Omar Al-Bashir and Africa's Longest War

by Paul Moorcraft

  The English Pasha did achieve a great deal in a short time. He curbed, but did not destroy the slave trade. Speaking just a little Arabic, he tended to ignore the concerns of Sudanese, especially the elite in Khartoum, and not just their financial interests in the slave trade. He preferred to rely on his European staff, or his local Egyptian officials. Gordon also liked and trusted the Khedive, but in 1879 Pasha Ismail was deposed because of British and French anxieties over the Khedive’s profligacy. London and Paris leaned on the Sultan in Istanbul to sack the Khedive, who cleaned out what remained of the gold in the treasury and sailed away to a comfortable exile. Gordon, exhausted, promptly resigned and sought a long holiday in Europe.

  In Cairo, the great powers had helped to install Tewfik, Ismail’s son, as the new Khedive. Tewfik was reluctant – he preferred farming to politics. Tewfik also understood that he would be a pawn of Western imperialists, especially Britain and France, although the British were in the driving seat. Tewfik’s army rebelled against Western control and the Khedive appealed to his British protectors, who occupied Egypt in 1882, not least to secure the Suez Canal. In the so-called Anglo-Egyptian war of 1882, the Royal Navy bombarded Alexandria, and then the army, led by the Highland Brigade, overwhelmed the Egyptian forces at Tel El Kebir, outside Cairo. Over 2,000 Egyptian troops were killed for the loss of fifty-seven British. Sir Evelyn Baring (later ennobled as Lord Cromer) had been the aptly named Controller-General in Cairo, as part of the Orwellian-styled ‘Control’ set up by the British and French to run the finances of the bankrupt country. As Consul-General after 1882 he effectively ruled Egypt until 1906. (British military presence survived until 1954.) It was his decision to withdraw completely from Sudan after 1885, because his austerity budget would not permit any costly military adventures. Baring reformed the Egyptian army, under British officers, to make it a more reliable tool of government. His reforms worked. The new (relatively) efficient army became a national symbol in a failed state; this symbolism played no small part in the dominance of the army, even after the revolutions of the contemporary Arab Spring.

  Baring was a true believer in the British imperial mission. According to an Arab historian, he believed that ‘subject races were totally incapable of self-government, that they did not really need or want self-government, and that what they really needed was a “full belly” policy which kept it quiescent and allowed the elite to make money and so cooperate with the occupying power’.3 In what was dubbed a ‘veiled protectorate’, Baring excluded the French and dominated the Khedives, while improving the economy of Egypt.

  The Mahdiya

  The administration in Khartoum was left in the hands of corrupt and inefficient officials during the turmoil in Cairo. Sixty years after their last revolt against foreign intruders, a national Sudanese uprising began in the nine-mile-long Aba Island, on the White Nile, about 155 miles south of Khartoum. A Sufi mystic, Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abdullah, moved there to seek religious contemplation. Born in Dongola in 1845, he received an excellent religious education. Like many Sudanese he disliked the imposition of foreign – to him, less pure – forms of Islam. His ideals were based on religious reform, but they tapped into tribal dislike of alien political rule. He had quarrelled with other religious leaders previously, who disputed his views, but in June 1881 he proclaimed that, in visions, the assembly of previous prophets, headed by Muhammad himself – what the Islamic scholars would call hadra – had told him he was the ‘Mahdi’ (the chosen or guided one). The new Mahdi gathered a small movement, calling his followers the Ansar (termed Dervishes by Europeans) and started to establish a local system modelled on the original administration of the Prophet Mohammad. His armed Ansar almost completely annihilated a contingent of Egyptian troops sent to Aba Island to arrest him. The rebellion spread, especially after the Ansar defeated two more attempts by the jihadiyya, led by the hated ‘Turks’, in September 1881 and May 1882. Slavers, pious men and disaffected tribesmen flocked to the Mahdi, who proclaimed the Islamic end of days. Such messianic movements were not new in Islamic history, but in Sudan and elsewhere in the Western-occupied Middle East, and then in the twenty-first century, the concept of religious renewal via military jihad caught fire. In Sudan’s case, it also meant the possibility of driving out the tax-oppressive Turks. Pragmatism and piety became handmaidens of the tribal warriors’ martial proclivities. Thus the Mahdi became a Victorian version of Osama bin Laden.

