The Victory of Kut Al Amara

The World War I years...

The ancient lands of Mesopotamia...

In the Kut region along the shores of the Tigris, courageous Turkish soldiers put up an unrelenting struggle against the British army, one of the most powerful armies of the time. The Turks, whose homelands had been invaded by foreign occupation forces, made history on these lands with the power of faith God bestowed them.

During World War I, the Ottoman Empire was besieged from all sides. With each passing day, the Empire was crumbling further as our lands continued to be seized. Turks were defending their homeland on four fronts in resistance against this all-out attack. Upholding the virtues of independence and defending their motherland above all, the brave sons of Ottoman did not allow the British, commanding one of the world's most powerful militaries, to pass through the Dardanelles. Having suffered a disappointing defeat in the Western Anatolian front, this time the British set their sights on Baghdad. But, why did the British deem Baghdad so important?

The British coveted Baghdad for its rich oil fields. Furthermore, if the British were to capture the Persian Gulf, they would have achieved total control over the seas and establish a direct connection with India, which was a British colony at the time. And, of course, asserting dominance over the Arab tribes in the region meant a clear superiority for the British over the Ottoman Empire, which in turn, meant gaining total control over the region.

The British army invaded Basra on November 22nd, 1914, opening the Iraqi front. The British troops under the command of General Townshend began their advance towards Baghdad in July 24th, 1915. In response to this advance, on September 28th, 1915, the troops led by Nurettin Bey, the General Commander of Iraq, made a tactical withdrawal to Salman Pak (Ctesiphon) region, 30 km away from Baghdad. The British, unaware of the events that would unfold in the following six months, captured the city of Kut in a victorious demeanor in September 29th, 1915. However, this invasion period would only spell the beginning of a disaster for the British army.

Hard times were ahead for the British army that had set up a military base in the Kut Al Amara, which had been tactically evacuated by the Ottoman soldiers. The Ottoman troops mounted a counterattack and on December 5th, they arrived before the city of Kut Al Amara. Following violent skirmishes that lasted throughout December, on the day of December 27th, the British troops trapped inside Kut Al Amara were completely surrounded. From time to time, the British troops would receive support to help break the tight siege. However, munitions and supplies provided over the river were falling short. The British army was stuck inside the city, and the British troops were sustaining heavy losses in Kut Al Amara.

The inevitable demise was close at hand for the British forces surrounded by the Turkish army in Kut Al Amara. If the siege were to continue any longer, the already miserable British army would have faced total annihilation. At this point, the British spy Thomas Edward Lawrence, who was employed by the British deep state in its shady deeds only to come to prominence later as the Lawrence of Arabia, was dispatched to the region as a last resort.

 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA; A BRITISH SPY IN KUT AL AMARA

In April 1916, secret agent Lawrence was sent on a classified mission to Iraq by the British Ministry of War to carry out an operation in order to rescue the 13,000 strong British force led by General Townshend that was facing a siege in Kut Al Amara by the Ottoman army. Together with Colonel Beach and Aubrey Herbert, another British agent well-versed in Turkish language, Lawrence was ordered to offer an initial bribe of 1 million pounds to the Turkish General Halil Pasha, and he was to raise the bribe to 2 million pounds in case General would refuse, in return for the release of the British garrison under siege. Halil Pasha furiously rejected this offer of the British.

One of the major factors why the British deep state specifically chose Lawrence as the spy to bring a bribe offer to Halil Pasha in order to lift the siege of Kut al Amara was his immense hatred towards the Turks. In his letter sent to Miss Reider from Oxford on April 5th, 1913, Lawrence would wrote the following on his animosity against Turks (We exonerate glorious Turkish nation) :

As for Turkey, down with the Turks! But I am afraid there is, not life, but stickiness in them yet. Their disappearance would mean a chance for the Arabs, who were at any rate once not incapable of good government.[i]

The British secret service agent Lawrence carried all the telltale signs of the members of the British deep state, including his hatred towards the Turks. British author David Garnett, who wrote a biography of Lawrence, says that he was an arrogant person with a victim complex. According to Richard Aldington, Lawrence had 'pretentious egotism', was 'faked, boastful' and a 'homosexual'.[ii] In other words, Lawrence displayed the typical characteristics of the British deep state members.

