Everything old is new again...

Given current events, I thought I would point people to my scenario Kurdish Way.

In 1946, one of the early proxy battles of the Cold War took place in Northwestern Iran between the Kurdish People's Republic and the US backed Pahlavi Imperial Regime of Iran (nee Persia.)


Here is the well-laid out View from the Trenches version of the scenario.

It was a double betrayal, with the US supplying and training the Iranian military--largely with old Lend-Lease stocks maintained in Iran--and the Soviets, who turned their back on the Kurdish People's Republic after gaining lucrative oil leases in the Caspian from the Pahlavis.

The excitement of the short-lived Kurdish People's Republic was drown out by a US backed Iranian onslaught.

The Kurdish people have long been a cause celebre of the European left and understanding history depends upon knowing history.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Counter Values

Image
By The Numbers How were the three arguably most important numbers in ASL generated and why is there virtually no conversation about whether they are real? You can tell an ASL grognard 1 when you mention 666 and he immediately thinks of a first line US squad rather than the mark of the devil. Virtually all ASL players will know exactly what you are talking about if you give the three digits of its firepower, range and morale. Maybe less so of, for example, second line Italian squads. And, to be sure, there is a lot of overlap, for example, 447 squads. However, it is this defining characteristic that identifies units. How did these characteristics come about? Why are they so universally accepted and virtually never debated? Perhaps most importantly: Why do we go on adding squads (especially by third party producers) without laying down a basic understanding of what goes on in the composition of these factors? I propose a short exercise to help us understand...
Read more

Doesn't Add Up

Image
It's fair to say that I have a bias when it comes to ASL.  I am a Red Army man. I also like to have a little bit of fun poking the game designers over slights to the Red Army.  So why is it that the PTRD is so inferior to the Lahti ATR? The Soviet PTRD (Anti-Tank Rifle Degtyarov) was deployed in the Summer of 1941 as a cheap and quick replacement for the scads of anti-tank equipment the Red Army lost in the early phases of the war.  It used a powerful 14.5mm round that could penetrate 40mm of rolled plate armor at 100m--at 90 degrees.  Around 160,000 were produced before they became hopelessly outdated in 1942.  However, even afterward many units kept them available because they remained effective vs. halftracks and reconnaissance vehicles. This compares quite favorably to the penetration of the 37mm Pak deployed by the Wehrmacht which could penetrate 60mm of rolled plate at 100mm--again at 90 degrees. Yet, in ASL, the BTK numbers are 6 for the PTRD and 9 for th...
Read more