///From the author: this is a bit of an expansion of an earlier post ("Titan - World of Mystery") which covers the history of society on Titan and touches on some of the details of the conflicts which have affected this world in the 23rd and 24th centuries. This post is meant to focus exclusively on and expand the details of the First Titan War, of which several characters in upcoming Spacers Saga stories (including Janet Harkov of Spacers: The Erebus Effect and Darius Maroney of Spacers: The Europa Goodbye) are veterans. This is their story...
The First Titan Civil War
Part of the Draconist Wars
Information:
Date: 23 June 2334 - 19 November 2342 (8 years, 2 months, 14 days)
Location: Titan, Saturn sector (primarily between 30° N & 30° S and 60° W & 60 ° E)
Result: Inconclusive (DRAC-aligned forces took nearly 37% casualties in total but Titan was partitioned in 2343 following the enactment of the Treaty of Jiuquan)
Belligerents (Coalition):
Interplanetary Cooperative Administration
Commonwealth of Titan
Belligerents (OPFOR):
Divisão Revolucionária da Assembleia de Callisto
Partido Popular Unido (until 2341)
Democratic Republic of Titan (after 2336)
Commanders & Leaders (Coalition):
Bryson Caldwell (ICA, 2334-2339)
Luanna Resendez (ICA, 2339-2342)
Dexter Sajan (COT, 2334-2337) ✝
Alison Sanchez (COT, 2337-2342)
Samira Walczynski (OSSF, 2334-2338) ✝
Raimundo Avedon (OSSF, 2338-2342)
Kasey Tavares (CDF, 2334-2337)
Lucas Westland (CDF, 2337-2341)
Clayton Rawlings (CDF, 2341-2342)
Frederick Kellogg (IDC, 2334-2337)
Cameron Powell (IDC, 2337-2342)
Commanders & Leaders (OPFOR):
Natsu Shimura (DRAC, 2334-2336) ✝
Jamiko Albrecht (DRAC, 2336-2339) POW
Simon Pereira (DRAC, 2339-2342)
Alexandre Quezon (PPU, 2334-2337) POW
Darrel Oviedo (PPU, 2337-2339) POW
Zander Ishikawa (PPU, 2339-2340) ✝
Isaiah Camden (PPU, 2340-2341) SURR
Umari Tieka (DRT, 2336-2340)
Gustavo Alameda (DRT, 2340-2342)
Isaac Castellano (TPA, 2336-2338) POW
Callum Petrov (TPA, 2338-2342)
Units Involved (Coalition):
Commonwealth Defense Force
Outer System Security Force
Interplanetary Defense Corps
Various pro-ICA militias
Units Involved (OPFOR):
PPU militias (until 2341)
DRAC militias
Titan People’s Army (after 2336)
Various AnCom militias
Strength (Coalition):
~2,380,000 at max (2338)
~10,600,000 total
CDF:
780,000 at max
3,430,000 total
OSSF:
620,000 at max
2,610,000 total
IDC:
750,000 at max
3,740,000 total
Militias:
230,000 at max
820,000 total
Strength (OPFOR):
~1,370,000 at max (2336)
~5,100,000 total
TPA:
Approx. 1,000,000 at max
Approx. 3,710,000 total
PPU:
Approx. 170,000 at max
Approx. 620,000 total
DRAC:
Approx. 90,000 at max
Approx. 350,000 total
Militias:
Approx. 110,000 total
Approx. 420,000 total
Casualties & losses (BLUFOR):
CDF:
79,217 KIA
474,226 WIA
7,463 MIA
OSSF:
47,886 KIA
278,597 WIA
3,386 MIA
IDC:
37,837 KIA
231,592 WIA
653 MIA
Militias:
28,649 KIA
165,386 WIA
1,832 MIA
Total:
193,589 KIA
1,149,804 WIA
13,334 MIA
Casualties & Losses (OPFOR):
TPA:
198,792 KIA
Approx. 1,100,000 WIA
PPU:
122,713 KIA
Approx. 670,000 WIA
DRAC:
15,854 KIA
Approx. 90,000 WIA
Militias:
19,934 KIA
Approx. 110,000 WIA
Total:
371,293 KIA
Approx. 1,970,000 WIA
Summary:
Approximately 560,000 military KIA and 3.12 million WIA ● Approximately 1.37 million civilians killed between 2334 and 2342 (1.8 percent of the prewar population), approximately 6.64 million wounded, and 10-12 million displaced ● Total casualties: 1.93 million killed and 9-10 million wounded
Historical Notes
The Origins of the War (2299-2334):
“Titan’s troubles began thirty years before the Draconists arrived.” In this quote from military historian Dr. Anwar Singh of the Marineris Technical Institute, we see the general consensus on how the conflict profiled here began. While the rivalry between Titan and Mars can be traced back much earlier than the Mars-Titan War of 2292-97, the true keystone of civil strife on Titan was the Harrison Accords of 2299.
