Tehran had always been looking for a new enemy. It was in the doctrine of their government.
Israel and the USA filled the speeches, the posters, the missile parades. It was familiar, even comforting, because it never demanded results. You could shout at a distant target forever and still sleep in a guarded villa.
Then the Alliance started closing foreign cultural temples. It was a process of "cultural safeguard" and "self-preservation." It was not aimed at Islam. It was not even consistent. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan left their mosques alone, left churches alone, left synagogues alone, and told anyone who asked that it was their heritage. Scandinavia, on the other hand, shut out anything that was not part of theirs in history and culture. They did it with paperwork and soldiers.
These steps were not against any particular belief or ideology. It was simply safekeeping the garden of different cultures.
In Tehran, the clerics on state television turned that into a gift.
They spoke of insult. They spoke of humiliation. They spoke of a war forced upon them by godless Europeans. The crowd was supposed to see the temples on screen and forget the price of bread.
Behind the cameras, the men who signed the declaration treated it like theatre. They had doubles. They had bunkers. They had routes out of the country.
They also had a new missile ready for its parade, and the committee had nearly come to blows over its name. Someone proposed "Stubborn." Someone else laughed and said it. After launch, it would correct its course toward Israel, dismissing its original target. Because the regime could not aim at anything else without changing its identity.
They declared war because it was easy. Especially for regimes like Iran. Where their leaders live in underground bunkers like rats and preach superiority. Where they vomit on freedom, flaunt rights and call themselves righteous.
They were not expecting a reply; they expected just another enemy who would not bother with them.
Yet the unexpected happened.
-
The first thing that died was the music.
Tehran's evening news always opened with it. The same swelling brass, the same studio, the same lie that everything was under control.
Tonight, the anchor's mouth moved, yet no sound came out.
A technician on the floor slapped the side of a monitor, then froze when the channel logo on every screen peeled away. Not with static or interference. The image simply surrendered. A plain black field replaced it, clean as a chalkboard.
White letters were written in Persian across the centre.
THIS IS A CIVIL WARNING.
The anchor turned, half rising from his chair. His earpiece shrieked. Someone in the gallery shouted for a cut. The red light over the camera did not blink.
The next line appeared.
WITHIN TWELVE HOURS, SELECTED MILITARY AND SECURITY SITES WILL BE STRUCK.
A pause, as if the unseen author wanted the studio to breathe.
CIVILIANS: LEAVE MAJOR CITIES. MOVE WEST TOWARD TURKEY. MOVE NORTH TOWARD AZERBAIJAN. DO NOT FOLLOW ARMED MEN. DO NOT FOLLOW REGIME FORCES.
The producer, a thick-necked man with a prayer mark on his forehead, lunged for the emergency feed switch. His hand hit the panel. Nothing changed.
A second technician ran to the rack of equipment and yanked cables out. The message remained perfect, as if it lived inside the screen.
In the control room, one of the Revolutionary Guard officers stepped forward, barking orders. His men pushed past cameramen, past editors, past a terrified intern who had never seen a gun pointed at a colleague.
The officer's radio cracked.
"Commander, we have the same broadcast on the radio. All frequencies. Even the provincial stations."
The officer's jaw tightened. He looked at the producer.
"Find the source."
The producer spread his hands, palms up, as if he could offer his own skin.
"It is not ours."
The last line wrote itself.
YOU HAVE TWELVE HOURS TO LEAVE. THOSE WHO STAY DO SO BY CHOICE.
Then the channel's music returned, thin and warped, and the anchor's voice came back as if nothing had happened.
Only he was not reading the script anymore. His eyes were wide, his face drained.
Across the city, in apartments where mothers fought with children to turn off cartoons, people paused. The warning repeated on every channel. It repeated on the radio in taxis. It repeated on the televisions in shop windows.
The regime tried to drown it in slogans.
The slogans did not land.
When the second broadcast came, an hour later, it named targets. in the way a man reads from a map.
The first cars left Tehran in the first hour.
By dawn, the roads were a moving wound.
-
Azerbaijan and Turkey always considered the North of Iran as 'South Azerbaijan.' The population was mostly Turkish. The same population cheered at the broadcast.
