The Sixth Kharak-Ghar War (3360-3368) was the last and largest conflict between the Reunification Alliance and the Kharak-Ghar Republic of Militant Citizens. It ended in 3368 with the capture of Ghar by Alliance forces as part of Operation Snakebite, though clean-up operations - most notably the extensive efforts to shut down the Torture Worlds - would continue for decades after.
The five years of the war are by some margin the deadliest period in Alliance history, approaching 30 million killed as a direct or indirect consequence of the conflict. Most of these fatalities occurred during the initial Kharak-Ghar advance, with the Operation Fulcrum and Operation Snakebite constituting the other spikes - though both were decisive in enabling Alliance victory.
Kharak-Ghar fatalities are harder to determine, as they do not record non-citizen population numbers and many of their records were in any case destroyed. Rough estimates place the figure around 30-40% greater than the Alliance equivalent, mostly due to poor tactics late in the war and inferior after-action medical care.
Background - Causes of War
Enmity between the Alliance and the Kharak-Ghar was longstanding, and can be traced all the way back to the destruction of the pathfinder ship Malmo by Kharak-Ghar naval forces in 3011. This provoked the First Kharak-Ghar War (3012-3028) a long but often low-intensity conflict between two new powers making their first forays into the wider interstellar sphere. Following the end of the war, the Alliance was invited to join the League of Interstellar Civilisations (LIC) in an attempt to smooth things over.
While this reduced the Kharak-Ghar’s contempt for the Alliance somewhat, tensions remained high. Border skirmishes were a regular occurrence throughout the ensuing period, but an uneasy peace was largely maintained until the Second Kharak-Ghar War (3189-3190). This opened the door to a resumption of open authority that persisted even after the shooting stopped, and three other wars were fought between the two powers over the course of the 33rd Century. Still, the peace that followed the Fifth Kharak-Ghar War was largely expected to last, normalising relations and establishing a demilitarised frontier zone between the two civilisations, both by this point ascendent in wider interstellar politics.
As such, despite a long history of conflict, the Kharak-Ghar attack in 3360 came as something as a surprise, both to the Alliance and the wider interstellar community. Tensions had undeniably been on the rise, with the new Gauthen regime at the top of the Republic taking a more hardline anti-Alliance stance but open war was a sudden and unexpected escalation.
There are several core reasons for the Kharak-Ghar Republic’s newfound aggression:
1- Population exodus towards greater freedom and living conditions in Alliance space was reaching the point of causing economic damage
2- A new regime looking to assert and improve legitimacy
3- Religious reasons; 3360 was an important year in the War-Canon and needed to be marked by a suitably major event
4- Growing religious control over the government; War Chaplains were always keen to ‘punish’ the Alliance for perceived past slights
5- A desire to reassert superiority in the face of the Alliance’s growing military reputation
6- The Republic’s inherently expansionist outlook and simultaneously poor ability to colonise totally uninhabited worlds
7- A belief that after years of low-intensity fighting only, the Alliance would not have the stomach for a mass war at interstellar scale
Prelude to War
The road to war began with Iridel Gauthen’s election as Chancellor in 3356. He was a hardline militarist who built his platform on anti-Alliance sentiment, traditional militant-religious values, and an any-means-necessary approach to stopping the War Weary Emigration Wave - a massive flow of people out of the Republic and into Alliance space. It was especially frustrating since earning Alliance citizenship as an immigrant was often achieved via military service, and it was galling to the Republic to see its people, and should-be future soldiers, in Alliance Combat Forces uniform.
Gauthen almost immediately instituted a massive programme of military build-up. Most of this funding went to the Kharak-Ghar Starside War Council in the hopes of giving it a chance to at least compete with the dominance of the Reunification Navy, but new equipment and recruitment programmes were also provided to the Atmospheric War Council. The Alliance responded with a smaller-scale response that primarily consisted of activating mothballed units, calling up the first semi-active wave of ACF Interplanetary Reserves (ACFIR) and surging additional naval battlegroups into the frontier region.
Things continued in this vein for some time, with Kharak-Ghar forces conducting mass exercises just outside, and occasionally encroaching on, the demilitarised border zone. The LIC’s enforcement units failed to police the border effectively and the DMZ had lost meaning by 3358. The Alliance conducted studies into the loyalty of its new Kharak-Ghar troops, which made up a significant proportion of ACF manpower in the region, and was satisfied with the results, moving the local units to wartime readiness and alerting local Planetary Auxiliary branches to make their own preparations.
