A Desert Called Peace Part 45

"That's something, I suppose," Mendoza answered.

"Where are you from, Jorge?" Lourdes asked.

"Las Mesas," he answered. "Why?"

"Really! I have family there," Lourdes said, without quite answering.

EXCURSUS.

From: Legio del Cid: to Build an Army (reprinted here with permission of the Army War College, Army of the Federated States of Columbia, Slaughter Ravine, Plains FSC) Legio del Cid: to Build an Army (reprinted here with permission of the Army War College, Army of the Federated States of Columbia, Slaughter Ravine, Plains FSC) Despite the impressive combat record ama.s.sed by the legion, both during the initial invasion of Sumer and later during the counterinsurgency operation there, and still later, in Pashtia and other theaters, the legion became a magnet for criticism. Much of this came from elements within the Federated States. Some of these objected to the cost, though these raised no practical alterative except for sending even costlier Federated States forces, which forces did not even exist at the time to send. Still others insisted on greater reliance on allied troops, with those allies presumably paying their own way. This foundered on the clearly stated objections of those very allies who, to quote the Chancellor of Sachsen, would come, "Not now, not ever, no how, no way."

Moreover, the performance and staying power of most of the coalition troops left something to be desired. Castilla, for example, deserted in less than a year, taking with it the not inconsiderable number of Colombian states which had sent small formations to the war. Etruria and other Tauran forces likewise drew down as things appeared to bog in what the media insisted was a quagmire. Some allies from along the rim of the Mar Furioso sent substantial numbers, and paid for them, but always over strenuous domestic objections and usually at substantial domestic political cost. Moreover, these troops were almost invariably limited in their portfolio to peacekeeping in sectors where there was no great insurgency. They were useful in such places, but only that.

The only really reliable troops proved to be those of Anglia, the Federated States themselves and the quasi-mercenary Balboans.

It was precisely that quasi-mercenary nature to which much of the world objected. Indeed, since approximately half of Terra Nova had signed on to Additional Protocols One and Two to Old Earth's Geneva Convention Four, which barred the use of mercenary troops, the presence of these Balboans was used as an excuse not not to send troops. The mercenaries, it was said, tainted the entire enterprise and made it illegal. Curiously, no one claimed that Anglia's and Gaul's use of mercenaries was illegal. to send troops. The mercenaries, it was said, tainted the entire enterprise and made it illegal. Curiously, no one claimed that Anglia's and Gaul's use of mercenaries was illegal.

Then again, from the World League to the Tauran Union to every humanitarian activist non-governmental organization on the planet, plus the United Earth Peace Fleet circling overhead, one and all insisted that the war itself had been illegal. Thus, it seems unlikely that any troops would have been forthcoming even had the Balboans been sent packing.

This was the view of the Federated States' Department of War, in any case, and that view prevailed. The Balboans continued to be used and paid for.

In that use, the legion, later legions, became noteworthy not only for impressive combat performance, but also for a ruthless application of the Laws of War.

They were notable, as well, for a more general ruthlessness. This was especially to be seen in their treatment of anyone and everyone a.s.sociated with the cosmopolitan progressive movement. Humanitarian activists attempting to operate in any zone of responsibility (ZOR) over which the Balboans held sway found that security and logistic support would not be provided. Moreover, any who didn't take that hint were often set upon and killed by parties unknown. Curiously, those who were approved and guarded by uniformed Balboan troops were never never given any trouble by the guerillas who were said to infest the land. given any trouble by the guerillas who were said to infest the land.

The key to being accepted by the Balboans was simple. A humanitarian organization wishing to operate in their area had to meet a simple test. If they were "neutral" or anti (and neutral, in this context, generally meant "anti"), they were not welcome. If they had no substantial a.s.sets and expertise to lend to the effort, they were likewise not welcome. If, on the other hand, the groups were willing to help and had the ability, they were welcomed with open arms. A certain number of groups who came willing to provide nothing more than labor were accepted, as well.