  After four months of siege, the garrison at El Obeid, the new capital of Kordofan, had to surrender, providing more modern weapons for the Ansar who had fought with lances and swords and great bravery. This Mahdist victory fuelled a national rebellion that spread west, north and to the Red Sea Hills. Very reluctantly, and despite his ideals of financial stringency, Sir Evelyn Baring and London reluctantly agreed to send Egyptian troops, led by William ‘Billy’ Hicks, a retired British colonel of the Indian Army. It was raised originally to relieve El Obeid. Hicks Pasha, who was not enthused by the whole operation, quarrelled with Egyptian staff officers as his column made its way south, harassed by the Ansar. The Mahdists filled in the wells and, more effectively, used propaganda to persuade the Muslim Egyptian forces that the Mahdi was truly leading ‘soldiers of God’. The Kordofan expeditionary force was made up of about 8,000 Egyptian regulars, 1,000 cavalry, 100 tribal irregulars, and around 2,000 camp followers. They carried supplies for fifty days on an immense baggage train consisting of 5,000 camels. The army also boasted artillery, including Krupp field guns and six Nordenfelt machine guns. The Nordenfelt had been patented only a few years before and, although reliable, was soon outclassed and absorbed by the company that produced the famous Maxim guns, but in Sudanese terms it was a super-weapon.

  By the time the expedition finally struggled to Kordofan, El Obeid had fallen. The operation was maintained to relieve Slatin Bey, the Austrian-born governor of Darfur. The force was, in the words of Winston Churchill, ‘perhaps the worst army that has ever marched to war’. Many of the reluctant soldiers had been freed from Cairo’s jails, convicted because they had taken part in the 1882 rebellion against the Khedive. Not only were they unwilling, but they were unpaid, untrained and undisciplined. To quote Churchill again, ‘Its soldiers had more in common with their enemies than with their officers.’

  Either by mistake or by design, their guides led them to a plain where they were surrounded at Shaykan, south of El Obeid, on 3 November 1883. Hicks Pasha’s force was surprised and some of the Egyptians broke and ran; the majority formed up in a square and fought for two days. The Mahdists eventually overwhelmed them. Some Egyptian troops escaped, but the majority of survivors were taken prisoner. The officers were killed outright, although a handful of Europeans managed to make their way to Khartoum. Hicks’ body was never found. It was a great victory for the Mahdi, whose jihadists now had modern artillery.

  The Mahdists pushed on into Darfur and eventually captured Slatin Bey. Rudolf Carl von Slatin was one of the most colourful of the European rulers of colonial Sudan. His father had converted from Judaism to Catholicism, and his Catholic son had converted to Islam when his Darfurian troops insisted that he needed to become a Muslim to lead them. His conversion helped when he was taken by the Ansar. Most captured infidels were murdered, but he was held in captivity for eleven years, mainly in Omdurman – sometimes treated tolerably (and offered wives), at other times with utmost cruelty. He was also shown Gordon’s severed head as an object lesson in good behaviour. After a dramatic escape, he sought absolution from the Pope for his temporary apostasy. He also wrote a remarkable book, Fire and Sword in the Sudan, which was later used by many British imperialists to argue for the re-conquest of the country.