In late 3358 several skirmishes broke out on the edges of the DMZ between RN and SWC naval units. A Kharak-Ghar special forces raid on Torrens was thwarted by an Alliance Nemesis Team shortly after, concluding this brief surge of violence.
In 3359 recruitment criteria for ACF were relaxed from a minimum age of 50 years to a minimum of 25 years. Later that same year, the Kharak-Ghar called up their entire ready reserve and enacted mass conscription of all those still waiting for a service rotation. Forces massed on the border. The Alliance surged 5th Battlefleet into the region as a deterrent and conducted several naval exercises with local units.
On the last day of 3359, the Kharak-Ghar Republic Otherlight beamed a list of demands to the Alliance Central Authority. The ACA immediately announced a move to wartime readiness across the Alliance, with both the RN and ACF scrambling to mass their forces in anticipation of the outbreak of open conflict.
The First Invasion Wave
On the first day of 3360, an enormous wave of Kharak-Ghar forces, comprising 27 War Clusters, began advancing across the DMZ. Local Alliance forces realised their inadequacy - even the Republic’s mass exercises had involved only a fraction of this force - and began evacuating the first line of worlds. The second line of frontier worlds was prepared for a defensive delaying action, with ACF and Auxiliary forces digging in and naval assets concealing themselves in-system for hit-and-run attacks. The two RN battlefleets in the region retreated to a strategic reserve with the intent of picking one thrust to meet once the attack began to resolve itself.
The invasion wave landed a week later, storming across the first line of almost-evacuated worlds in a matter of days. Nearly 300,000 civilians were left to die as the Alliance made its final retreat, at last forced to leave by the executive order of Hawk Argill. The second line of frontier worlds had similarly little hope and civilian populations were hastily evacuated as the first major series of battles began. The Alliance failed to significantly delay the advance, and the retreat continued.
The Alliance thus waged a campaign of gradual withdrawal, stopping at regular intervals to bloody the invaders’ nose, then pulling back before they could be totally overrun. This achieved many modest successes, but Alliance forces in-theatre were too badly outnumbered to make a really meaningful difference and for every point the advance was held up, there were a dozen other occasions it swept on unopposed.
By 3362, the Kharak-Ghar had advanced nearly 100 light years into Alliance space and seized some 40 worlds, though admittedly many of these had only ever been small outposts. They were running nearly a year ahead of their projected schedule and still largely in good order, their record marred only by a handful of notable but ultimately unimpactful defeats.
The Second Invasion Wave
In the fifth month of 3362, the Kharak-Ghar invasion force was substantially reinforced by the arrival of a new wave of fresh troops, including a further 31 full War Clusters. A month later, they restarted their advance, crashing down nine worlds simultaneously as they looked to expand and broaden their advance, perhaps a little drunk with success.
However, by this point the Alliance had also received meaningful reinforcements and its commanders felt they were at last capable of mounting a significant counteroffensive. Seeking to cripple the Kharak-Ghar’s strategic mobility, they drew up Operation Fulcrum. This plan, masterminded by then-Admiral Lycen Dal, aimed to force a confrontation at an area of maximum concentration and thereby achieve a decisive, if likely costly, victory.
This led to the gruelling sixteen-month Arven Campaign, culminating in the largest space battle in history - the Arven Deep-Space Action. In the course of this action, the RN managed to strike a decisive blow to Kharak-Ghar naval power, while ACF destroyed a significant chunk of land forces and killed War Chaplain Commoroh, depriving their foe of an important leader and dealing a crushing blow to morale.
The rest of the Second Invasion Wave, crippled by the decisive defeat at Arven, was rolled up and thrown back across the front. By 3365, the Alliance was in a position to launch a major counter-offensive into the territory seized by the First Invasion Wave, now held only by second-line forces and what little remained of the Second Wave’s strategic reserve.
The Third Invasion Wave
Given their suddenly perilous situation, the Kharak-Ghar rushed the Third Invasion Wave forwards, seeing it arrive in-theatre in early 3366, well before it was truly ready. Faced with an overwhelming advance by Alliance forces jubilant with victory, it had little prospect for offensive action. The Alliance had shorter supply lines, better troops, and a local mass advantage, and began retaking much of the territory it had lost. Still, the Third Invasion Wave had committed another 14 War Clusters - coupled with the remnants of the first two waves that still constituted a very significant concentration of military strength - and going was slow. The Kharak-Ghar now adopted the defensive tactics of the Alliance in the first wave of the war, and were in fact better-placed to make good use of them.
