Selenite soon took me to a war room deep within the Lunar Castle. This was the whole reason I was brought to Equestria, of course, to give insight on how best to combat insurgencies. Once in the war room I was dazzled at what I saw. Looming above the room, a huge light screen with a detailed and interactive map of Puerto Caballo loaded with details regarding troop movements, insurgent factions, combat, ongoing operations, foreign presence, and more. I’d never seen anything like it, for a few seconds I was speechless. The intern who presented the display was rightly proud (pretty sure she’s not actually an intern given the high security environment, dont know what else to call her). The big flat screens could only display information from pre-set files, plus they were mostly limited to using shades of purple, but it was a level of sophistication well beyond anything I knew was currently in use. Definitely need to ask about getting one of those for the Legionary Council chamber.

After getting over that initial bout of amazement, the intern(?) ran us through what all the symbols on the map meant and Selenite explained the war situation. They’d been bogged down fighting persistent rebels in Puerto Caballo for nearly two years. After easily defeating the crooked Celestial remnant in a conventional war, they found themselves fighting a new sort of war against a much more troublesome foe. Given my reputation as Viceroy of Zarantia, Selenite must’ve known I knew a thing or two about combating insurgencies. Especially as the Bush War and the Puerto Caballo insurgency had a few similar elements: Insurgents supported by the Arisians, population with strong inclinations against Lunar rule, rebels divided into myriad factions.

Selenite ran me through several recent examples of how her forces had utilised Fireforce, a tactic I’d developed to great effect during the Bush War, and wanted to know if it was being applied correctly. By all tactical metrics, they were doing great. They were wiping out rebel positions and achieving extremely favourable casualty ratios, an average of thirty or more dead insurgents to each dead Lunar soldier. There were frequent issues, such as rebels equipped with surplus Arisian equipment or powerful magic artifacts, but most rebels had little more than a submachine gun. Arisian AA guns and ancient magical neckwear was far from standard issue. She went over Lunar naval and air operations too, all successfully identified and hit their targets to great effect. She wanted to know: What was wrong?

What caught my eye wasn’t anything on the list of ongoing operations, but what wasn’t on there. It was all combat operations, nothing about winning over the population. Insurgencies are inherently political struggles, and from the way Selenite talked about it she was treating it like a purely military struggle. Weird to me as she seemed to get that defeating Solarism in Equestria meant more than just defeating the Royal Guard but also showing the ponies of Equestria that they were a competent and effective government with the ponies’ best interests at heart. When I brought that up she mentioned that they had to defeat them militarily before they could assert themselves as an effective government. Arguably true, but most settlements were under Lunar authority.

I mentioned that in Zarantia, my approach wasn’t to just militarily crush the insurgents but to cut off support to the insurgents by winning over the population, or if that wasn’t possible inducing apathy among the population. In territories we controlled we assured improvements in nightly life, economic development, and generally good governance. Other measures such as assuring land and passage rights for natives and providing legal channels to voice disagreement helped considerably, too. Something as basic as reliable water services convinced the locals that our rule was the better rule. We brought local ponies and zebras over to Lunarist teachings through tax incentives, framed in such a way where it was perceived as a reward for converting rather than a punishment for staying by false gods. Broader efforts were made in propaganda to paint the insurgent groups in an unfavourable light.

I described this all to Selenite, and told her that they should adopt a population-centric strategy rather than an enemy-centric strategy. Puerto Caballo isn’t Zarantia of course, but the fundamentals of anti-insurgent warfare remain true. Image was everything, and the ponies of Puerto Caballo weren’t going to become loyal Lunar subjects if their primary experience with the Lunar Empire was their home being bombed and burned down. On top of all that, the insurgents were divided into at least five factions. Incredible potential to turn them against one another, from what I heard it wouldn’t take much to get the PSP and the SSV to turn their guns on one another. Selenite “agreed” (sic) with me and conceded that I had a point, but I’m not sure if she’s really taking on my advice. She kept talking about combat operations.

Two familiar names came up in all the discussion, Kara Waypoint and Fenris Ebonyglow, who I remember from the revolt in Ain Trotgourait. Lost a lot of good ponies those nights, ponies who could’ve been throwing the Storm King out of North Zebrica. Turns out the pair had become leaders of one of the more prominent insurgent factions, led mostly by ponies from the former Celestial government and armed forces. Still heavily backed by the Arisians, too. Well in prepartion is an operation, codenamed Wolfhunt, to assassinate the two to be carried out by a Night Eye Agent, codenamed Cygnus. As great as it would be to get payback for Ain Trotgourait, I mentioned to Selenite that simply killing the two wont be enough to dismantle their network, or even significantly damage its combat capabilities, unless something is done afterwards to assure no other leader takes their place. The possibility of capturing them alive came up.

I’ve arranged to meet with Cygnus tomorrow, Wolfhunt is his assignment after all and he will likely be pulling the trigger. Looked over his file, seems like quite the character. Definitely sharing my thoughts on the operation with him.