minister Napier had to consider before resorting to a nuclear attack, especially given that they had no certain knowledge of the location of the Caliphate’s centres of weapons production.
Calmer and more expert military wisdom prevailed as the day wore on. Appropriate decisions, tactical rather than strategic, were made to accelerate and increase armaments production, and to strengthen the defensive ACA shield along Europe’s borders. Through Beijing, stern diplomatic warnings were relayed to the Caliphate that any attempted attack on a European country would result in a full-scale counterattack in which NATO could not rule out extensive use of nuclear weapons. Coll instructed the reactivation of mothballed weapons’ research programmes. All members agreed at once to increase recruitment to their armed forces. Tellingly, even on this first day of the war, most NATO leaders appeared to accept that the coming maelstrom would not likely be restricted to a war of machines.
The thorniest problem Coll had to deal with was Israel. The country had enjoyed little sympathy since its cl
andestine attempts to derail the Peace-Buffer Settlement in 2054 became public knowledge. On Jordan’s and Syria’s assimilation into the Caliphate, the Second Caliph had decreed the withdrawal of all believers to form a buffer-zone along the Caliphate’s new border with Israel. Some 88% of the remaining Palestinians, Arabs and other Muslims inside Israel elected to relocate to the Caliphate. The buffer ranged in breadth from fifty kilometres in the south to nearly a hundred at the Golan Heights. In her 2056 book How the Middle East Found Peace, Jennifer Lewis is scathing in her assessment of the Israeli government’s duplicity: ‘While in public Prime Minister Mendelberg praised the Peace-Buffer Settlement, in private he and many Israeli politicians seethed. Israel’s economy relied too greatly on military production and sales. Exports had been falling as traditional markets continued to contract, and the century-old confrontation with Muslims needed to continue to exist. A final resolution would spell disaster for the economy. So Mendelberg set Mossad agents to work to undermine the Muslim exodus from Israel’s borders.’
Lewis goes on to describe in depth how close Israel came to achieving its objective, and praises the Caliphate, and especially the Second Caliph, for seeing through the provocation and not responding with bloodshed. Thus did the Caliphate establish itself in the eyes of the world not only as non-violent, but as an entity which avoided confrontation at all costs. However, in 2055 the Second Caliph would be succeeded by the Third Caliph, and a great deal would change, only to be fully revealed on that fateful Monday morning.
By 2062, Israel’s economy still struggled to export sufficient armaments. In addition, although Jewish interests retained control of much wealth and therefore power, these fortunes had long been eclipsed by financial conglomerates and banks in China, India and Brazil. Beijing in particular had little difficulty encouraging Chinese companies to freeze Jewish-backed interests out of the world’s largest economy. The US continued to support Israel financially as it had throughout the century of its existence, but local pressures on President Coll made Israel a politically difficult issue.
On the morning of 6 February 2062, the Israeli Prime Minister, Uri Mendelberg, now in his sixth year of power, displayed a similar dismay and shock as other leaders of the democracies, edged with biting declarations that he’d anticipated the Caliphate would eventually attack the West in some form, sooner or later. Records show that Mendelberg rapidly became boorish in his demands for an immediate and comprehensive counter-attack. More measured voices, including Gen. Sir Terry Tidbury’s, advised caution in the face of an enemy who had shown a remarkable prescience and complete tactical superiority. Mendelberg bitterly opposed the military logic of measured consideration before deciding the response. The emergency meeting broke up in the early afternoon in general agreement that NATO and Europe faced a unique and specific threat which required appropriate preparation before any attempt to bring Turkey back into the family of nations could be mounted. As Napier’s aide confided to his diary: ‘The boss worried that the attack on Turkey had completely unhinged Mendelberg. As it turned out, it had, and he would bring the destruction of his own country down on his neck in punishment for not being able to cope.’
As soon as the emergency meeting concluded, Mendelberg took matters into his own hands. Irrespective of the balance of his mind, records show that Mendelberg enjoyed widespread support from key members of his cabinet and government. This support also extended to the general population. One of the handful of survivors, Ayala Salomon, at the time a twenty-eight-year-old nurse working at a hospital in the Holon district of Tel Aviv, later told the post-war US Congressional hearings: ‘Mendelberg knew we had to act, we had to defend ourselves, as we always had. Whatever you might think now, however it turned out, at the time we believed we were doing the right thing. We had to hit them before they hit us. None of us could’ve realised the trap we walked into.’
Many members of the Knesset hardly needed summoning for an emergency debate, held in-camera. No records of the debate survive, but it is reasonable to assume that some dissenting voices may have been heard. At some point, the decision was made not to consult Washington, but to proceed unilaterally. This would merely compound this greatest of errors. In a matter of hours, nuclear-armed attack ACAs were prepared and the Israeli military brought its substantial capabilities to full readiness. The Israeli super AI at the centre of the country’s command systems was tasked specifically with ‘rendering Israel safe from assault by the Persian Caliphate’. In truth, this had been its main objective since its inception; it only had to make final refinements to a well-established plan. The super AI estimated the probability of the attack failing at a mere 1.37%. It was enough.
