The Battle of Jabiim was one of the
bloodiest battles of the Clone Wars. Countless Jedi and clone troopers were killed
and lost to Jabiim’s muddy surface over the course of the 43-day-long campaign against Alto
Stratus and his CIS-backed Jabiimi Nationalists. But, as is often forgotten, the Jedi and their
clones weren’t alone in their fight on Jabiim; they had local allies as well, the Jabiimi
Loyalists. The Loyalists played just as much of a role in the fight as the clones did - and yet, at
the end of the battle, they were left on Jabiim to die. Due to a lack of transports, Anakin
Skywalker, the last Jedi left on the planet, was forced to choose between evacuating
the Loyalists and evacuating the clones, and he ultimately chose the clones. In
this video, we’re going to be discussing the implications of that choice, and why it was
such a crucial turning point in Anakin’s life. The Clone Wars are best described as a
thousand tiny civil wars happening at once, tied together by a campaign of interventions
by the Republic and the Confederacy. Most battles of the conflict were actually
small wars that one or both of the galaxy’s major governments took an interest in,
and the Battle of Jabiim was no exception. The battle had its roots in millennia of the
Republic neglecting Jabiim, a remote Outer Rim world that, at first, appeared to have nothing
of value. Jabiim suffered greatly over the years, enduring everything from plagues to slaver
incursions, and not once did the Republic or the Jedi lend a hand. This bred resentment
among some Jabiimi, especially those who had lost family due to Republic neglect. Among
them was a firebrand named Alto Stratus. In the years leading up to the Clone Wars, Stratus
formed a faction called the Jabiimi Nationalists, an extremist political group that wanted
Jabiim to cut ties with the Republic entirely. At first, the Nationalists were a fringe
group, but when the Separatist Crisis broke out and those sorts of sentiments became more common,
the Nationalists started to gain traction. When they gained a majority in the Jabiimi Congress,
they received the formal backing of the CIS, further increasing their influence. It
was around this time that the Jabiimi made an important discovery - beneath all
the mud, their planet was rich in ore. At this point, the Republic stepped in, unwilling
to let that sweet, sweet ore fall into Separatist hands. They barred the Jabiimi from trade with
the Confederacy, outraging the Nationalists, who urged the Jabiimi Congress to tender a
Declaration of Secession. Loyalists within the Congress blocked them from doing so, however,
and in response, Alto Stratus orchestrated a coup. The Nationalists took over the government and
killed off most of their political opponents; the survivors of this purge formed their
own faction, the Jabiimi Loyalists, and a bloody civil war began. The
Loyalists petitioned the Republic for help, while the Nationalists requested
weapons from the Confederacy. We’ve done a deep dive into the Battle of Jabiim
already, so we’re just gonna do a brief recap of the battle itself. The Republic marshalled a huge
strike force on nearby Handooine, led by Obi-Wan Kenobi and complete with twenty-odd Jedi, a
whole lot of clones, and new experimental AT-ATs. When the Republic first landed to reinforce the
Loyalists, the strike force quickly gained ground, driving Stratus’s poorly trained
frontline militia fighters back with ease. But it was all a ploy to spread Republic forces
out, and while they were far from the front lines, Stratus, his elite Nimbus Commandos, and an
army of Separatist war droids attacked the Republic’s headquarters, disorienting Republic
forces and apparently killing Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Nationalists and their droid reinforcements
proceeded to butcher Republic forces on all fronts, killing Jedi after Jedi until a few
Padawans were the only ones left. Thousands upon thousands of clones were slaughtered, and
by the end of the battle, every last one of the Republic’s walkers had been destroyed. Victorious,
Stratus and his men swept across Jabiim, driving the Loyalists and their allies back
to Monsoon Mesa, where they were forced to plan an evacuation. As the other Padawans held
the Nationalists off at nearby Cobalt Station, Anakin Skywalker went to oversee the evacuation,
per Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s direct orders. Cobalt Station held out just long enough
for Republic evacuation craft to arrive. But there was a problem. Several craft had
been lost on the descent through Jabiim’s extremely turbulent atmosphere, and there
weren’t enough to evacuate everyone. Anakin Skywalker was given a choice of evils -
he could either save the surviving clones, or he could save the Loyalists. Either way, he
would have to leave thousands of men to die. At length, Anakin chose the clones. The Republic
