provided protective air cover to Algharb and Monaco.
For the moment all Yousef Jebouz could do was put out desperate calls to Medina Hurriya as armoured units of the Nation’s Army entered Avignon, more than one hundred armoured personnel carriers, sixty tanks and four thousand soldiers encircled the walled city, their gun barrels swinging menacingly into position. Jebouz and his men desperately spoke though the links, calling diplomats around the world, appealing for help.
Sources inside Jebouz's office told Global Focus that he warned of a bloody battle between his forces and the Nation's army, hoping that prospect would prompt the international community to force the French to desist. He called the Brussels hotel room of Tony Burns, the U.S. special envoy to the Federation, and pleaded with him to inform the President and the US Administration to stop what was about to happen.
"It's an attack on our leader Hassan bin Ibrani personally," Jebouz cried. "They want to destroy him."
He was right. A communiqué issued by Boublil's department told Global Focus some hours latter that the assault on Avignon was in response to the unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of the Nation which had been no less than a call for revolt and insurrection in the SRZs, and for the terrorist bombing at the Bastille the previous day.
The Nation's ministry of defence spokesman explained that the objective of the incursion into Algharbi territory was to arrest Jebouz and to expel him from the Algharb to the Caliphate.
"We are obligated to remove Jebouz from the occupied region," Boublil said. "We cannot let him stay to organise terror and chaos."
The hard-liners in le Martel's government, considered the incursion as a warning, had they been able to choose they would have decided to settle the affair of Provence once and for all. For them the terror campaign orchestrated from Algharb and Hassan bin Ibrani's refusal or incapacity to stop it, was a staggering display of aggression. The last straw had been his incitation to the Zones to rise against le Martel's government. It was the signal for the start of the most dangerous confrontation that ordinary people on both sides of the border feared and from which it was impossible to escape.
Certain knew that it was just the start of le Martel's only acceptable solution, however, the moment was not yet ripe and the incursion was to serve as a warning. The acts of terrorists guided from bases in Occupied Provence were to stop; it was to be part of a softening up process. Step by step he would prepare world opinion for the final assault and the expulsion from the Nation's soil of the colonisers.
The tanks penetrated into the town, a few shots were fired, as the tanks were positioned before the walls of the City des Papes. Helicopters over flew the city firing warning missiles that fell harmlessly into the Rhône, it was unthinkable to touch the historic city, Jebouz was comforted with that knowledge.
Jebouz spoke with the Palace in Medina Hurriya and was instructed to sit still whilst the President appealed to the Federation and the world to intervene.
The scenes of a potential war in Algharb seemed to have a particularly stimulating impact in Brussels. After a long period of calm during which le Martel had pursued his policies of ethnic cleansing Algharb had become an unacceptable reality on the western Mediterranean shores of Europe. At last the scene was set for a new battle to cleanse Europe of its ills, for many le Martel was none other than the reincarnation of Henri de Navarre who would rid Europe of the invading Moors forever.
France was stronger and prosperous, the Caliphate was weak and Africa was prostrate. New technologies had transformed the economies of the industrialised nations, nations that had become lean with a fall off in their populations but strong by their technologies and a more equitable distribution of wealth. Countries that no longer depended on oil and imported energy where technology provided industry with the means to provide almost limitless goods and services to elite populations whose average age had risen giving them greater experience and new determination whilst providing their youth with the privileges of wealth and superior education.
Once again the position of Brussels would be to wait and see. Their diplomats informed Washington to caution the Caliphate and the Turkish Levant against any acts that would encourage Hassan bin Ibrani to resist France.
By Monday elite units of the Nation's armed forces had penetrated into the ancient city and the Palais des Papes was surrounded. Before storming the palace, the French blared over a loudspeaker to those inside, "Lay down your arms and come out." French officials told Global Focus that a highly specialised unit of commandos had led the room-to-room raid through the palace and that Jebouz's quarters were surrounded.