  In his book, Slatin Bey offers a rare and sympathetic pen portrait of the Mahdi:

  He had a light brown complexion, a sympathetic Arab face on which the marks of smallpox were still traceable, an aquiline nose, a wellshaped mouth, slight moustache, and a fringe of hair on his cheeks, but rather thicker on his chin;
he was about middle height, neither thin nor stout, was wearing a jibba covered with small square patches of different colours, and a Mecca takia, or skull cap, around which was bound a cotton turban; he generally spoke with a smile and showed a row of glistening white teeth.4

  Besides the impact of Slatin Bey’s book, the letters of Emin Pasha also caused a sensation in Europe. Born to a middle-class Jewish family in Silesia, Isaak Eduard Schnitzer trained as a doctor, but was later disbarred in Germany. Employed by the Ottoman Empire, the adventurer ended up as a surgeon working for Gordon Pasha. Isaak had converted to Christianity and then, probably, to Islam, always styling himself Mehmed Emin. Gordon put him in charge of Equatoria. After the Mahdist revolution, Emin Pasha retreated south to Lake Albert with his few thousands troops. After the fall of Khartoum, the fate of Emin Pasha became a continuous media event in Europe. The famous Welsh explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, led a relief expedition via an arduous route along the Congo River, and losing two-thirds of his party. Eventually, Stanley met up with Emin Pasha in April 1888 and persuaded him to exit Africa via Zanzibar.

  The humiliating defeat of a British general (the Egyptians had promoted Colonel Hicks) was a political blow to British prestige in Egypt and the whole Middle East. And the Islamist nature of the revolt caused anxiety as far away as the British authorities in India. The decision was made, however, not to exact a traditional imperial retribution, but to order the withdrawal from Sudan of all Egyptian troops and administrators and families, especially from Khartoum. The prime minister in London, William Ewart Gladstone, was as reluctant as Baring to get sucked into the expensive wars in Sudan. Sending one man was relatively cheap, however. General Gordon, it was said, had a ‘name which was worth an entire army’. Reappointed Governor General, Gordon reached Khartoum on 18 February 1884. His orders were to organize an evacuation of Egyptian and Europeans from the capital.

  Gladstone was extremely hostile to further British military involvement in troublesome Sudan. The military occupation of Egypt in 1882 was deemed by his many political opponents a hypocritical betrayal of his principles of non-intervention abroad. The new crisis in Sudan in 1884 was now judged a test of his political sincerity. Ignoring his orders, Gordon decided to stay in Khartoum until he was relieved by forces sent from Egypt. He reasoned that both peace with the Mahdi and total evacuation were impossible. Moreover, he feared that the jihad would spread to engulf Egypt. He did, however, send some women, children and wounded men down the Nile to Egypt. Gordon then set about fortifying the city. The Mahdi himself arrived on the west bank of the Nile opposite Khartoum, in what became known as Omdurman. Gordon showed great courage and charismatic leadership by rallying the frightened citizens of the capital, and its small garrison of 5,000 soldiers. The Mahdi’s shura (council) argued that it was a trap and the inevitably large force coming from Egypt to relieve the famous general might defeat them. The Mahdi refused to retire to Kordofan.

  The final Mahdist assault of 50,000 men came in the early hours of 26 January 1885, when the Nile waters were at their lowest. This exposed solid beachheads around the weakest riverside defences. The Egyptian garrison was overwhelmed, Gordon was killed and the city reduced to ruins. The advance steamers of the relief expedition arrived two days later. ‘Too late’ screamed the headlines in the British press. To the fury of the British public the death of their hero was not avenged and the large relief force turned around and went back to Cairo.

  The leader of the relief force, General Sir Garnet Wolseley, faced much criticism, but it had been a herculean task. Wolseley had served in the lakes of Canada, and arranged for a team of Canadian navigators to help his fleet of small boats overcome the massive obstacles of the six Nile cataracts. This was considered the fastest route through enemy-occupied territory. Eventually, Wolseley divided his 5,000-strong force into an overland camel route (to take a short cut across the big loop of the Nile) while half remained on the river. The internal problems, not least dragging and re-assembling his boats, as well as Mahdist harassment, impeded his progress, although the slow decision in London to permit Gordon’s relief was also a factor. The telegraph line had been cut, but Gordon sent out messengers to the north. On 14 December 1884, in the last entry in his journal (which, when published, created a frenzy in the UK) was: ‘Now mark this, if the Expeditionary Force, and I ask for no more than 200 men, does not come in ten days, the town may fall; and I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good bye.’

