Listening to the Ghosts of Empire

There has been much consternation at the inability of the Iraqi Army and Kurdish forces to defeat the forces of the Islamist militant ISIS group. The Iraqi Army has plagued by mass desertions, its officers are ineffective by Western standards, and it has been driven back nearly to the gates of Baghdad despite years of U.S. and NATO training, A recent Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) report estimated that 2 billion U.S. dollars had been spent since 2003 in the re-training and equipage of the post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi Army. Talented U.S., British , and NATO officers trained hundreds of Iraqi officers in Iraq and other locations under the NATO Training Mission in Iraq (NTMI) program from 2004-2011. Has all of this effort and expenditure been for naught? A short review of the more distant history of Imperial powers may have an answer as to why the new Iraqi Army is being stampeded in defeat by Islamist militants.

      The British faced a similar situation in the Sudan from the early 1880’s to nearly the end of the 19^th century. The British Empire invaded and occupied Egypt in 1882. Just afterward, the Sudan, and parts of Egypt and Ethiopia were overrun by the radical Islamist forces of Muhammad Ahmed, a Sudanese Sufi who claimed to be the Islamic Messianic figure known as the “Mahdi”. Despite extensive training, equipage and even operational and tactical command by experienced British officers, the Egyptian Army was defeated again and again by inferior numbers of Mahdist soldiers armed with edged weapons and an abiding zeal in their cause. The story of the British experience and solution to the Mahdist revolt of the 1880’s and 1890’s could guide Western Forces to a similar successful outcome. It also serves as a warning to Western leaders who would have their troops decamp too quickly from unstable, war-torn states. Such premature judgments have not brought successful conclusions or provided significant budgetary savings in the past. Instead, they resulted in extended deployments, elevated casualty lists, and non-attainment of national goals.

The British Invade and Occupy Egypt

General Sir Garnet Wolseley

Colonel Ahmed Urabi

     The Ottoman province of Egypt had gradually attained more independence since the Ottoman forces of Mohammed Ali Pasha drove out Napoleon I’s troops out of the former Pharonic state in 1805. The Sultan (Emperor) of the Ottoman Empire officially confirmed the special status of Egypt as a quasi-independent state in 1867. The opening of the Suez Canal however in 1869, the mountain of debt incurred by the Egyptian govt. in the construction of the canal, and threats to the strategic waterway from rebels opposed to the Khedive (Viceroy) of Egypt compelled British and French financial interests to take a greater role in the management of both the canal and the Egyptian govt’s finances. The British themselves acquired controlling interest in the canal in 1875 through British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s shrewd purchase of the Egyptian canal debt. This move provoked greater hostility to foreigners. A revolt by Egyptian Army officer Ahmed Urabi, ostensibly a member of the Khedive’s cabinet, exploded into a massive upheaval that quickly degenerated into armed mobs hunting and killing foreigners in the streets of Cairo. Responding to the Khedive’s calls to restore order, the British Navy and Army, in an 1880’s version of “shock and awe” launched a naval bombardment of the city of Alexandria, landed significant ground forces under command of General Garnet Wolseley, defeated the rebel army, and exiled Urabi to Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

Well Organized Islamist Rebels Threaten British Egypt

Muhammed Ahmed al Mahdi

The Hapless Hicks and his Staff

     The British occupation of Egypt was supposed to be of short term, but the need to secure the strategic Suez Canal by creating a stable Egypt compelled the British to remain indefinitely, but in much smaller numbers than their original invasion force. The British occupiers quickly set out to train the Egyptian Army in the latest European methods of war and began creating new units trained and officered by current and former European soldiers. A serious threat from the south however quickly tested the resolve of the new masters of Egypt. A Sufi Sudanese cleric named Mohammed Ahmed proclaimed himself “the Mahdi”, the promised Islamist Messiah who would rule the world just before Judgment day. The Mahdi gradually gathered a large number of followers, evaded bungled Egyptian attempts to arrest him, and quickly became a significant threat to the Egyptian administration of the Sudan. After locally led Egyptian forces were defeated by Mahdist rebels, the British-controlled government in Cairo dispatched the best of the British trained Egyptian troops led by a career British Indian Army Colonel William Hicks. Created a general in the Egyptian Army, Hicks Pasha (general) sought to engage Mahdist forces with an array of modern cannons and machine guns. Despite their British training, advanced weapons and European officers, the Egyptian Army disintegrated in battle near the town of Obeid on 5 November 1882. Hicks and all of his European officers were killed. The Mahdist victory gained the rebels significant new followers among the tribes of Southern Egypt and Ethiopian Muslims.