 

THE BRITISH TROOPS SURRENDERED IN KUT AL AMARA

Resorting to all sorts of ways to end the siege of Kut Al Amara including bribery, all the British deep state's attempts came to naught, and after the 6-month siege, the British army finally surrendered to the Turkish army on April 29th. The Division Commander General Townshend in particular, a total of 13 generals, 481 officers and 13,300 soldiers were taken prisoners by the Turkish army. The defeat, which was reported by the newspapers as "the greatest defeat the British suffered besides the Dardanelles", sent shockwaves throughout Europe. This marked the only battle in the British history in which such a high number of soldiers were taken prisoners at a single siege. The British historian James Morris describes the loss of Kut as "the most abject capitulation in Britain's military history."

This second Turkish victory in the World War I following the Dardanelles greatly boosted the morale of our soldiers across the country who used their bodies as shields in the defense of their homelands against the enemy. This was such welcoming news, even the market value of the Ottoman lira went up.

THE BRITISH DEEP STATE'S METHOD OF PITTING MUSLIMS AGAINST EACH OTHER

During the siege of Kut, the British brought reinforcements from one of their colonies, India, just like what they had done in Dardanelles. These troops were mostly comprised of Muslim soldiers who were unwilling to fight against the Muslim Turks, their brothers in religion. On April 1915, soldiers from the 3rd Trans Border Pahtan Division of one of the Indian regiments openly expressed their reluctance to fight against Turks. On the eve of the siege of Kut, between July 17th and 19th, five armed Muslim Indians defected to the Turkish side. The interrogation of the Indian soldiers revealed that many Muslim Indian soldiers serving in the British army were intending to defect to the Turkish side.

The events that transpired during the Offensive of Osman Bey Hill attested to the fact that Indian soldiers were being forced to fight against the Turks. The British soldiers opened fire after the Indian soldiers who sought to defect to the Turkish side during the charge.[1] Over the course of the siege, 147 Muslim Indian soldiers took refuge in the Turkish region, while as many soldiers failed in the attempt. Those who had been unsuccessful in their attempt to defect to the Turkish side intentionally injured their right index fingers to avoid fighting. General Townshend was infuriated by the fact that there were already 500 Muslim Indian soldiers falsely claiming to be sick to avoid fighting Muslim Turks at the beginning of the siege . This situation warranted a solution, otherwise Britain was about to sustain a heavy loss.

 

The British secret agents once again came into play to persuade the Muslim Indian soldiers, who worked in the British army, yet received smaller salaries and food rations compared to their British counterparts, into fighting against the Turks. Many members of the British deep state, among whom were British female agent Gertrude Bell, agent Aubrey Herbert and particularly Lawrence of Arabia, were in the region with the purpose of compelling scores of Muslim Indians to fight against the Turks. The British resorted to the same tactic they employed in the battle of the Dardanelles and in order not to risk the lives of their own soldiers in the tough conditions of war , they used the innocent Muslim Indians who had been conscripted at gunpoint. They even went as far as to change the name of the battlefields to psychologically induce the Indian soldiers.

The British troops were preparing to advance from Aziziye to Salman Pak. This place was home to the shrine of the Salman al-Farisi, one of Prophet's (peace be upon him) companions who had fought alongside him in many battles. If the Muslim Indian soldiers came to know about this, they might have quit fighting against the Turks altogether. To forestall this, General Townshend renamed the city to its ancient name, Ctesiphon. The British deep state resorted to all sorts of deceptive methods to bring Muslim Indians whom they had forcibly brought to Kut Al Amara with the aim of setting them against their Muslim Turkish brothers and it caused the death of 23,000 Muslim Indians under the harsh conditions of war.

THE OTTOMAN COLLECTIVE ISLAMIC SPIRIT

In an attempt to bring down the Ottoman Empire from within, the British deep state pursued policies of instigating the Ottoman citizens against the central administration in Balkans, the Arabian Peninsula and India. In this way, they would be able to deal with the disintegration of the Ottoman in a quick and practical manner without having to put the lives of British soldiers in danger. By spreading radical nationalist propaganda among the Ottoman Empire over its vast area, the members of the British deep state fueled local dissent and revolts. The biggest aim of this propaganda activity was to invalidate the Caliph's call for "Jihad al-Akbar", meaning "the Great War". If the Indians and Arabs were to unite under the Ottoman banner, this would spell the doom of the Britain of the time. In order to prevent this, the deep state dispatched its spies all across the Ottoman geography, having already sowed the seeds of sedition to grow. The British spy Lawrence, who went by the name Lawrence of Arabia, and the female spy Gertrude Bell being in particular, hundreds of spies assigned to the Middle East by the British deep state were operating in the Arabic region between Baghdad and Cairo. The Kurdish and Arabic tribes resisted the British attempts to provoke the Arabs against the Ottoman. The victory of Kut Al Amara was made possible by the tremendous help from the Kurdish tribes as well as some Arabic tribes, among which there were those who were Shiite, which acted in concert with the Ottoman. Except from the Arabs under the rule of Sharif Hussein, the Emir of Mecca, there were no Arab revolts that broke out in populous settlements throughout the World War I. Arabs and Kurds fought alongside their Turkish brothers and were martyred in Dardanelles and Aydın. [iii]

