The situation in Syria, due to Hamid’s fortunate survival and the Blackwater Company’s platform, had entered a delicate balance.
Those high-level officials in the opposition who advocated eliminating Hamid, because their plot failed and was made public, faced condemnation from the international community. Now they were in a phase where everyone was calling for their punishment.
Although they could disregard international reputation, their internal authority had indeed been greatly affected. The people questioned them; internally, there was vigilance against them. For them, the situation was indeed somewhat unfavourable, so in the short term, they absolutely dared not engage in any disruptive operations.
Moreover, within the opposition, there were various factions. The core layer formed its own group; some peripheral small warlords, like Hamid, were in awkward or even precarious positions. This time, Hamid’s attack also sounded an alarm for their future prospects.
After Hamid returned safely, following Ye Chen’s guidance, he maintained very close contact with some relatively marginal figures in the opposition. He had been launching psychological offensives on them, making them all highly wary of those in power. Everyone formed an alliance to advance and retreat together on this matter.
However, Hamid currently did not know how strong the actual cohesion within this alliance was, or how high the actual combat effectiveness would be after cohesion.
Therefore, he was now exerting twelvefold spirit. After purging internal spies, he increased the personnel responsible for sentry duty and security threefold. Drones equipped with thermal imaging took off in succession, conducting uninterrupted reconnaissance of the surrounding area within a radius of dozens of kilometres for 24 hours, fearing an enemy sneak attack.
When Ye Chen called him, Hamid, who had been inspecting for several hours, was still in deep sleep.
Upon receiving Ye Chen’s call, he quickly became alert and asked excitedly: “Brother Ye, what instructions do you have for me?”
Ye Chen asked: “Brother, how has the situation been in recent days?”
Hamid sighed and said: “Recently, I have been following your previous instructions, secretly uniting some warlords within the opposition and reaching preliminary alliance agreements with them.”
Ye Chen asked him: “What about the strength of those warlords?”
“Strength…” Hamid said awkwardly: “Their strengths are not very impressive. They do not even have their own territories; their teams have been integrated into the so-called government army. However, because of my experience, they are all on tenterhooks now and very eager to find an opportunity to separate their teams again.”
Ye Chen instructed: “You can incite these warlords like you to pursue autonomy according to your model. It is best if they can also, like you, control a region and build high walls, accumulate grain widely. In these times, entrusting your back to comrades is actually not safe. If you can build your own iron wall, the security will improve a lot.”
Hamid sighed: “They do want to, but it is not so easy to achieve… The core layer of the opposition has always been very wary of them. If they want to pull out the already integrated troops again, the core layer will absolutely not agree.”
Ye Chen smiled: “They would not agree before; now the situation is not necessarily the same. They must be in a mess now. After all, they have secured their position and are no longer the previous opposition. This time, carrying out such a terrorist attack has greatly damaged their image. Coupled with internal morale being scattered, if they continue to maintain high pressure on other warlords at this time, without waiting for the former government army to return, their own interior may already be in chaos. So now is a good time to promote the enfeoffment system.”
“Enfeoffment system?” Hamid was somewhat puzzled, not quite understanding Ye Chen’s meaning.
Ye Chen said: “To put it another way, it is the modern federal system. Everyone, like you, strives for their own fief, operating with their own armed forces in their fief. Usually highly autonomous, but in major events like foreign invasion or internal uprising, they obey the scheduling of the federal manager and jointly confront the enemy.”