When the Ramayana Site was uncovered in the 2280s, it paved the way for the rise of the Titan Pact, a militant nationalist organization hell-bent on securing control over outer system resources. This brought them into conflict with Mars and the ICA, leading to the aforementioned interplanetary conflagration.
After the Titan Pact’s defeat in 2297, the Mars-dominated Interplanetary Defense Corps exacted further humiliation upon the warlords of Titan by levying steep reparations against their economy.
Over the next thirty years, as the outer solar system was slowly engulfed by nationalist fervor which spiked in response to the ICA’s crackdown on rebellion, Titan was held down by these sanctions and by a three-decade occupation by the Outer System Security Force. When the Divisão Revolucionária da Assembleia de Callisto came to power in the mid-2320s, lifting the yolk of ICA control from Titan’s back was high on their list of priorities.
After sending waves of cadres there as early as 2327, the Draconists finally achieved a breakthrough in the Commonwealth of Titan in the parliamentary elections of July 2334, when the local Draconist puppet entity, the United People’s Party, achieved a plurality. Within weeks, Draconist-inspired militias were being recruited in the major cities and weapons were being stockpiled in the countryside by opposing factions, some pro-ICA and some pro-UPP. In early September, the powder keg erupted into the First Titan Civil War.
Invasion, Occupation, Infuriation (2334-2336):
As soon as people started dying on Titan, the IDC launched an intervention. Although already deeply involved in the civil war in the neighboring Jovian sector, the Spacer Corps deployed a full three aerospace expeditionary forces (AEFs), to Operation Hailstorm: the invasion, occupation, and pacification of Titan.
By the second quarter of 2335, nearly half a million spacers were stationed across the surface of Titan as counterinsurgency forces. Roughly a third of them were deployed in forward operating bases (FOBs) far afield from the settlements where much of the civilian population lived. The strategy at work was similar to that used in the Vietnam Conflict of the mid-20th century or the Afghanistan War of the early 21st: the spacers deployed to the field would seek out (or draw out) hostile forces and destroy them in stand-up fights.
The actual result was much less conclusive, and far more frustrating. The roughly 600 thousand IDC spacers then on Titan, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Commonwealth Defense Force and OSSF personnel also in the fight faced stiff opposition from a nebulous enemy which resisted them at every turn despite never quite emerging from the shadows to face them in the stand-up fights they expected.
The strategy originally advanced by AEROCOM planners–Invade, Occupy, Pacify–was sent back to the drawing board. By 2338, after suffering appalling casualties in their campaign to flush out and eliminate the Draconists on Titan, they had instituted a new strategy. The centerpoint of this strategy was Hearts & Minds.
The Turnabout Years (2336-2339):
The ICA’s troubles were not limited to setbacks in the field. In 2336, after seizing control of the critical Samarkand district, home to the capital of Titan, the UPP set up a puppet government called the Democratic Republic of Titan to oversee its bid to control the entire moon. Over the next two years, as the ICA and its military forces fought to evict the Draconists from Titan, the DRT stood as a stark reminder of their failures. A string of military fiascos, including the infamous Battle of Diablo Pass in 2337, only heightened this tension.
But a new plan was taking shape. Taking a page out of the same textbook which had informed counterinsurgency strategists as far back as the 2000s, AEROCOM’s policy wunderkinds hatched a bold new idea. While the Spacer Corps and its allies would maintain many of their frontier FOBs for the purpose of force projection, they would begin moving into the cities and settlements to live among the local population.
The strategy behind this plan was simple but effective. As the IDC took up residence among the population they were deployed to protect, that population would come to see them less as an invading army and more as a bulwark against the Draconists who were always keen on punishing perceived disloyalty.
Throughout 2338 and 2339, this new strategy was implemented by Spacer Corps forces deployed on Titan. Even as IDC Special Forces including the famed SOAR orbital insertion commando force continued their full-on assault of Draconists in the backcountry, other elements of the coalition force focused on their hearts and minds policy. By the middle of 2339, roughly 55 percent of ICA forces on Titan were stationed in or very near to the major settlements, where they conducted presence patrols daily to reassure the locals.
The results, although inconclusive at first, quickly turned encouraging. By late 2339, public approval of the ICA military presence on Titan had risen to 58 percent, up from a 2336 low of 22 percent. The Draconists’ power was waning as sources of willing recruits dried up and young people flocked to the Commonwealth’s Public Development Initiative in search of opportunities less volatile than carrying the Draconist banner.
