The campfire crackled, casting shadows on the grim and angry faces of the warriors around.
Naxin and the mbers of the "Sand Fox" squad listened with somber faces.
Song Heping was expressionless, but his gaze was as cold as a blade.
"Taking Mosul was like injecting adrenaline into 1515!"
Samir's branch on the map frantically moved east, crossing Tikrit, Sinjar, Ramadi, Fallujah...
"They're ard to the teeth with seized Arican equipnt! Driving Humrs, with mounds of ammunition from governnt army warehouses, they spread like a black plague along the highway network, sweeping the entire northwest! Governnt army? Scattered like the wind! Routing for thousands of miles! Kurd people tried to resist in Sinjar, but 1515 was too cunning, too cruel, using suicide bomb trucks to pave the way and capturing civilians as human shields, prompting the Kurdish to preserve strength and abandon vast areas of Sinjar, leaving the Yazidis there..."
Samir's voice choked, eyes filled with bloodshot anguish, "… suffered catastrophic disaster! Massacres! Rape! Enslavent! n executed collectively like livestock! Won and children sold as goods! Sinjar Mountain… has beco hell on earth! Those images… coil around like a poison snake!"
He hamred the ground fiercely, sand splattering.
"We, the 'Liberation Army,' had allied with so tribal ard groups and remnants of the governnt army unwilling to surrender, trying to halt the black tide around Tikrit and Samara. We fought several tough battles, even ambushing one of their transport convoys on the outskirts of Tikrit, destroying several tanks. But..."
Samir shook his head despondently, pointing to the map at Baghdad's location, "It's just a drop in the ocean! The montum of 1515 is too fierce; they've already captured Ramadi and Fallujah, with the vanguard less than two hundred kiloters from Baghdad! Their forces keep snowballing..."
"Half a year ago, didn't I lead you to capture Mosul once?" Song Heping frowned, "Back then, you united several thousand forces. How did you lose Mosul again in just six months? Aren't their main forces currently in Siria?"
"That was half a year ago, now their forces are enough to simultaneously fight on two fronts in the northwest of Illiguo and Siria..."
Samir raised his head, his gaze sweeping over Song Heping, "Do you want to know why their montum is so fierce? First, they have money! They've seized oil fields and refineries near Mosul! They sell oil on the black market to the Turks, even... I suspect there's a more complex international hand behind the scenes! Trading oil for weapons, for US Dollars, sustaining their massive war machine!"
"Secondly, they have foreign aid! Continuous overseas support flowing in from all over the world! From Europe, North Africa, Central Asia, Chechnya! These thoroughly brainwashed lunatics fight with the ferocity of human bombs!"
"Third, and most deadly, they've exploited the cracks between various factions on this land. In the Sunni Sect-dominated Anbar Province, many tribes, even so people from Sadam's era, because of long-term oppression and exclusion by the Shiite-dominated Baghdad Governnt, seeing no hope, actually... actually regarded 1515 as 'liberators!' Thinking they would overthrow the 'infidel' governnt! What a monuntal irony and tragedy!"
Samir's branch drew an almost entire covering large circle on the map in Anbar Province's region, "Now, the whole western and northern Anbar Province, including key towns like Fallujah and Ramadi, have beco dens of 1515! Only so mountainous areas and desert edge zones near our side, along with so tribes and resistance forces like us who refuse to bow, still linger. But our situation..."
He smiled bitterly, gesturing at the surrounding desolate, desperate camp and the demoralized warriors, "You've seen it firsthand, hell is no more than this."
"Your current controlled area and troop strength?"
Song Heping asked in a deep voice.
"Controlled area?"
Samir laughed self-deprecatingly, "What can we still control? We're a group of ghosts struggling in the crevices. Mainly active in the northernmost Anbar Province, near the western Siria border, around the mountainous areas of Haditha, and along broken villages not yet fully devoured by the Euphrates River. Population? At most two thousand, scattered across dozens of outposts that could be wiped out at any mont. As for troop strength..."
He glanced around at the warriors in the camp, his eyes dim.
"On paper, there are over a thousand, but those who can hold a gun, who can fight, who truly count as combat power don't exceed eight hundred. Equipnt..."
He pointed at the scrap tal in the warriors' hands.
"You've seen it too, the best are just so old AKs, RPG-7s, a few falling apart PKMs, and a few battered pickups welded with machine guns. Ammunition? Blast through a few decent battles and it'll be gone! dicine? Bandages and painkillers are luxuries! 1515 knows we're here, chasing us like a cat catching a mouse. They have more people, better equipnt, and smart intelligence. We can only rely on traversing mountains, sniping sneakily, exchanging ti with lives! In the last two months, we've lost nearly two hundred brothers!"
He suddenly rolled up his sleeve, revealing a grotesque burn scar on his forearm, the edges tinged with dark red.
"On the outskirts of Haditha, last month, their mortars rained down... if it weren't for a few brothers risking their lives to drag out..."
He lowered his sleeve, his voice so faint it could almost be carried away by the wind.
"What about intelligence?" Naxin interjected, brows furrowed.
User Comments
0 comments from readers