Land of Promise (Counter-Caliphate Chronicles Series Book 1)

by James Wesley, Rawles

  - Gideon Di-Nur, a former Israeli Defense Force mortarman from Eilat, Israel, who was an instructor with Israeli Krav Maga Association (IKM). He became the mentor and lead instructor for Krav Maga training for the entire Ilemi Republic Defense Force. He was also the militia’s first mortar trainer.

  - Elise Van der Merwe, a trauma nurse and former SANDF medic from Windhoek, Namibia. She developed the first training curriculum for IRDF medics.

  - Wayne Healey, a cattle brand inspector from Woodward, Oklahoma.

  - Andry Boto, a shoe salesman from Madagascar, who volunteered to start a Boots For IRDF fundraising campaign to provide boots and uniforms for low-income IRDF recruits.

  - Nate Raymond, a gunsmith, gun salesman, and firearms trainer from Arizona. He created a standardized training method soon adopted by the IDF for teaching novice shooters how to best shoot Glock.

  - Sister Sylvia, a member of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth (CSFN). While serving at the St. Frances of Rome Convent in Tyler, Texas, she read about the Ilemi Republic. The concept captivated her. She was sad to learn there was no organized Catholic Church presence in the Ilemi Republic. But rather than encouraging Roman Catholics to emigrate to the Ilemi Republic, she saw her role as a helper in shepherding persecuted Catholics through the Ilemi, en route to extant Roman Catholic refuge nations. Her organization was called Catholic Refugees in Transit (CRIT). Working with an endowment from The Heston Foundation, she helped fellow Roman Catholics make their way to the Philippines, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chile. Sister Sylvia was a 66-year old dynamo. With just one assistant, a native Ilemi woman who had been raised at the Red Cross compound in Liwan, she spent countless hours lining up visas and jobs for CRIT refugees. The pair kept meticulous accounting records to assure that every Silmo provided by The Heston Foundation went to transition lodging, meals, and travel.

  Heston’s foundation also funded Eastern Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Coptic Syriac, and Malankara Indian Orthodox church emigration to Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and to several other less hostile host nations. Many Eastern Orthodox went to the United States, settling particularly in Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. This also generated goodwill among a separate diaspora of Christian sects which would prove strategically valuable in the years to come.

  From the very beginning, the philosophy of the IRDF was for its units to be a truly decentralized citizen militia and, keeping with the concept, for most militia equipment to remain privately owned and stationed at private homes. APCs, helicopter, tanks, and artillery pieces were often stored on site at greenhouse farms and ranches in dedicated buildings and, just as often, tucked into barns. Crews for vehicles and large weapons systems were recruited geo-locally, just as fire truck and paramedic crews for the rural volunteer fire departments had traditionally been recruited in the U.S. and Canada. Although the options were more plentiful in Solus Christus, the norm was that if an APC graced your neighborhood, your sons and daughters would train as mechanized infantry.

  Many wealthy families bought large weapons systems, including helicopters, drones, and self-propelled artillery. Although the notion was downplayed, some considered such a purchase as much a status symbol as the 20th century’s Lear Jet or Rolls Royce. Middle class families tended to buy APCs and light howitzers. Poor families usually pooled their resources to buy mortars and machineguns. Surplus 81mm and 4.2” mortar tubes, baseplates, leg assemblies, and sights were sold by Israel at scrap metal prices, and the IRDF Central Command provided inert mortar shells free of charge for training purposes, as well as high explosive and parachute flare mortar shells as war reserves to be stockpiled in sealed crates by individual owners.

  Family settlement patterns led to some inconsistencies -- such as a large number of helicopters being located on the Mtume Plateau and a cluster of wheeled APCs in the Notch Valley where new cattle ranches were predominantly established by Afrikaners. There, the small market community of Midvale had more than a dozen APCs ranging in size from small Mamba and Nyala scout vehicles to 18-ton RG-35 six-wheeled APCs. The IRDF established depot maintenance facilities throughout the country leased or granted from settlers.