If harsh treatment was the lot of many of the humanitarians, this was even more true of the press. With these, not only were unfriendly members not authorized, any found within the Balboans' ZOR were likely to be arrested, tried, found guilty of spying or subversion, and sentenced to death. After the Balboans shot a news team of four from the Arabic news channel, al Iskandaria al Iskandaria, newspapers and television networks generally had to pay a substantial, even crippling, fine to retrieve any of their people who had been found, unauthorized, in the BZOR. Others, who toed the line and did not slant their reporting, were made welcome and, generally speaking, treated rather well. Indeed, the Balboans went out of their way to welcome those who engaged in truly constructive constructive criticism. criticism.

The Balboans proved not to be above conducting "sting" operations to humiliate and discredit the cosmopolitans. Some of these were very elaborate and, it is clear in retrospect, had been planned well in advance...

PART IV.

Chapter Twenty-five.

"The enemy gets a vote."-Common wisdom, understood by all decent armies, and completely lost on the press.

Ninewa, 24/3/461 AC People were beginning to return to the town now, indeed to return to all the villages of the roughly forty thousand square kilometers of the Balboan Zone of Responsibility or BZOR. The people numbered anywhere from a million to two million, no one really knew and aerial surveys were of little help.

The populace of Ninewa returned to what was mostly a ruin. There were no functioning utilities, no governmental administration, no schools, no jobs. Whatever local money the people had was worthless except perhaps as toilet paper. Then again, since the Sumeris did not, by and large, use use toilet paper it didn't really have even this small value. toilet paper it didn't really have even this small value.

On the plus side, there was food plenty of it, as a matter of fact in the granaries and silos of the former government. These were under guard by the legion, which had taken control by right of conquest. There was water no worse than what they had been used to drinking. As this same water might well have been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands in the years leading up to the invasion, this was small recommendation.

There was also plenty of work to be done. With work, with money, with food for the money to buy, there was some hope. Electricity was nice, but it could wait. Clean water was more important, but it could wait, too, albeit at cost in lives. For now, what the people needed were jobs, money, and food to buy with the money.

And therein lay a problem, for although plenty of the food had been captured, enough to last until the next harvest came in, following right on the heels of the invading armies had come the cosmopolitan progressives.

The progressives came in one of four or, rather, five categories. Some had a.s.sets or skills and were willing and eager to help the Sumeri people by helping the invaders. Others had a.s.sets and skills, money at least, but were totally unwilling to cooperate with the invading armies even though that was the only way to help the Sumeri people. Some had neither a.s.sets nor skills and only enough money to ensure that their representatives in Sumer could live rather well while by being gadflies. Some came with nothing but a willingness to work and were willing to live pretty poorly while they did so. And then, for the fifth group, there was the press, which was unwilling to do anything useful and, indeed, was most eager to see the entire enterprise fail, preferably miserably.

The cosmopolitans, most of them, did not want the food sold. They did not want the people forced to work to earn the money to buy it. Food was a "human right" and it was morally wrong to withhold it.

Carrera said, "f.u.c.k off." The cosmopolitans lived to be appreciated, that and for their perks, and rough language was not something they were used to. This cavalier treatment sent many of them packing but, in both Carrera's opinion and Sada's, too many of them stayed.

The legion called a meeting of the Kosmos, sending patrols out throughout its ZOR to so advise them. About half showed up. These were given their marching orders and rules of engagement. They were also promised that security would be provided by the legion as long as they followed the legion's program.

The rest? Those without the obvious security of uniformed legionaries? Sada's watchers came to the fore here, showing up in the middle of the night to threaten, to beat, in a few cases to kill. The only limit on their conduct was, "no rapes." This rule was not always followed and Sada had to have a few of his men, with regret, hanged in public squares.

Some more of the Kosmos packed up, true, but even more came to Carrera's next meeting.