The Alliance therefore found themselves staring down a long, grinding, attritional campaign with no hope of a quick victory. There were also signs that the next invasion wave, then being prepared, would be much larger, perhaps as large as the first two, and would therefore have the potential to muster an effective counter-attack of its own. Alliance commanders therefore felt the war was far from over, and victory seemed far from certain despite their recent success.
This led to the decision to take the Great Gamble, and the preparation of Operation Snakebite.
The Fourth Invasion Wave and Operation Snakebite - Prelude
The Fourth Invasion Wave was set to be enormous. The Kharak-Ghar intended to throw everything they had at it, with the intent of knocking the Alliance back to the First Invasion Wave maximum expansion line. It was then hoped that subsequent, smaller waves of reinforcements could defend this line until an armistice could be agreed - the reality check of Operation Fulcrum had reminded the Republic that total victory in a war of this scale would take decades, and they were now happy to settle for their substantial initial gains.
Consequently, a force of 45 War Clusters was assembled and prepared for movement to the front. This necessitated a broadening of recruitment criteria and a massive new training programme. It was an enormous endeavour, but one that carried with it the promise of victory - the Alliance would have to return to a defensive stance in the face of the overwhelming force about to be applied across the front.
Alliance commanders were worried, but hope was offered from an unlikely source. Loeh Kruval was a junior ACF intelligence officer, and a Kharak-Ghar, previously native to the planetary capital. She was working as part of an intelligence liaison team attached to RN SIGINT operations, and had spent the last three months serving aboard RAS Skylark, an electronic warfare frigate conducted signal-interception operations behind the frontline. As part of this role, she and several colleagues had managed to map out Kharak-Ghar interior force dispositions. These were largely ignored in favour of reports on matters closer to the frontline, but the young captain, hastily promoted under wartime conditions, saw an enormous opportunity and became determined to make her case.
Efforts to achieve an audience with the commanders proved fruitless, but by spoofing an intelligence report she managed to meet with Hawk Argill. Three days later, she was presenting her findings to the Alliance war planners. Some were non-plussed, but Admiral Dal championed the idea, and the reputation he had earned from the success of Fulcrum let him force it through. Effectively, Kruval had noticed that the Kharak-Ghar home system had been left remarkably lightly defended. While there were still significant land forces stationed there, the naval screens were incredibly light and reinforcements would be a long time coming.
Ordinarily, getting a planetary invasion force deep into the interior unseen would be impossible, but the SWC was stretched impossibly thin due to its losses at Fulcrum and needed almost everything it had to transport the Fourth Invasion Wave. Hence Dal felt that an Alliance force could, by a circuitous route, appear in the Lhuthon system unnoticed, and thereby end the war.
It would be by no means easy. Even if the invasion force could arrive unseen, they would have to, with limited forces and no resupply, seize both Ghar and its sister world Mahlkon before reinforcements could arrive. But, with the spacelift potential of the RN, it was possible. ACF was asked to begin preparing its troops immediately, and consequently formed the Special Assault Army Groups, collections of their most elite forces that would spearhead the invasion. The cross-service planning was all drawn together into Operation Snakebite, scheduled to go begin in late 3366. This would see the invasion start in early 3367, after the Fourth Invasion Wave had already hit, putting enormous pressure on the uninvolved Alliance forces to hold the front against a significantly superior force. Reserves were poured in.
The Fourth Invasion Wave and Operation Snakebite - Towards War’s End
The Kharak-Ghar always had a penchant for flair, and on the first day of 3367 the Fourth Invasion Wave began its assault on Alliance forces. Initial planetfall was made on three worlds, producing some of the bloodiest campaigns of the war as largely second-string Alliance formations fought desperately to stem the tide. All the while, they were sustained by the knowledge that Snakebite would end the war.
Two months later, five Alliance battlefleets and an enormous transport contingent slipped into the Lhuthon system. The scattered light naval units still in system scrambled to mount a response, but the destroyer screens blew them away and the land invasions began just three days later. 23rd Special Assault Army Group made planetfall on Mahlkon on the 5th of the Third, while 1st Special Assault Army Group commenced its attack on Ghar on the 7th. 12th Special Assault Army Group followed them down two days later.