Within 24 hours, the French had arrested over one hundred wanted terrorists. Only a handful of senior aides and bodyguards remained with Jebouz twenty-four hours after the incursion.
With electricity cut, Jebouz was forced to rely on candles. He had little food, water or medical supplies.
"He won't be able to go to the toilet without us knowing about it," said a French army officer.
It was soon clear what the French had accomplished. Avignon was under French control and bin Ibrani could do nothing to change that.
The Caliphate and Istanbul endorsed a peace proposal by Arabia that, for the first time since the partition in France, offered le Martel normal relations with all Muslim states, in exchange for France's withdrawal from Algharb and its agreement that Muslim refugees be allowed to return to their homes in France.
Diplomats from Muslim states interviewed by global Focus accused le Martel of deliberately sabotaging the peace overture with his attack on Avignon. In an interview, the Caliph called le Martel's assault on Avignon "a brutal, despicable, savage, inhumane and cruel action." He continued, "The acts we are witnessing represent the views of a criminal who has blood on his hands," and he vowed, "The resistance to the occupation will continue."
The success of the deployment encouraged le Martel to advance his plans with the army repeating the same exercise in other border towns. By the end of the week French tanks had rolled into the suburbs of several border towns and began to prepare troops near the border for further action.
While the French had selected Avignon for its symbolism, the seat of the Catholic Church during two centuries, it was also because of the presence of Ibrani's minister responsible for the settlement of refugees, Jebouz. He was an Islamic militant who had provided help and assistance to resistance movements in France. It was a fact that Avignon was crawling with militants.
French intelligence sources said forces were hunting two key leaders of the UFMF Martyrs Brigades. Nasser Awwas, a founder of the group, is thought to have gone underground in Avignon, along with the Brigades' effective leader, Marwan Barghouti. Having judged Ibrani unwilling to arrest his own people, the French had decided to do the job for him.
It was the augur of yet another defeat to an embittered Islamic world, embittered by its own weaknesses and divisions, embittered by its loss of wealth and power as the principal supplier of the world’s almost unique form of liquid energy.
The Clodos
On the edge of le Martel’s ‘brave new world’ lived the hordes of Clodos, for the most part hidden from the eyes of the bourgeois living in their smart city centres far from the camps and districts in the zones infested by the new age travellers and their hangers on, the Drogo-alcolos.
Who were the unruly hordes of Clodos who squatted the public parks and railway stations? First they were Gallos, they were dregs of the Gallo-Europeans, the drop outs, the hardened rebels who never escaped their juvenile imaginations, the incompetent and the good-for-nothings with their fringe of composed the Drogo-alcolos and those on the edge of internment suffering from grave social problems and mental disorders.
Why did they exist in the authoritarian state of the Nation? It was simple that they were Gallo-Europeans. It was said that the Rase recruited its thugs from their ranks and used them to harass the non-Gallos, burning their homes and property when it suited the regime.
/> Others said that le Martel would look after them when the time came, shipping them out to some distant New Territory.
The exploding population of Africa spewing its desperate hungry people out towards Europe the only possible haven for the majority. A paradise where there was food, shelter, health care and benefits, it would have been crazy not to attempt to reach that land of milk and honey.
At the beginning of the century France counted amongst its population almost eight million persons of Arab extraction. The vast majority of who lived in the so-called cities, state housing projects that lay in the near suburbs of the big towns. Many of the cities had been built for the white working class French a few decades before; they had gardens, lawns, well-lit pedestrian areas and parking places. At the time they were built they were considered a luxury at a time when new housing was scarce and expensive.
Over the years most of the white working class moved on, the economy expanded and there were better jobs with more pay that raised their expectations, giving them the possibility to join the middle class and buy their own houses in the leafy suburbs that lay further out of the towns, or apartments in the bourgeois town centres.
The cities slowly filled with the new arrivals, Settlers from North Africa and then