  The Loitanet River Valley, commonly called the Notch Valley, between the Lorionetom Mountains (“Eastern Range”) and the Lokwanamoru Mountains (“Southwestern Range”) was roughly seven miles wide and stretched 16 miles south to the Kenyan border; to the northwest were the Kadingetom Mountains (locally called “The Northwestern Range”). The valley was once largely desolate, but the advent of water bores, photovoltaics, and earth graders turned much of the valley into irrigated hay fields and farmland.

  The region west of the Lokwanamoru Mountains had very poor pasture and was quite hot and fairly barren of trees. Much like Israel’s southern Negev Desert, a large portion of the western third of the Ilemi Triangle became devoted to military training, with artillery ranges, bombing and aerial gunnery ranges, and APC maneuver areas.

  The Ilemi Republic was a melting pot for cultural artifacts from around the world: The greeting “Howzit,” Braai parties, Bobotie (a sweet curried ground-meat dish), and Roibos tea from South Africa; Hummus, pita bread, peanut butter puffs, and halva from Israel; handshakes with simultaneous shoulder taps from South Sudan; the greeting “Karibuni” and Chapattis wheat from Kenya; Three Gun shooting matches, voluminous home emergency food storage supplies, cowboy hats, and southwestern chili from The United States.

  Rick found that the developing Ilemi culture was in many ways a throwback to what you’d find at a Texas ranch before the 1960s. There was plenty of hospitality and copious quantities of both barbequed beef and iced tea. Amusements for guests usually involved guns or horses, or both, since shooting from horseback gained considerable popularity. The standing joke was that the perfect horse for the Ilemi would be “as surefooted as a goat, as accustomed to the heat as an Arabian stallion, and as deaf as a post.”

  A typical dinner party at an Ilemi ranch started in the late afternoon with some target shooting, went on until well after dark, and ended with a stroll for the gentlemen after the invitation, “Let’s go see Africa.” The ladies were not invited, because this typically involved watering some shrubbery. Enjoying a cigar and a single shot of some aperitif were considered acceptable at many private residences, but either of these would be frowned upon at any public establishment.

  Large cattle ranches predominated in the more remote ends of the Ilemi. Because of difficult road conditions, many of these ranches were isolated for almost the entire rainy season. Most ranchers constructed a landing strip at least 500 feet long so that they could at least get emergency transport, via STOL aircraft.

  Many of the Israeli aquaculture- and hydrogen-farmers settled along the Big Wadi that bisected the Kokuro Road 6.5 kilometers south of Liwan. Even though it was hotter at this elevation, they preferred this valley to the Mtume Plateau because it was truly level ground, which was crucial for aquaculture. This settlement became known as New Paran, named after Kibbutz of Paran in a valley in southern Israel. An angry split between the Masorati and Meshichim in Paran prompted a group of 60 Messianics to make Yoridah to the Ilemi.

  Meanwhile, the vacant valley with a level floor that been the site of the village of Kaiemothia was resettled by Christian refugees from East Timor, and the village was renamed New Dilli. There, aquaculture became so popular that New Dilli was sometimes jokingly referred to as “East Tilapia.”

  The abandoned village of Kamachia also had new residents, predominantly Christians who had fled Jordan and Lebanon. Many of them took up cattle and goat ranching, or meat processing. A cooperative company there prepared and packaged jerky in a wide variety of flavors, packaged it in retort pouches, and exported it worldwide.

  Another new cattle-raising town was called Entok -- a shortened version of the name Naitatitok, the original name of the village. This village site was abandoned at the turn of the 21st century. The new residents in and around Entok were mostly from Iraq and Syria. T
heir cattle was typically driven 23 kilometers, either on the hoof or in trucks, for processing in Kamachia.

  A small enclave of Pakistani Christian refugees formed at the southern end of the Notch Valley on the Lotorobu Wadi, five kilometers northwest of where the Kibish Road crossed the southern border of the Ilemi. There they established greenhouse farms on the Israeli model. The greenhouse kits were sourced in Israel and paid for with funds raised worldwide in a campaign organized by Christian Rescue, the successor organization to a group with a similar name formed much earlier in the century. The well bores were funded by a grant from Harry Heston’s foundation.

