Human Civil War

The Human Civil War, more commonly known as the Insurrection was a war fought between the United Nations Space Command under the orders of the Unified Earth Government against numerous organizations who wished to secede from its control. The conflict would produce traitors and heroes, and would be the final step in the United Nations Space Command's goal of ruling the colonies. The decades long conflict would lead to numerous technological and military advances for the UNSC, and some believe that if it were not for this bloody war, Humanity would have faced utter oblivion in the light of the Covenant threat.
==Background==
As the Unified Earth Government (UEG) began to spread its reach throughout the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, they had expanded their influence too thin; eight-hundred worlds were under UEG control by the late 2490sHalo: The Fall of Reach, Various Pages, and seventeen were major population centers. In response, the UEG had given the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) control of the inner colonies, and the Colonial Administration Authority (CAA) control of the outer colonies.
The inner colonies, which included Reach, were very stable politically, economically, and socially. However, those in the outer colonies saw themselves as frontiersmen, exploring what had not been explored before. The governments of those colonies were weak, and had little control over the groups of colonists who demanded better treatment and pensions, and were powerless to suppress any brush wars that broke out, which they did at an alarming frequency. 
Although these rebellions were at first a minor nuisance, they became a serious problem in 2492, when the colony of Far Isle was completely toppled by a major rebellion.Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, Various Pages When the government was completely decapitated by the rebels, the United Nations Space Command was dispatched to put it down. There was a series of bloody ground battles, and several special operators would find evidence of Colonial Military Administration soldiers aiding the rebels. However, all evidence was lost as the UNSC forces evacuated, and the planet was destroyed by bombardment with thermonuclear weapons and Magnetic Accelerator Cannon slugs. However, this would not be the end of the rebellion; it was only the beginning.
Many people, especially those behind the brush wars themselves and even those within the UNSC saw the bombardment of Far Isle as an illegal and inhumane action. It showed the UNSC's weakness - if they could not take back one of their own planets, how could they govern any colony at all? It was a question that plauged the minds of government officials, and sparked a more intensive revolutionary fervor in the colonists. The brush wars began to grow even more intense, and several personnel within the UNSCDF and the CMA either deserted from their units or were covertly backing the rebels.
==Callisto Incident==
Two years after the Far Isle rebellion, the colony of Levosia was suspected of placing refined elements used to create faster-than-light drives on the black market. In response, the UNSC High Command ordered a naval blockade of the entire planetary system - nothing was allowed to enter or leave that was not throughly searched by Naval Special Warfare boarding teams. In 2494, the UNSC Callisto seized and searched a UNSC Merchant Marine freighter. Although no contraband was found aboard this freighter, a jittery crewman had pulled a weapon, sparking a firefight that killed three naval officers and twenty-seven crewmen.Halo: Evolutions - The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J Cole
Thirty-seven days later, the Callisto seized another vessel, and its boarding team began to search the vessel. After finding the cargo bay of the ship empty, the crew opened the cargo bay's doors, ejecting the boarding team into the harsh vacuum of space. The crew of the vessel captured the Callisto, executed the UNSC Navy personnel aboard, and replaced the ship's electronics systems. In retaliation, UNSC Naval Command dispatched three brand-new destroyers and their rookie crewmen to hunt down the vessel. They discovered the Callisto still in system, and began the game of cat and mouse. After several Ares missiles were fired, the Callisto was nimbly maneuvered behind an asteroid, which then exploded - the Insurrectionists had planted nuclear warheads in the core of the asteroid - sending boulders at the three destroyers. One of the destroyers, the Buenos Aries, was destroyed, and the other two were heavily damaged; the entire bridge crew of the Las Vegas was killed, save for a young Ensign by the name of Preston Cole, who took command of the ship.
After Cole faked a distress signal and offered the Las Vegas' surrender, the Callisto offered to dock with the ship to secure its surrender; however, Cole had ordered an Ares missile to be placed into a docking bay - the same docking bay that the Callisto was to dock with. After the docking procedure was completed, the Ares missile was fired into the Callisto, crippling it and forcing the crew's capitulation.
This incident would go down in the history books as signifying the start of the Human Civil War, the culmination of a chain-reaction of events that would lead to the second-bloodiest war in human history.
==Innies Out==
Members of the newly formed Secessionist Union, under the control of Jerald Mulkey Ander began a series of failed coups against the colonial government of Eridanus II. This lead to the United Nations Space Command Defense Force deploying the UNSC Naval Special Warfare Development Group in an operation codenamed CHARLEMAGNE. This would mark DEVGRU's first deployment; they only narrowly missed capturing Ander and had recovered a sub-orbital transit station without ever being observed. Even though one DEVGRU operator was lost, this led to a major propaganda operation by Section-II of the UNSC Military Intelligence Division. Several other operations sprung from CHARLEMAGNE, including TANGLEWOOD, the manhunt for Ander, and KALEIDOSCOPE, an assassination mission which ended with Ander's death. There were also operations against the Kelorists on Mamore, conducted by the Development Group and UNSC Naval Special Warfare.