At the Turkish crossing, the line stretched until the end and became a rumour. People abandoned cars when fuel ran out. They walked with bags that tore at their fingers. They carried sleeping children without looking down, because looking down made it real.
The Turkish officers were ready; their rifles stayed slung, not aimed. That mattered to the incoming wave of Iranians.
Behind the first desk sat a sergeant with a pen that moved without pause. He did not speak much. Only the standard questions are used to record every entry.
Every few minutes, a second man drifted behind him. That one wore no badge or rank. He watched the faces of the Iranians and moved on.
An old Iranian with a white beard slid his papers forward. His wife clutched a cloth bundle to her chest as if it contained their last room.
The officer stamped. The second man's gaze swept the couple.
They were waved through.
Behind them, a younger man tried to step forward with his wife. His passport shook in his hand. He smiled too quickly.
The second man stopped, two fingers raised.
The Turkish officer did not glance up. He tilted his head, a small motion to the side.
Two soldiers stepped in. They did not shout, nor did they use force. They took the younger man's elbow, turned him, and guided him away as if escorting him to a different line.
His wife began to protest.
A third soldier caught her sleeve, gentle at first, then firm when she tried to pull free.
The young man's eyes snapped to the old Iranian, to anyone who might help.
His mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
A clean, precise charm settled over his face like a lid.
The old Iranian watched until the soldiers and the younger man disappeared behind a wall.
He leaned toward the officer behind the desk.
"Why him?"
The officer slid the stamped passport into a drawer and kept his voice level.
"Spy. They send them into the crowd. They are mostly sleeper cells; they wait and listen. You are welcome here, baba. They are not."
The old man's throat worked. He wanted to ask how the officer knew.
The answer stood behind the desk, already scanning the next face.
The second man met the old man's eyes for a heartbeat.
There was no warmth in that look. No malice either. Only function.
The old man turned away and walked, because the border was not a place to debate.
Beyond the booths, rows of new structures rose from bare ground. Prefabricated housing. Field kitchens. A medical tent marked with a red crescent. Turkish flags snapped above them.
People moved inside those lanes as if they had been rehearsing for this.
Every hour, the "watchers" rotated. New faces, same stillness. Some were women with soft hands and tired eyes. Some were men with the calm posture of soldiers who had stopped believing in panic.
They pointed, and someone was always taken out.
-
In Kabul, the Taliban followed Tehran's lead because it was convenient.
They spoke about temples to satisfy the loudest men in the room, then they used the language of faith to cover what they actually wanted: a new fight that would pull attention away from their own fractures. They knew the Alliance had not shut their mosques. They knew Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan had not touched Islam's places. None of that mattered. A pretext was a pretext, and the world was full of people who believed a slogan more than a fact.
On the Afghan front, there were no warnings.
The first rockets hit that afternoon. Just hours after their declaration, when the wind was steady, and the roads were loud with fleeing engines.
A Turkmen lieutenant watched from a ridge, one knee in the gravel, binoculars pressed to his face. The villages on the far side of the line were small, built from mud and stubbornness. The Taliban had used them as nests. That was the polite word.
A man crouched beside the lieutenant. He did not wear a uniform. He wore plain clothes and no insignia. His wand stayed in its holster.
"Ready."
The lieutenant did not ask how. He had learned.
A second later, the space behind them rippled. Then came the soft thud of boots.
Women appeared first. Some barefoot. Some are carrying babies wrapped in shawls. What caught the eye of the lieutenant was how young they were. They would be considered kids in his country, yet here they were carrying children of their own. His face grimaced for a while.
A girl with a bruised cheek stumbled, then caught herself when a hand steadied her. He crouched and caressed her hair.
"It is over, you are safe." He was not sure if the kid understood what he said. Yet when he stood, there was a determination in his eyes.
Children followed, wide-eyed and silent, in the way a child withdraws to himself when they stop expecting comfort and safety.
Elderly men came last, guided by younger hands.
They were moved away from the ridge at once, toward trucks with tarps and water barrels.
No one asked where they were going. They did not have breath for questions.