The press waxed lyrical about "the growing lawlessness and terror in Sumer."

That, Carrera admitted, was a problem but not one admitting of an easy solution. That he had hired Sada's brigade, and even expanded it, helped. Still, that was only about three thousand young men employed. There were anywhere from a third to three-quarters of a million men without jobs, though many of these were farmers and could be said to be constantly employed. For the non-farmers, he could decorate every non-functioning lamppost in the BZOR with hanged bodies and still still men would rob to feed their families. And who could blame them? men would rob to feed their families. And who could blame them?

Again, Sada's watchers provided a partial solution. Sent out to all the larger towns and in all the neighborhoods of the city of Ninewa, they reported on the crime status in their areas, naming names. Carrera's helicopters would then fly in, surrounding the town concerned with Sada's troops. Hangings, sometimes ma.s.s hangings, quickly followed. That was the province of the mullahs Sada had found, the chief mullah chargine a price of one gold drachma per death sentence.

The press added, "Travesty of Justice" and "Death Squads" to their existing repertoire of "growing lawlessness and terror."

"In the long run, though," Sada told Carrera, "however necessary they seem now, the hangings might do us more harm than good on their own."

"Why's that?" Carrera asked, puzzled.

The two men sat conversing in one of the university buildings, the entire complex still being under occupation by the legion. Fortunately, the furniture had not been looted precisely because of that occupation. The rest of the town had been somewhat looted, what little there was to take, by the returning people. It was only "somewhat" because of a dozen or so street lynchings that had taken place supervised by the men of Sada's brigade.

"We're not individuals the way you people are," Sada explained. "Everyone we hang is a member of a family and a tribe. It doesn't really matter if the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds we string up are guilty because right and wrong here do not mean objective right and wrong, they mean, "What is good for my tribe is right; what is bad for my tribe is wrong." Executing young men who could bring in money and eventually father families is therefore inherently wrong."

"How many have your boys hanged so far?" Carrera asked.

"Eighty-seven," Sada answered, instantly. "As of yesterday. Fortunately, they're mostly from two of the smaller tribes. Also, fortunately, they were mostly here in Ninewa where tribal affections are slightly looser."

"How did the dictator maintain control if killing a tribe member makes enemies of the entire tribe?" Carrera asked, even more puzzled than he had been before.

"Well...see," Sada explained. "He changed the equation. Resistance meant something between tribal culling and tribal extermination and not a man or woman in the country but believed he meant it. Therefore that that became the ultimate wrong, risking the complete death of the tribe." became the ultimate wrong, risking the complete death of the tribe."

"I can't exterminate entire tribes," Carrera said. Jesus, I've got Jesus, I've got some some decency left. decency left. "You have a solution?" "You have a solution?"

"Work? We have to provide work for the young men. We might also slip some money, under the table, to the leaders of the tribes we've affected."

Carrera answered, "No...I won't reward people for failure to control their young men. I'm willing to provide work, though."

"It'll help," Sada answered with a shrug. And I can take care of bribing the tribal leaders, even if Patricio will not. And I can take care of bribing the tribal leaders, even if Patricio will not.

"Let's look at the map," Carrera suggested.

The map, marked up with grease pencils, showed the borders of the BZOR, which was a near square of about two hundred kilometers on a side. Ninewa was approximately in the center of the eastern side along the River Buranun.

"We need to build a base here," Carrera pointed to a spot just northeast of Ninewa. "I'll also need one more smaller base for each infantry cohort, though those will need to be big enough to house three times that many, eventually, and a.s.suming the war goes the way I expect it to. Can your people handle that kind of construction?"

Sada snorted. "Back on Old Earth my people were building magnificent palaces and cities when yours were still painting themselves blue." He did some quick calculations in his head. Let's see. An average cohort base will need to house about fifteen hundred men when it grows. At sixty square meters per man that would be ninety thousand. A square of three hundred meters on a side... Let's see. An average cohort base will need to house about fifteen hundred men when it grows. At sixty square meters per man that would be ninety thousand. A square of three hundred meters on a side...