Even though CHARLEMAGNE was successful, the Secessionist Union continued to grow in size and power, being taken over by Robert Watts, a former UNSC Marine Corps Colonel in 2503, and becoming the People's Occupation Government, finally toppling the colonial government of Eridanus II. Around the same time, Section-II psychological warfare specialists invented the phrase "Innies Out", an ironic motto said sarcastically by UNSC servicemen during the bloody war.
As the People's Occupation Government became entrenched, and the entire 82 Eridanus System broke away from Unified Earth Government control, UNSC High Command would formulate a massive offensive to end the Human Civil War once and for all.
It was named TREBUCHET.
==TREBUCHET==
left|200px|thumb|UEG and URF Diplomats in a cease-fire meeting.
Operation: TREBUCHET was the United Nations Space Command's largest and final push into rebel space. Nearly every UNSC serviceman and woman who could be spared was thrown into the conflict, which would start in the 82 Eridanus System and would eventually spread right to the UNSC's front doorstep - Epsilon Eridani.
TREBUCHET started in 2513 after the UNSC finally managed to respond to the threat posed by Eridanus II's rebel government; a Marine Expeditionary Force was dispatched to the planet to enter into organizations, and the 21st Division’s 1st Battalion started negotiations with the "Governor" of the planet. After a series of unfortunate events, the entire colony erupted into war, and the UNSC Army burned portions of Elysium City to the ground, and the UNSC Navy won a victory in space against the rag-tag rebel fleet. The rebel presence on Eridanus II quickly evaporated as they hid inside of an asteroid somewhere in the 82 Eridanus System's asteroid belt, but pirate attacks still continued well into the 2520s.
At first, TREBUCHET was widely supported by the general civilian populace as the UNSC attempting to bring peace and stability back to Earth’s colonies. However, it soon fell out of favor as the body count continued to increase and the war waged on. According to official statistics there were at least one thousand bombings a day on some colonies alone, and kidnappings and murders were getting out of hand, while some UNSC units engaged in several massacres that would become the icons of the conflict. One such massacre was the slaughter of a small community on Tribute. The UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence had gleaned intelligence that put the community as one of the premier points for arms distribution, training, and the manufacturing of explosive devices. A Naval Special Warfare strike team was deployed, and they raped the women, killed the children and executed the men in retaliation for an attack that occurred the week prior. 
By 2524, the official civilian body count of TREBUCHET was over one million lives lost, and the rebels had resorted to using more underhanded tactics; in that year they had bombed the cruise liner National Holiday while it was en route to Arcadia. However, the UNSC soon gained bigger fish to fry – several civilian freighters belonging to the UNSC Merchant Marine had gone missing in the Epsilon Indi System, which was home to the planet of Harvest. It would only be later that the true fate of those ships would be revealed – they had been destroyed by a group of alien races that called themselves the Covenant.
==Conclusion==
The Human Civil War drew to a close as the Covenant was soon realized to be more of a risk to humanity than the United Rebel Front. Despite this, several operations were conducted by SPARTAN-IIs to take the URF out of commission. The first of these operations was in 2525, when Blue Team captured Robert Watts from the hallowed out asteroid in the 82 Eridanus System. The team had infiltrated the asteroid through a rebel freighter, and had captured the Secessionist Union's leader after a fierce firefight. Watts was later put on trial and executed the same year. Watts' prior interrogation had pinpointed a rebel cell on Jericho VII, which was quickly dispatched by the SPARTAN-II commandos in 2525. 
In 2531, Blue Team prosecuted another operation against the United Rebel Front, this time killing Howard Graves, one of the organization's "Generals". The operation was executed off of intelligence gathered from numerous operations in Micronesia, on Reach, Station Jefferson, and the destruction of the URF Origami. Their chance came when Graves and his personal bodyguard gathered several captured FENRIS warheads in a way so that the UNSC Military Intelligence Division would catch on, and then contacted members of the UNSC for a trade - nukes for medicines for several people who they claimed to be suffering from Boren's Syndrome. The UNSC deployed Blue Team again; however, the entire set-up was a trap. Four members of Blue Team were captured by Grave's bodyguard - there were only four according to his intelligence. However, Graves was killed by another SPARTAN-II, a new addition to Blue Team during an impromptu rescue operation.
The Human Civil War would reach its conclusion in 2537 after Alpha Company put down the Mamore Independence and Liberation Front's insurrection in the same year. 
However, many who seek freedom from the so-called "tyrannical" UNSC continue their never-ending struggle for liberty.
==References==
Category:Canon Expansions
Category:Wars