A third group appeared, not civilians. They wore Alliance gear without any flag. Their faces were hard and bored, which was worse than anger.
One of them offered the Turkmen lieutenant a brief nod.
"Clear."
The lieutenant lowered his binoculars.
"How many?"
The wandless man answered.
"Women, children, elderly. Those who chose to stay with the Taliban stayed. Those who tried to stop us do not matter now."
The lieutenant did not like the phrasing. He was also smart enough not to argue.
He raised his hand.
An artillery team, concealed behind camo netting, finished its last alignment. The tubes lifted a fraction.
The lieutenant breathed out.
"Fire."
The rockets left with a brutal cough. They screamed across the border and dropped into the villages with a rhythm that did not care about prayers or doctrines.
In the distance, a compound's outer wall buckled. A second rocket hit the centre of the courtyard.
Smoke rose.
A man ran into the open, rifle in hand, shouting into a radio as if his voice could call help through stone.
The sniper on the vantage point heard the command of the lieutenant. He lay prone, cheek on the stock, steady as a machine.
The Taliban fighter lifted his radio again.
The shot took him through the head.
His body folded and stayed down.
The wandless man beside the lieutenant watched without expression.
"Erase the rest," came the command from the radio.
The lieutenant's mouth tightened.
"That word is accurate." He murmured. This was not the first village today.
The wandless man stepped forward and finally let his wand slide into his hand.
He traced a short line in the air, then a second. The air answered.
A corridor of space, a boundary, an edge. The lieutenant saw this before. It still was wrong to his senses.
With the last flick of the wand, the distorted orb moved outward like a blade. Its size increased as it moved.
Where it passed, structures did not burn. They did not collapse. They simply disappeared, ceased to exist.
A mosque, a market stall, a mud wall, a line of trees.
Gone, nothing was left.
The lieutenant watched the far side of the border and felt his skin tighten.
Where a town had been, there was a flat scar of earth, smooth as if the land had never been touched by human hands.
A man with a radio stood at the edge of it, staring.
He lifted the handset to his mouth.
Only static answered.
He dropped it and ran, not away from the border, but toward the emptiness as if it might give him his world back.
Two more shots cracked.
He fell.
The sniper rolled his shoulder once, as if loosening a knot.
"Next." Said the man as he hid the short wooden stick.
The lieutenant swallowed and looked down at his map.
Qalae Naw. Ghormach. Maymana. Dawlat Abad. Andkhoy. Sheberghan.
Names on paper.
The wandless man leaned in.
"Mark them as the other towns."
-
In Kabul, the pest who called themselves rulers heard the first report as an argument.
A messenger burst into the room, dust in his beard, eyes bright with panic.
"The western posts are gone."
A commander with a black turban slammed his palm onto the table.
"Gone how?"
The messenger's mouth worked. He looked at the map, then at the commander, then back at the map as if he expected the ink to explain.
"Not captured or burned. Gone."
A man with a radio on his belt snatched it up, turning the dial hard enough to hurt.
"Islam Qala."
Static.
"Dowlat Yar."
Static again.
He tried a third frequency. A fourth.
Nothing.
A younger fighter, too eager, too sure of heaven, scoffed.
"Djinn?" It was the solution to the unexplainable.
The commander cut his eyes toward him.
"Shut your mouth."
He looked back at the messenger.
"Send scouts."
"They went."
"And?"
The messenger's hands shook.
"One returned. He cried like a little boy. He said there is no town. There is no road. There is only a flat earth. He said the sky looks wrong above it."
Silence sat on the table.
The commander's fingers tightened around the edge of the map.
"We have fought Russians. We have fought Americans. We are not afraid."
His gaze dropped to the map.
A second messenger came in, breathless.
"The Turkmen border posts are not answering. The people are moving. They are leaving. The women, the children."
The commander's mind caught on the wrong detail.
"Leaving where?"
"North and West. They say the Turks are letting them in."
The commander stared at the map again.
A war to capture land would have left something.
A war to punish would have demanded surrender.
This did neither; his throat tightened. He finally understood what the absence meant.
They were not being conquered.
They were being erased.