September 2, 11.30 am: looting after the battle,[Khartoum 1898]- Attributed to Francis Gregson. The Royal Collection Trust.
In the autumn of 1898, London buzzed with jubilation. Major-General Herbert Kitchener returned from Sudan a conquering hero; streets thronged with admirers, and newspapers crowned him the avenger of General Charles Gordon, slain thirteen years prior in Khartoum. As the political elite prepared for royal celebrations, adorned in tailored suits and the scent of perfume, a different reality festered on the plains of Karari, north of Khartoum. There, beneath the scorching sun, the corpses of 11,000 Mahdist fighters lay where they fell, their decomposition filling the air with the true, unspoken fragrance of Empire. It was a stench that did nothing to interrupt the festivities or temper the honourable speeches back in London.
This adulation solidified Kitchener as a national icon. Years later, during World War I, his image on the Your Country Needs YOU poster would compel millions to enlist. Yet, amid the 1898 ordeal, whispers of momentary horror seeped into Parliament. Reports emerged of Kitchener’s orders: the Mahdi’s tomb in Omdurman bombed to rubble, his body exhumed, decapitated, and cast into the Nile like refuse. This act of desecration, meant to crush the Sudanese spirit, contaminated what one MP called “the civilizing mission of the English race,” making its work “even harder.” Kitchener’s insulting acts reached Queen Victoria, who decried them as un-Christian, but it did little to diminish her fascination with Gordon’s avenger. Kitchener continued to bask in glory and admiration.
The desecration of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi’s grave was no impulsive act but a calculated humiliation, stripping dignity from the defeated and erasing their memory. During the Battle of Omdurman on September 2, 1898, Kitchener’s gunboats bombarded the domed tomb, a sacred site for Mahdists who viewed al-Mahdi as a spiritual leader and liberator. Artillery reduced the dome to ruins; then soldiers dug up the body. Historian P. M. Holt records that the body was burned, while Keith Surridge maintains it was thrown into the Nile. The head was reportedly considered for a macabre souvenir—even an inkstand—before allegedly being buried in Wadi Halfa. Yet this act of desecration is conspicuously absent from the meticulously detailed, hour-by-hour accounts of the battle provided by Steevens, Churchill, and others embedded with Kitchener’s army; a telling omission from the official colonial record.
The Guardian covered the parliamentary debates in late 1898 and early 1899, where MPs condemned the “barbarous” deed as unworthy of civilized warfare. Queen Victoria, informed via telegram, expressed profound dismay. Kitchener offered a tepid defence, claiming it prevented the site from becoming a rebel focal point—a hollow apology. The Times and other papers debated the horror, though many excused it as necessary vengeance for Gordon’s beheading. Some liberals were angered, even some imperialists. But the broader public remained unmoved. Historian Keith Surridge observed that while some voices in Britain voiced their objections, “the public did not and Kitchener’s reputation, perhaps strengthened by his apparent ruthlessness, was instead enhanced further.” Ultimately, Parliament voted to grant Kitchener a £30,000 reward.
The Horrors of Technology
It was a matter of machinery. One Briton’s death justified the mass extermination of thousands, an imperial equation where life was never equal.
The Battle of Karari, known in colonial history as the Battle of Omdurman, was less a clash of equals than a mechanized slaughter, emblematic of colonial asymmetry. Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian army, 25,000 strong, faced Abdullah al-Taishi’s 52,000 Mahdists armed with spears, swords, and outdated rifles. Backed by Maxim machine guns, artillery, new Mark IV bullets, and gunboats, the British unleashed devastation. Waves of Mahdists charged valiantly but were mowed down; in hours, over 12,000 lay dead, 13,000 wounded, and 5,000 captured. The human cost for the British was staggeringly one-sided: three officers and 25 rank-and-file killed, with 11 officers and 136 wounded.
Winston Churchill, present as a correspondent, portrayed the carnage:
“Did they realise what would come to meet them? They were in a dense mass, 2,800 yards from the 32nd Field Battery and the gunboats. The ranges were known. It was a matter of machinery. The more distant slaughter passed unnoticed, as the mind was fascinated by the approaching horror. In a few seconds, swift destruction would rush on these brave men.”
This template of technological slaughter, serving a genocidal logic, is a grimly enduring reality.
This “victory” avenged Gordon’s 1885 death, when Mahdists liberated Khartoum, killing him against their leader’s consent. The Mahdi had wanted to capture Gordon alive to exchange him for Ahmed Urabi Pasha, an Egyptian anti-colonial military leader captured by the British in 1882. Following the massacre in Omdurman, war correspondent G. W. Steevens declared that Gordon’s life had been avenged with 11,000 lives. One to eleven thousand. It is the imperial equation where one Briton’s death justified the mass extermination of thousands of “savages.”
Forgotten or Not Worthy?
The “unequal life” logic of Omdurman echoes today, not least in the international response to Sudan’s current war. A war that erupted in Sudan in April 2023 rarely breaks through in mainstream media. Often dubbed a “forgotten war,” it exemplifies the colonial dichotomy philosopher Giorgio Agamben describes between protected “life” (bios) and expendable “bare life” (zoe), where Sudanese people are reduced to bodies outside political protection, subject to violence.
In Sudan today, this bare-life dichotomy manifests in the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, according to the UN, with over 30 million people in need, 12 million displaced, and famine ravaging entire regions. Yet global indifference prevails.
Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, has fallen to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after months of siege that pushed its population into catastrophe. Residents were driven to survive on animal feed sold at exorbitant prices, under famine conditions classified as IPC Phase 5. The UK remains aligned with the UAE, which has funded and armed the RSF, thereby enabling these crimes. The UAE, having learned from other geopolitical players, wields its leverage effectively, treating imperial impunity as low-hanging fruit.
Britain must confront the fact that a history glorifying Kitchener serves as a prologue to future genocides.
As American scholar Jeffrey Sachs stated on the Judging Freedom podcast with Judge Andrew Napolitano, at the outset of the current genocide in Gaza, Israeli officials declared that 50 Palestinians would be killed for every Israeli. It is Gordon’s equation: same maths, different figures. Should we feel relieved that the exchange rate has dropped?
Britain must confront the fact that a history glorifying Kitchener serves as a prologue to future genocides. His legacy, beyond mere military acclaim, must be complicated by the plain truth: he was an invader, an imperial intruder, and a war criminal. Kitchener was quick to apologize to Queen Victoria for the excesses surrounding the desecration of the Mahdi’s tomb. Yet, after 127 years, the Sudanese people have received no apology from the British government.
One massacre per nation is already too many. Britain must, at the very least, refrain from aiding and abetting the UAE in its destruction of the Sudanese people. It must stop shielding UAE impunity for war crimes and the deliberate engineering of starvation in Sudan. The Guardian‘s 1898 critiques demand revival. It is time to expose Gordon’s mathematics—and how it works.