  Harry Heston also personally sponsored the relocation and settlement of dozens of families when he heard of any pressing need or particular plight. These were mostly Kurdish, Syrian, and Iraqi Christians. Their horror stories of degradation, humiliation, forced separation, torture, death, and mayhem were compelling. Many young women told tearful stories of forced marriages and sex slavery in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond. But most of their young women were taken and never seen again, their fate unknown.

  One refugee who did providentially escape was Ceylan Hiyat, a 24-year-old Kurdish Christian from Northwestern Iraq, a territory that had changed hands seven times in the past 22 years. She was educated for nine years by Christian missionaries from Indiana, and she spoke a cultured English. In her background interview with the Passport & Immigration Office, Ceylan said, “I was taken by the WIS police when I was 17 years old. One of their matrons put lipstick and eye makeup on me, and then they took me into the abd auction. I was paraded around and then surrounded by the leering bidders -- men who ranged from their 20s to their 80s. The bidding was in WIS dinars. I didn’t hear the final price, but they seemed excited and the bidding went on for several minutes. Then there was shouting and commotion, I was handcuffed again, and a bag went over my head.

  “I was driven to a house far from the city. The man who bought me was about 50 years old. He lived alone in a rented house. He had many missing teeth and foul breath. He kept calling me his zawjah -- his wife. He also called me kuffar, which means infidel. He wasted no time dragging me to his bedroom, where he removed one of my handcuffs and shackled me to a four-meter chain that was set in the bedroom floor. This left enough slack for me to reach the toilet and the shower. That is where I spent the next three months -- three months of a hellish torture. I was raped and beaten so many times that I soon lost count. I bided my time, waiting until one night when both his knife and his ring of keys were within reach. I stabbed him in the throat while he was asleep.

  “The only things I took with me were his knife, a satchel of food, and two bottles of water. I hadn’t learned how to drive, but I did know how to use a GPS, and I had watched my father and brother drive -- they had explained the gear shift lever, the gas pedal, and the brake pedal. I learned how to drive that night. It was an old Mercedes with an automatic transmission and built like a tank. That was a good thing, since I had two collisions just getting the car onto the road. I drove south for three hours, praying all the way, following the GPS.

  “I knew that the roads all had guarded checkpoints at the border, so I chose a place where I thought I could drive down dry wadi. It was a miracle, but I made it three or four kilometers bouncing down this wadi until I could go no farther. The car was what you call ‘high center’ on boulder. I took the GPS out of its holder and started to walk. By dawn, I was at the frontier, and another two hours later, I saw a PKK patrol pickup and waved at them to stop.

  “All of my close family was dead, so I joined the Yekîneyên Parastina Jinê -- the YPJ, the all-female Women’s Protection Units armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syrian Kurdistan. It is not so communistic or communalistic as the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistani -- the PKK Kurdish Worker’s Party -- but there is still a communist flavor to the organization. Not a deep shade of red, just sort of pink. I think that some of the leadership is still living in the 1960s. I left because I disliked their lingering communist outlook, and the fact that I had to hide my Christian faith. But I did get some good firearms and communications training. I also slayed five WIS soldiers, so my time with the YPJ was time well-spent.”

  Ceylan Hiyat became an enthusiastic IRDF trainee; she was elected to Corporal within two years and Sergeant just before being selected for the fulltime Cadre. She became one of the Drill Sergeant NCOs for the female trainees, as well a leader for a barracks room Bible study.

  Chapter 21: Speaking Sikorsky

  “Five and twenty ponies

  Trotting through the dark--

  Brandy for the Parson, ‘Baccy for the Clerk;

  Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,

  And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!” -- Rudyard Kipling

  Solus Christus, The Ilemi Republic -- July, Four Years After Declaration of the Caliphate

  There were just a few helicopters in the country in the first year after independence, but a substantial number began to arrive in the second year. These were mostly Sikorsky UH-60, HH-60, and S-70 variants. Even the “Q Model” UH-60Q was considered obsolete, since most countries had adopted S/H-90 and S/H-100 series helicopters. These later Sikorskys, nicknamed Speedhawks, were “ring tail” models that used a third engine to power a vectored thrust ducted propeller (VTDP), making them capable of achieving 195 knots in level flight at low altitude.