"How are you planning on building your bases?" Sada asked.

"Basically square. Ditch. Earthen wall," Carrera answered. "Maybe adobe housing. Small airstrip inside for the Crickets. A full length strip, maybe twelve-hundred meters, at the main base."

"Okay...that would be about one square kilometer you'll need to rent or lease trust me, Patricio, you'll want to lease it rather than just take it for each cohort base. A fair price, depending on the quality of the land, would be somewhere in the range of twenty to fifty thousand FSD per year for each."

"That's all all?"

"Yes, somewhere in there. Probably on the low end provided you make it clear that the housing will stay when you leave. Then, for the walls...ummm...call it two or three thousand men employed with shovels for a month, for each base. Housing would be...honestly I don't know anything about housing."

"I know someone who does," Carrera answered. "Get me Tribunes Cheatham and Clean," he shouted out the office door.

"Two to three thousand each would work for the outlying bases," Carrera said. "Here in Ninewa it would have to be quite a bit larger."

"Yes," Sada agreed. "Including my brigade it would have about four times the area and twice the perimeter. Call it four to six thousand men for a month."

"That would make a big dent in the unemployment situation here in Ninewa," Carrera said. Unenthusiastically, he added, "But only for a month or so. Speaking of your men and families, has yours arrived here safely?"

"Yes, just this morning. I've taken over a couple of rooms here in the compound for them."

"We'll need to secure the families of your men as well, you know," Carrera observed.

"Just so. But the university hasn't enough s.p.a.ce. For now, the families are safer where they are. When we build the base, we can make room for them as well and move them there."

Cheatham knocked on the door, accompanied by the Anglian, Clean. "You called us, sir?"

"Yeah...how much would we need in housing, presumably adobe housing, for the troops?"

"Adobe?" Clean asked, visibly interested. "As it so happens, I've always had a great interest in adobe construction. Did you know that it can be as strong as concrete and, if labor is cheap, also much, much cheaper? It's a wonderful building material for the very rich and the very poor."

It took Clean and Cheatham some days to work out the plans and the requirements. Still more time was spent in negotiations with local leaders for the leasing of land. After that it took more time for PSYOP and word of mouth advertising to a.s.semble work crews. Within a month or so, however, about fifteen thousand of the otherwise unemployed Sumeris had found work in base construction. This was less of a drop in the bucket than it seemed as each Sumeri with money to spend created jobs for the otherwise jobless.

It helped, but not enough.

Zabol, Pashtia Fadeel al Nizal was a man with a problem.

Actually, I have more problems than I can count. Starting with this one.

"This one" meant Mustafa ibn Mohamed ibn Salah, min Sa'ana. And Mustafa was not a happy camper, nor even a happy troglodyte.

"You shame me for being a member of the same race," Mustafa stormed. "I gave you money, hundreds of thousand of FS drachma, and what do you show for it? Nothing!" he raged. "I've given you access to our data base to recruit your own group and what have those you have recruited done to resist the infidel? Lain around b.u.g.g.e.ring each other for all that anyone can see!"

Abdul Aziz ibn Kalb, standing well off to one side, flinched even though he was not the target of the tongue lashing.

"Sheik Mustafa," Fadeel began, "I admit, we were taken by surprise by the speed of the infidel conquest. But then," and Fadeel looked around at the walls of the cave as if to say, Aren't Aren't you you a little surprised to find that your impregnable Pashtia, the Pashtia that did to death the might of the Volgan Empire, is reduced to this little hole in the ground? a little surprised to find that your impregnable Pashtia, the Pashtia that did to death the might of the Volgan Empire, is reduced to this little hole in the ground?

"Don't try me, little man," Mustafa glared. "If we are here it is due to the will of Allah. He He is the great strategist. Ours is but to fight in His cause." is the great strategist. Ours is but to fight in His cause."