  The death of Gordon sent the British popular press into overdrive. The Western media tended to obsess about its own imperial concerns with little understanding about what was happening in Sudan to Sudanese. This bad habit has continued to the present day. Western cultural conditioning tended to portray European Christian heroes fighting either bloodthirsty ignorant Muslims or black pagan savages farther south.

  The 317 days of siege spawned a continuous newspaper barrage to send a relief column. Its arrival just two days too late added to the Victorian melodrama. Despite the lack of eye-witnesses, varying – but always lurid – accounts of Gordon’s death created a national scandal. In the Hollywood version, over eighty years later, Gordon is beheaded on the steps of the governor’s palace. (In the 1990s I had to ascend those same steps to secure rare press passes from another radical Islamic regime; I was never sure whether an implicit warning was intended.) Because it took over a decade to exact imperial retribution, the Gordon saga remained an open wound in the British national psyche.

  Queen Victoria addressed Parliament on 14 August 1885 and, unusually for a sovereign, rebuked her own government. She mentioned her ‘deep sorrow, which was shared by all my people’ and criticized the relief which arrived ‘too late’ and mourned ‘the heroic Gordon’. Gladstone himself usually refrained from defending himself. He did write a private letter at the height of the crisis which said that to have complied with Gordon’s demands ‘was madness and criminal’. In another private correspondence, Gladstone wrote: ‘I must continue to suffer in silence. Gordon was a hero…It was unfortunate that he should claim the hero’s privilege by turning upside down and inside out every idea and intention with which he left England and for which he had obtained our approval.’ Nearly 130 years later, Gladstone still gets a bad press. To this day the apotheosis of Gordon has been prolonged and almost completely uncritical. His manifest flaws forged a Greek tragedy: hubris leading to nemesis. He wilfully disobeyed his superiors, both civilian and military because he usually held them in contempt. He gravely misread the Mahdist uprising and its tribal and spiritual support and above all its military capacity. The arch-apostle of the Christian imperial mission brought ignominy on his own government and the empire he wished to promote. Gordon’s journals as well as bestselling books by Europeans, most notably Slatin Bey, added to the Gordon myth by denigrating and demonizing the Sudanese. Some of these books were secretly funded by British military intelligence in Cairo.5

  The Mahdi had explicitly ordered that Gordon should not be killed, perhaps because of the superstition that his own death would soon follow that of the British General’s. Six months later the Mahdi died, probably of smallpox. The succession inevitably prompted religious and tribal disputes. The Khalifa Abdallahi had the best claim by his title (‘the steward’ of the Umma, Islamic community; Caliph in English). Equally important, his Black Flag division controlled the new capital of Omdurman. Having decisively outmanoeuvred his opponents, the Khalifa now wanted to fulfil his mentor’s prophecy by spreading the jihad throughout the world, starting with the rest of Sudan.

  Messianic movements had been emulated in the African Fur and Masalit tribes in Darfur. The Khalifa ordered his Baqqara tribesmen to suppress the revolt. The Khalifa’s nephew, Mahmuud Ahmad, spent the next five years pacifying the Darfur region, but separatism there was never fully quelled. On the Ethiopian border, the Ansar had also been severely thrashed. After crushing a mutiny in the Mahdist army, the Khalifa regrouped his forces and sent them on a successful plundering ra
id against the ancient Ethiopian capital of Gondor. Retaliation soon followed. The Ethiopian army, massively reinforced, was led by Emperor John IV himself. On the edge of defeat, the Ansar army triumphed because a stray bullet killed the emperor and his troops retreated in disarray. Mahdist soldiers also pushed south along the Nile deep into Equatoria. The south, west and east had been largely, if temporarily, pacified, but the success of the universal jihad depended upon a northern conquest: Egypt.