  The mothballed Sikorsky helicopters arrived as ship’s cargo in Mombasa with their rotors removed. Most of them came wrapped in the same white shrink plastic that was used for boat storage. The Sikorskys had been sourced in Israel, Korea, and the Philippines. Because of the pending UN arms embargo, all purchase paperwork had to specify “aeromedical evacuation and disaster relief helicopters” although most of them had been originally built as military mission UH-60s and MH-60s. By the end of the second year of independence, there were 17 Sikorskys in the country, but only three qualified pilots for them. So 15 of the helicopters sat cocooned in white plastic in a row at one end of the cavernous Isher Trading Company warehouse. Harry Heston considered these helicopters better than money in his bank.

  At Colonel Kamwi’s request, Rick and Meital Akins did a special recruiting tour in the United States and the Philippines. Their journey began with a pleasant jaunt to Juba on a chartered flight with a local private pilot, who was chit-chatting about his son’s experiences in IRDF Basic Combat Training. From there, they had stops in London, New York, Memphis, Tennessee, and finally Mobile, Alabama. In all, their journey took 43 hours, including a one-night layover at a noisy airport hotel in New York. Coming back to the United States was a series of culture shocks for Rick. He kept muttering, “What happened to my America?”

  Clearing customs in the international terminal at JFK Airport was agonizingly slow. Unlike European airports, where anyone with a diplomatic passport breezed through, at JFK there were multiple “gatekeepers” that had to be appeased. The Akinses got in the marked Diplomatic & Differently-Abled line. The smell of marijuana smoke was wafting through the air, as the airport’s smoking ban made an exception for “licensed medical marijuana.” Ahead of them in line was an Afghan woman in a head-to-toe blue burqa with her male escort. With the aid of an Arabic interpreter, they spent 15 minutes arguing with the Customs clerk that the woman was Differently-Abled by virtue of her religion and hence would be exempt from any searches. After this couple was finally shuttled off to a Diversity Arbitration Office, Rick and Meital reached the head of the queue.

  The clerk looked at their diplomatic passports and began shaking her head, muttering, “Not on our Diplomatic List.”

  Preemptively, Rick pulled out the notarized letter that he had received from the U.S. State Department for Ilemi Ambassadors authorizing diplomatic entry visits of up to 180 days in the United States and Territories even through the new nation did not have full recognition by the United States. He handed her the letter, saying, “Here is an authorization letter from the State Departme
nt.”

  The clerk spent two full minutes reading and re-reading the letter, squinting at times. Then she looked up and said, “I’m gonna have to get this approved by my supervisor.”

  She returned with her supervisor a few minutes later. After holding up the letter to a black light to see its State Department watermark, he put on a smarmy smile and intoned, “Sir, this letter is what we need, but we can’t accept it unless it has a JFKA stamp. All variances to standard procedure need to be documented and get the JFKA stamp. You’ll need to go get in Line 3, and get this stamped.”

  This sounded odd to Rick, so he asked, “I’m sorry, but I’m a bit confused. Do the clerks at the Line 3 desk work for a different department?”

  “Oh no, they work in my department, and they report to me.”

  “Can’t you stamp it?”

  “That’s not our procedure. Line 3, please.”

  The supervisor dismissively looked over Rick’s shoulder and shouted, “Next!”

  They then spent 23 minutes waiting in Line 3. Rick handed the clerk their passports and the letter and said, “I was told that this letter needed a ‘JFKA’ stamp.”

  The clerk shrugged and said, “Oh, sure. It’s on State Department letterhead.” The clerk fished through his drawer, pulled out a self-inking stamp, and quickly stamped the top of the letter. He said, “Sorry, but you’ll need to get back in the Diplomatic line.”

  The Akinses wheeled their bags back to the other queue to find there were now seven arriving passengers ahead of them. This time their wait was only five minutes, and they were thankful that the same clerk was there. She again examined their passports, re-read the letter, and then said, “You’ll have to wait a minute while I get this letter scanned into our system.”