Major General Charles Gordon

     The British did not want to become involved in another colonial war and demanded that the Egyptians evacuate the Sudan and leave it to the Mahdists. British Prime Minister Gladstone dispatched veteran British general Charles Gordon, a colonial forces expert that had formerly governed the Sudan for the Egyptians in the 1870s and led Imperial Chinese forces in the Taiping rebellion to manage the evacuation of Europeans from the Sudan. Gordon exceeded his orders and attempted to rally support against the Mahdist revolt. He too failed and on January 25 1885, Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan fell after a siege of 313 days. Mahdist warriors killed and beheaded Gordon, and placed his head on a pole in their camp. General Wolseley was belatedly dispatched to relieve Gordon, but arrived two days late to save the popular Khartoum commander. Gladstone’s perceived inaction on defeating the Mahdist rebels cost his Liberal party control of the British government.

A Decisive Response to a Radical Islamist State

General Sir Herbert Kitchener

    Several further desultory British attempts with small forces were made to rescue Sudanese officials from Mahdist captors and influence events in the country. These half measures did not bring down the Mahdist state, now led by Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, who after the Mahdi’s death from natural causes proclaimed himself “Khalifa” (successor) and leader of the Mahdiyah (Mahdist state). This new radical Muslim entity practiced a ruthless interpretation of Islamic law much like the present ISIS group. Their continuing threat to Egypt finally compelled the British to act forcefully against them in 1896. British General Sir Herbert Kitchener was appointed as the “Sirdar”, or General in Chief of the Egyptian Army. Heartened by a Mahdist defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian Imperial Army at Adwa, and compelled to intercept a French expedition attempting the claim the headwaters of the Nile, the British Resident (unofficial Viceroy) in Cairo Lord Cromer authorized Kitchener to invade the Sudan and destroy the Mahdist state. Kitchener did so with substantial Egyptian forces backed up by British regular Army soldiers and artillery. Kitchener finally crushed the Mahdist Army in battle at Omdurman in 1898. Unlike at El Obeid in 1882, the Egyptian troops, well supported by British regulars and substantial firepower, did not break under a Mahdist attack 3 times their numbers. Kitchener’s forces rounded up the remaining Islamist rebels in the next year and returned the Sudan to effective Anglo-Egyptian control. This period of relative peace continued through to the formal independence of the Sudan in 1956.

Lessons for the West

      Radical Islamist states that threaten Western interests, and practice relatively barbarous methods of rule are not new phenomena. History suggests that local forces like the Egyptian Army of the 1880s or the Iraqi Army of the present can be trained to the best Western standards and equipped with modern weapons and still be completely defeated by ill-equipped, radical forces. Western officers in small groups as leaders and trainers with local forces, as Gordon and Hicks discovered, are also no proof of  success. Some Western regular forces, well supported by modern firepower in the form of artillery in the 19^th century, or close air support in the 21^st are required to stiffen the morale of local forces in the face of fanatical attacks.

     If the “Ghosts of Empire” like Wolseley, Hicks, Gordon and Kitchener were assembled to give advice on how to combat ISIS, they would not likely rely on airstrikes and advisors alone to defeat the current incarnation of the radical Islamist state. These measures may preserve the status quo but in the long run result in casualties, greater expenses and failure to achieve ultimate objectives. They might instead suggest a strong Western Expeditionary force on the ground to work in concert with Iraqi, Kurdish and Syrian forces to destroy this Islamist state before it gains a foothold on the Mediterranean coast, or in a repeat of 1885, occupy a regional capital like Baghdad with brutal disastrous results. As in the case of the Gulf War of 1991, Western military intervention should be cast as short-term, and in the interest of one goal without an indefinite occupation of Arab territory. Any nation-building in the aftermath of such Western action should be undertaken by the Iraqis, Kurds, Syrians, and other regional authorities.

     Half measures do not succeed any better in the present then they did in the mid 1880’s. Western states in concert or the United States alone need to dispatch a small, but heavily armed expeditionary ground force to Iraq in order to destroy ISIS before it can gain a window to the wider world on the Mediterranean coast, or capture and likely destroy a regional capital like Baghdad. The “Ghosts of Empire” demand no less than complete victory as the price of long-term stability.