"Indeed," Fadeel agreed. "And all will turn out well, even in Sumer. But we do have problems there."

"Like what?" Mustafa demanded.

"Number One is a turncoat Sumeri general named Sada. For reasons I dearly pray the Almighty will reveal to me someday, this man fought the infidel gloriously...and then surrendered and joined him. Worse, this Sada, the dog, took his brigade over with him."

"He is in the infidel's pay," Mustafa said, with a glare of hate. "His family must pay."

"Easier said than done, Great Prince. The turncoat's family is already beyond our reach. Those of his men will be...harder to identify and find. We are working on this."

"Ah, so you actually have have done something." done something."

"We have done what we could. I have just over one hundred future martyrs operating in Sumer. About twenty of them are in the area of the traitor, Sada. It would be more except that about half, or a bit more, of what I sent simply disappeared. I suspect he has a network of informers. And I can't eliminate the informers without knowing who they are. I can't find out who they are without getting more of my people in place. And I can't get my people in place, as long as the area crawls with informers. Only in the city of Ninewa, mostly because it is of a size that makes it impossible to identify strangers, have I been successful in infiltrating. That; and that there been a major displacement of people and disruption of society wherever there was serious fighting."

"And you have a plan for the use of what you do have?" Mustafa asked, growing visibly calmer.

"I do. Noting that everything is in the hands of the Beneficent, the Merciful, still I am prepared to begin attacks against these crusaders very soon."

"With what?"

"I have too few men to conduct a proper suicide campaign at this time," Fadeel admitted. "But I can do kidnappings, I can plant bombs, I can do some a.s.sa.s.sinations. Watch and see. There are munitions scattered unsecured all over Sumer. My people are buying these up. Very soon the invader will feel our sting."

Ninewa, 1/4/461 AC Tariq Mohsem was one of the town's few Christians. A bit shorter than most of the Sumeri norm, and also a bit stouter as befit a normally prosperous shopkeeper, he was also one of the first merchants to reopen for business. Tariq's shop, one of Ninewa's largest before the invasion, was a general store that sold food along with some dry goods, household appliances, tools, and such.

He'd returned to find the shop looted and heavily damaged. He had some funds, not the worthless Sumeri pounds but hard currency from the FS and TU. It had been his escape money. Instead of using it to escape with his family, however, he'd decided to stay and rebuild. Factoring large in that decision had been the very forthright way the occupying forces or liberating, for those who insisted on more aesthetic terms had shown early on that they were intent on maintaining order. Perhaps the clearest indicator of this was the young man Tariq had found dead in the shop, though visible from the street, hanging by the neck from a cross beam Who would have thought a neck could stretch that far? Who would have thought a neck could stretch that far? and with a sign on his chest proclaiming, "Looter." and with a sign on his chest proclaiming, "Looter."

"If the invading forces provide safety and order," Tariq had told his wife, "why not stay? This is home, after all."

So, instead of using the money to flee, Tariq had hired a couple of carpenters to put his shop back in order. The rest he had used to buy food from the invaders. He had to admit, they'd charged a fair price.

"Thank G.o.d," he'd also said to his wife, "that they are, too. If we were further north, in the Anglian or FSC sector, they'd be giving the food away and no one would shop from us."

Things were going well enough, so far, too. He'd bought the food at about forty percent of what the invaders told him he could sell it for. And don't the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds stop by from time to time to make sure I'm not gouging, too? Of course, that doesn't stop me from taking some of the grain and trading it for other foodstuffs which I can mark up rather more than that. And don't the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds stop by from time to time to make sure I'm not gouging, too? Of course, that doesn't stop me from taking some of the grain and trading it for other foodstuffs which I can mark up rather more than that.

With the profits, and given that he was one of the first stores to reopen, Tariq not only hired two a.s.sistants, he also took on an armed guard for the evenings when he closed shop.