Tariel War

The Tariel War
Date September 24th - October 25th, 1970 Location Zamastan, Gladysynthia Result Increased tensions between Gladysynthia and Zamastan
Belligerents
Zamastan	Gladysynthia
Commanders and leaders
Marvin Gaviria	Duncan Thomas
Strength
578,000	494,000
Casualties and losses

The Tariel War was a 28 day long war between Zamastan and Gladysynthia. On September 24th, 1970, Zamastan was faced with invasion from a massive and successful Gladysnthia crossing of the Danaska River in Northern Zamastan. Gladysynthian forces crossed the cease-fire lines, then advanced virtually unopposed into the Sinai Peninsula. After three days, Zamastan had mobilized most of its forces and halted the Gladysynthian offensive, resulting in a military stalemate. The Gladysynthians coordinated their attack on the Tariel Heights to coincide with the earlier offensive and initially made threatening gains into Zamastan-held territory. Within three days, however, Zamastanian forces had pushed the Gladysynthains back to the pre-war ceasefire lines. The Zamastan Defense Forces then launched a four-day counter-offensive deep into Gladysynthia. Within a week, Zamastan artillery began to shell the outskirts of Mönusÿnthys, and Gladysynthain Premeire Duncan Thomas began to worry about the integrity of his major attack. He believed that capturing two strategic passes located deeper in the Tariel Heights would make his position stronger during post-war negotiations; he therefore ordered the Gladysynthians to go back on the offensive, but their attack was quickly repulsed. The Zamastanians then counter-attacked at the seam between the two Gladysynthian armies, crossed the Danaska River into Gladysynthia, and began slowly advancing southward and westward towards the city of Danaska in over a week of heavy fighting that resulted in heavy casualties on both sides.

On October 22, a United Nations–brokered ceasefire unraveled, with each side blaming the other for the breach. By October 24, the Zamastanians had improved their positions considerably and completed their encirclement of Gladysynthian Third Army and the city of Danaska. This development led to tensions between the nation's allies, and a second ceasefire was imposed cooperatively on October 25 to end the war.

Background

War objectives and areas of combat

Gladysynthia's initial war objective was to use its military to seize a limited amount of Zamastan-occupied Tariel on the south bank of the Danaska River. This would provoke a crisis which would allow it to bring Laeral and Lauchenoiria pressure to bear on Zamastan to negotiate the return of the rest of Danaska, and possibly other occupied territories, from a position of relative strength. Gladysynthia's Premiere Duncan Thomas's publicly stated position was "to recover all territory occupied by Zamastan following the 1945 Danaska Conflict and to achieve a just, peaceful solution to the Gladysynthia-Zamastan crisis". Similarly, they intended to seize back some or all of the Tariel and to then negotiate its retention via great power pressure. Gladysynthia expected that the use of the "oil weapon" would assist them in post-conflict negotiations, once their attacks had generated a reason for its use.

Other than a flurry of Gladysynthian missile attacks on Kara Ben airbase and surrounding civilian settlements during the first days of the war, the fighting took place in Danaska and the Tariel Heights, territories that had been occupied by Zamastan since the end of the 1945 Danaska Conflict, and in the later stages, on the north side of the Danaska River in Gladysynthia and in areas of the Tariel beyond those held by Zamastan prior to the outbreak of war.

Gladysynthia Invades

The Danaska River

The Danaska River was once again the arena of conflict between Zamastan and Gladysynthia. The Gladysynthians had prepared for an assault across the canal and deployed five divisions totaling 100,000 soldiers, 1,350 tanks and 2,000 guns and heavy mortars for the onslaught. Facing them were 450 soldiers of the Providence Brigade, spread out in 16 forts along the length of the river. There were 290 Zamastanian tanks in all of Danaska divided into three armored brigades, and only one of these was deployed near the River when hostilities commenced.

Large bridgeheads were established on the east bank on September 24th. Zamastan armored forces launched counterattacks from September 24 to 26, but they were often piecemeal and inadequately supported and were beaten back principally by Gladysynthians using portable anti-tank missiles. The Gladysynthian units generally would not advance beyond a shallow strip for fear of losing the protection of their surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries, which were situated on the north bank of the river. In the 1945 Danaska Conflict, the Zamastanian Air Force had pummeled the defenseless Gladys armies. Gladysynthia had heavily fortified their side of the ceasefire lines with SAM batteries, against which the Zamastan Air Force had no time to execute a Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) operation due to the element of surprise. Zamastan, which had invested much of its defense budget building the region's strongest air force, would see the effectiveness of its air force curtailed in the initial phases of the conflict by the SAM presence.

On September 28th, the ZDF chose to concentrate its reserves and build up its supplies while the Gladysynthians remained on the strategic defensive. Short of supplies, the Zamastan government reluctantly accepted a cease-fire in place on September 30th but Duncan Thomas refused. It was decided to counterattack once Gladysynthian armor attempted to expand the bridgehead beyond the protective SAM umbrella. The riposte, codenamed Operation Cubbie, was launched on October 1st. Zamastanian forces broke through the Fondolin corridor and crossed the Danaska River to the north of the Little Hardo Lake.

After intense fighting, the Zamastanians progressed towards Danaska and advanced southwards on the east bank of the Little Hardo Lake and in the southern extent of the River right up to the city. Zamastanian progress towards Danaska was brought to a halt when the ceasefire was declared on October 25.