was engaged on hundreds of active battlefields across the galaxy, he reasoned, and it needed as
many clones as it would get. Orliss Gillmunn, the leader of the Jabiimi Loyalists, was furious. He
shouted that Skywalker was proving Stratus right, and declared that he and his men were going
to seize the Republic’s evacuation craft for their own. Tired from fighting and grieving
over the loss of so many of his friends, Anakin wasn’t in the mood for it, and he
instinctively lashed out at Gillmunn. For the first but most definitely not the last time,
Anakin Skywalker choked a man through the Force. He quickly released Gillmunn, somewhat
horrified by what he had just done, and ordered his clones to board the escape
craft. Wordlessly, they did so and took off. As their former allies fled the planet, the
Jabiimi Loyalists hurled rocks at the escape craft, while Gillmunn swore they would never
forget the name Skywalker. Anakin was badly shaken up by the ordeal; when one of the surviving
clones told him Coruscant was requesting an update on the evacuation, he said to respond that the
Battle of Jabiim was over, and everyone had lost. Against all odds, the Jabiimi Loyalists managed
to survive the immediate aftermath of the battle, though Captain Gillmunn wasn’t
quite as lucky as his cause. The Nationalists had suffered their fair
share of casualties in the battle as well, and in the last assault on Cobalt Station,
Alto Stratus and the last of the Nimbus Commandos had been killed. This caused a
bit of inner turmoil for the Nationalists, which gave the Loyalists an opening to regroup and
stay alive. They kept fighting the Nationalists, and when the Clone Wars ended and the Nationalists
allied with the Empire, they started fighting the Empire too. But they refused to join the
Rebel Alliance, as they remembered all too well what had happened the last time someone
named Skywalker came to them offering help. Anakin’s decision had ramifications
that went far beyond Jabiim, however. It was a major turning point in his life, and as
we all know, turning points in the life of Anakin Skywalker had a profound impact on the entire
galaxy. The abandonment of the Loyalists was a major step towards the Dark Side for him, even
if he didn’t recognize it as such in the moment. The end of the Battle of Jabiim wasn’t just
the first time Anakin used Force Choke, after all - it was the first time he sacrificed
innocents for the sake of a greater cause. There was no good choice for Anakin
to make in this scenario, of course; abandoning the clones would’ve been pretty
terrible of him as well. But there was a key difference between abandoning
clones and abandoning the Loyalists. It wasn’t just a choice of who to save; it was
a choice of whether innocent lives or victory in war was more important to him. He chose victory in
war, and though he didn’t realize it at the time, it had a major effect on his psyche. It made
him more willing to sacrifice civilians for what he viewed as a greater cause, something he
took to a barbaric extreme as Darth Vader. This mentality actually led a lot of Jedi to the
Dark Side over the years. Most notably, it was what turned Jedi heroes Revan and Malak into Dark
Lords of the Sith. During the Mandalorian Wars, Revan and Malak were faced with many similar
dilemmas, and they quickly became accustomed to sacrificing civilians and even entire planets
for the sake of beating back the Mandalorians. They believed, at first, that it was for the
greater good, that they were ultimately saving more lives by letting people die, but over time
that justification faded, replaced by a desire to win the war no matter the cost. The end result
of that mentality was the Battle of Malachor V, an atrocity so unspeakable it turned a whole
planet into a wound in the Force. Revan, Malak, and all but one of the Jedi who followed them
embraced the Dark Side in that battle’s aftermath. It was a similar case for Anakin Skywalker. His
path to the Dark Side was much more complicated, of course, and involved many other factors, but
his lack of hesitation to sacrifice civilians during the Clone Wars was a major part of his
fall. In Anakin, this mentality manifested in more ways than just sacrificing civilians, too -
to him, it gave him an excuse for doing terrible things to the enemy, even prisoners of war and
sometimes even Separatist civilian populations. It was this mindset that allowed him to justify
slaughtering younglings during Operation Knightfall. To Anakin’s mind, they were just more
sacrifices made for the sake of the greater good. So, that’s why Anakin’s abandonment
of the Jabiimi Loyalists was more important than you might have thought.
But what do you think? Would you like to see more videos like this in the future? Feel
free to post your thoughts in the comments below.