The New Faction (2339-2341):
But even as the ICA’s star rose, so too was the strength of a new entrant to the great game of astropolitics. In March 2339, representatives from Titan, Ganymede, and Callisto signed the Allied Worlds Pact, in which they pledged their economic and military assets to mutual defense and commercial growth. By 2340, a dozen other governments had flocked to the Alliance of Free Worlds in hopes of joining this new order.
At first, it seemed the Alliance and the ICA might be able to coexist peacefully. From 2339 to 2341, the Spacer Corps invited the Alliance military to participate in the gradual pacification of the Draconist threat. Advisors from the new Armada of the Free Worlds even accompanied IDC forces on patrols of Titan, and Armada attaches were allowed to study IDC strategy in hopes of their coming to the aid of the ICA in its peacekeeping mission there. But both sides’ leaders had other plans, ones which did not include cooperation.
The Alliance Central Committee sought to control the Solar frontier, and saw themselves as the rightful leaders of colonial peoples in the outer system. The ICA Council, on the other hand, was wary of threats to their control of outer system resources, especially with the Mars-Titan War still looming large in their minds.
As a result of this mutual mistrust, the two sides drew their plans against one another even as their foot soldiers patrolled the streets of Samarkand and New Heraklion. In 2341, the Alliance came down in favor of the Democratic Republic of Titan as the new legitimate government there, while the ICA retained staunch support of the old Commonwealth. Thus the stage was set for the final phase of the First Titan Civil War.
Not a Bang but a Whimper (2341-2343):
In 2341, the Jovian Civil War came to an end as the Alliance evicted the Draconists from their traditional stronghold on Callisto. In truth they would continue to support the Draconists financially for another twenty years, as their leaders saw them as a convenient bulwark against ICA imperialism.
But 2341 was also the beginning of the end for a unified Titan. As the civil war entered its seventh year, the ICA had long since turned the tide. By 2341 there were still about 2 million coalition military personnel on Titan, compared to less than 900 thousand for the Draconists. To make matters worse for the DRAC, the UPP left the fight in April 2341 after negotiating a deal with the Alliance that would grant their leaders clemency in exchange for a cessation of hostilities. The Draconists were running out of time, and they knew it.
In January 2342, the Draconists initiated Plan Omega, an evacuation from major population centers on Titan. Much as they had done the previous year when told to vacate Callisto by the Alliance, they withdrew from their strongholds and disappeared into the hinterlands. Unlike on Callisto, however, they did not simply vanish from Titan. Instead they went to ground and established hideaways in the badlands.
Throughout 2342, AEROCOM leaders debated how best to address this change in the war. Through August, they continued hunting down and eliminating DRAC forces in the field, but the war was effectively over. All that remained was for the treaties officially declaring its end to be signed by those involved.
Although the Draconists publicly refused to negotiate with the ICA, privately they sent envoys to ask for peace talks. After months of inconclusive arguments, the Treaty of New Heraklion brought a ceasefire on 19 November 2342. With the Samarkand Accords the following May, the war ended officially and Titan was partitioned between the Alliance-affiliated Democratic Republic of Titan (“West Titan”) and the ICA-aligned remains of the Commonwealth of Titan (now “East Titan”) taking charge of the ruins. After more than eight years and nearly 2 million deaths, the First Titan Civil War was over.
The End is the Beginning (2343-2348):
Unfortunately for the long-suffering citizens of Titan, their troubles were not over. Over the next few years, they endured a period of unrest called the Reconciliation, wherein millions of civilians were forced to emigrate across Titan to escape reprisals or in search of better living conditions under a different government. Many of them left behind homes which had been in their families for generations.
Now, six years after the First Titan Civil War came to an end, Titan is at war with itself again. The new conflict is in many ways a reopening of old wounds, as Draconist cells which ran to the hills in 2342 have re-emerged to fight the ICA while the Alliance funnels funds and weapons to them under the table. The Draconist Wars show no sign of slowing, and as more and more young spacers are shipped off to fight the Draconist threat, it seems truer than ever that war is a disease for which there is no cure.
In the end, Titan remains a place of haunting mystery, shrouded as much in danger as in the thick methane haze which clouds its primordial surface. As generational violence grips this vast world, and the misbegotten children of Sol continue their aimless struggle over the resources in their realm, it is apparent that the only mysteries Titan will retain for itself are the ones humans are not willing to kill and die for.
More to come, when it's ready...
Transmission Ends\\\
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