The fighting in Lhuthon was every bit as vicious as that back against the Fourth Wave. The casualties suffered during the initial landings were lower than projected, but it was afterwards that the Alliance started to get bogged down, particularly on Ghar. With Maklkon falling more quickly, several formations were pulled out and redropped on Ghar. Most famous of these was [[XVIII [Assault] Corps]], which was dropped into the snowy forests of Bulpan to relieve the scattered light infantry units desperately trying to hold the sector. The resulting siege would be the subject of dozens of books written after the war, usually praising the heroism of the Alliance light forces in fending off Republican Guard armour until XXX Corps finally relieved them 43 days later.
However, the biggest struggle faced by Snakebite was trying to actually force an end to the war. The best way to do this according to intelligence was to capture the Chaplaincy Archives and leak sensitive information contained within to the public. It was hoped this would erode war support and force a change of regime. With time running out, the Alliance prepared Operation Viper, a daring drive towards High Ghar that would desperately overstretch supply lines. The new operation would begin in the 9th Month of 3367.
Operation Viper - Winning the War
Viper got off to a bad start, with the infamous Assault on Hill 42, but the armoured drive pushed through to the gates of the capital and the combined airborne and ground assault stunned the beleaguered defenders into submission.
Shortly after, a Nightwatch team led by Hawk Argill and backed up by airborne infantry stormed the archives building. After a series of vicious close-ranged firefights against religious fanatics, Argill’s team started the data broadcast. It took another five months for the fighting to wind down, as while the Gauthen regime fell quickly, it took some time for the provisional government to agree to end the war and negotiate surrender terms.
The fighting in this period was less intense than that seen for the majority of the war, but it was still vicious enough for those on the front lines and the Special Assault Army Groups were critically low on fighting strength when they were finally relieved by Operation Salvation.
Aftermath
The final surrender terms were largely imposed by the Alliance. After Gauthen’s government collapsed Kharak-Ghar forces lost their central coordination and Alliance troops were generally in strong positions across the board. These terms were formalised in the Treaty of Arven, symbolically chosen as the turning point of the war.
Treaty of Arven Main Terms
1- The return to Alliance possession all territory occupied by Republican forces including all terrestrial bodies and stations occupied in the DMZ during the war.
2- The creation of a new border that gave the Alliance sole control over the DMZ.
3- The right for the Alliance to deploy military units in the DMZ until such a point as relations are fully normalised.
4- The right for Alliance forces to investigate, pacify, and assert control over the so-called Torture Worlds.
5- The removal of all planetary assault spacelift from the Kharak-Ghar inventory, including fleet carriers and lineships equipped in this capacity.
6- Submission of the Republic’s political and military systems to LIC inspections annually and at the request of the Alliance Central Authority, with a maximum of two additional inspections permitted per annum.
7- An agreement of understanding that the Republic should never again attempt aggressive and expansionist military action; a concurrent understanding that any war of aggression undertaken by the Republic against any civilisation will be met by Alliance military action per the terms of the Argill Protocol.
Alliance-Kharak-Ghar relations remained complex after the war. The Kharak-Ghar were not exactly crippled by the terms of the surrender, but their morale and war support was undeniably much reduced. Still, they had undeniably been embarrassed by (in their view) an inferior civilisation, and this naturally provoked a great deal of resentment, particularly among the hardcore believers and former military types.
The Alliance no longer felt threatened by a further invasion - a weak government and disillusioned youth meant the Republic had little capacity for that - but they were undeniably still hated, perhaps more than ever. However, many young Kharak-Ghar were heavily affected by the Argill broadcasts and wanted nothing to do with what they viewed as a corrupt and broken society. As such, Gauthen’s attempt to bring society together with a grand victory against the old enemy backfired in spectacular fashion, instead producing a society even more fractured and divided than before. This divide was primarily along age lines, though hot-blooded youths were also susceptible to pro-Chaplaincy propaganda, so that is hardly a concrete rule.
Emigration from the Republic to the Alliance remained high. There was initially a degree of hostility to this, but an Alliance education, a highly multicultural society and the massive publicity given to Loeh Kruval’s role in the war soon mitigated this. The Alliance had its victory, but the cost it paid in lives was far too high, and the trauma of the Torture World investigations was set to continue for years to come.
Legacy and Impacts