As with many other aspects of the war, in the following decades pro-Western historians have attempt to evidence more rational explanations for actions which, even without the benefit of hindsight, appear to have been wholly reckless. However, apart from the preceding historical context, there is little to redeem Prime Minister Mendelberg. Although Israeli moderates had corralled the more hawkish elements on the political right, the shadow cast by the Peace-Buffer Settlement debacle still denied the country any great sympathy. The Second Caliph’s diplomacy and patience had made many see Israel as the aggressor; a rogue state in a new, peaceful Middle East.
At 01.33 local time on the morning of Tuesday 7 February, the Israeli Air Force launched two hundred and fifty-six Nesher 101-C ACAs in five waves, armed with uranium-234 fission warheads yielding between two and ten kilotons each. The volume of attempted overkill was impressive; for example, Tehran alone was to receive sufficient destructive power to render it uninhabitable for several decades. Each wave launched at two-minute intervals, and was immediately detected by US satellites. These began tracking the ACAs until they left the Peace-Buffer Zone and entered Caliphate territory, at which point the Caliphate’s jamming rendered the Israeli attack invisible. Mendelberg contacted Washington to inform them of his country’s actions, much to President Coll’s consternation.
Time passed. Israeli military command requested the US to consult its earthquake monitoring stations for any indications of seismic activity. It then relayed the same request to Indian seismology facilities. At length, all returned with nothing to report. By 04.30, the Israeli military was obliged to conclude that the attack had failed absolutely. One can imagine the confusion in several installations inside Israel, confusion which would shortly turn to material concern.
The first Caliphate ACAs to cross into the Peace-Buffer Zone did so at 07.11. Unknown to Israel and the rest of the world, the Caliphate had indeed destroyed the assault in its entirety, and would now deliver a devastating blow in reply. Here again the super-AI technology employed by the West failed comprehensively. Mendelberg’s and the Knesset’s gamble had been that as the bulk of the Caliphate’s forces were now engaged in subduing Turkey, the Caliphate’s main population centres remained relatively unprotected. In the event, the Caliphate had rearmed to such an unforeseen degree that not only did it have the resources to defeat Israel’s attack, it was able to reply in the same coin. Moreover, the Caliphate did so in a way that would do most to hold global public opinion on its side, for while Israel attacked with nuclear weapons, which the Caliphate disabled, the Caliphate replied with non-nuclear - although no less lethal - conventional armaments.
Sirens blared across all of Israel’s major conurbations and local governments continuously transmitted urgent warnings for citizens to take cover in the ‘secure room’ which each Israeli home was obliged by law to have. However, news of the overnight attack on the Caliphate had spread, and thousands of moderate citizens from the artisan district of Tel Aviv formed an impromptu protest in the early light of the morning. They gathered at Rabin Square and paused to await the arrival of half a dozen MKs from the two leading left-wing political parties.
Five thousand metres above them, hundreds of IDF defence ACAs held their formations as the Caliphate machines advanced swiftly across the Peace-Buffer Zone. The Isr
aeli designed and manufactured Nesher 101-A defensive ACA was believed to be the most advanced weapon of its time. It came in a number of variations for different military roles: air-to-air combat; air-to-surface smart missile; as well as anti-tank and anti-personnel designations, with armaments to suit the target. Its shielding was by a narrow margin the strongest in any Western army. Thus, while confusion may have reigned concerning what became of Israel’s own attack on the Caliphate, it is reasonable to assume many people in Tel Aviv felt confident of their country’s ability to defend itself.
At 07.16, Israeli ACAs were directed to intercept the leading Caliphate machines, and battle was joined. Writing in The Fall of the State of Israel a few years later, historian Avraham Udell describes what happened next: ‘The protesters hushed when strange popping sounds could be heard distantly in the bright blue of the morning sky. Most had been asking each other for news of their own country’s attack on the Caliphate, and none expected they could be at any serious risk of harm. This made the resulting panic even more terrifying. A thousand slates and other mobile devices were thrust skywards as little black dots became visible against the blue, a thousand live feeds being sent around the globe in real time. Some of the protesters had the C-ALL-2 implant, and now activated it to upload their personal vision to their preferred social sharing platforms. The resulting images make extremely painful viewing. In numerous sequences we can see the Caliphate ACA glide down towards the crowd, who at once explode into flame. The Caliphate had succeeded in installing a powerful laser in a quick and agile ACA, which now slowed as it burned the protesters. Three pulses from the invisible light set hair and clothes aflame, and most of the sequences end in screams of agony with views of exposed flesh bubbling up in red and angry blisters, before the intense heat destroyed the devices and the images end.’