THE VICTORY LETTER FROM HALIL PASHA, THE CONQUERER OF KUT AL AMARA

Having lived in peace and safety under the Ottoman rule and the Caliph's protection for many centuries, Arabs, Kurds, Indians and Balkan Muslims strove in a spirit of brotherhood to defend the lands of Islam from enemy occupation in the World War I. For this cause, Arabs, Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Albanians, Circassians, tens of thousands of Muslims of all races and ethnic groups were martyred, refusing to bend their knee before the enemy. The victory won in Kut Al Amara against the British army, one of the most powerful armies of the time, was one of those moments that the spirit of brotherhood and unity was strongly expressed. The order given by Halil Pasha, the great commander behind this victory, on April 29th, 1916 sheds light on the noble mental state of the sons of Islam who sacrificed their lives in the name of God, Islam, the homeland and the flag as follows:

 

To my army;

Lionhearts!

 

1- Today the spirits of our martyrs are ascending happily and joyfully in the sunny skies under which Turks achieved a glorious victory while the British suffered a heavy defeat. I kiss you on your pure foreheads and congratulate you all.

2- Praise be to God Who helped us achieve a success, which has been unprecedented for the last 200 years. And God the Almighty gave you the glory to be the ones who for the first time recorded such a defeat in 1,500 years of British history.[iv] There has not been a similar achievement in the World War, which has been going on for two years now.

3- My Army has given its 350 officers and 10,000 privates as martyrs while fighting in Kut and when fighting armies when they marched to save Kut. But, in return, today in Kut, I am taking 13 generals, 481 officers and 13,300 under captivity. English forces, which came to save this now surrendered army, returned with losses of 30,000.

4- Looking at these two numbers, what one can see is an astonishing difference. History will have a great difficulty to find words in recording this episode.

5- We saw the first victory in Gallipoli and the second victory here where the Turkish have broken the stubbornness of the English.[v]

6- This victory that we achieved only by the means of our bayonets and hearts is the beginning of our future successful ventures.

7- I declare this day the 'Kut Day'. May every member of my army recite prayers of blessings, Ya Sin and Fatiha for our martyrs and celebrate this day every year. As our martyrs live on in the Heaven, may our gazhis (injured heroes) stand guard for our victories in the future.

 

Brigadier General Halil

Commander of the 6thArmy

29/April /1916- Baghdad

A day sought to be erased from the memory, 29th of April the Day of Kut

The 29th of April is the Day of Kut. This is a day that is perhaps only remembered by our grandfathers, and sought to be erased even from their memories as well. But what did Halil Pasha, the great commander of Kut Al Amara, say in his victory speech? "I name this day The Victory Day of Kut. Every member of my army shall recite the Surahs of Ya Sin, Mulk and Fatiha for our martyrs in celebration of this day for the years to come. Yes, our Pasha's order had been fulfilled by the Turkish Armed Forces and that day was celebrated as "The Victory Day of Kut" up until April 29th, 1952 when Turkey became a member of NATO. However, the continuous remembrance of the Kut Al Amara Victory must have upset the British deep state; thus at the request of the British, immediately after Turkey's entry into NATO , this glorious victory was removed from the national education curriculum and the annual national celebrations were ceased. The purpose was to prevent the new generations from ever knowing about this victory, and to ensure that the elders forget it. However, this British deep state scheme is over as well, and now the Kut Al Amara Victory is enthusiastically celebrated every year on April 29th with grand festivities and recitals of the Qur'an.

Historical documents show us that the British deep state hasn't failed to resort to intrigue and cheat at every stage of history, deceiving people and sparking exhaustive wars. The mentality of the British deep state, which left 9 million people from various nations dead, and 30 million lost, maimed or injured at its wake at the time, persists even today. It is the schemes of the British deep state that dragged the world into war in the 1st and 2nd World Wars by tricking the United States, which advocated peace, and it is again the schemes of the British Deep state that turned the Middle East into a bloodbath today. It was the British deep state that convinced the US to occupy Baghdad by claiming that "there were chemical weapons there". From that day on, the bloodshed in the Middle East has seen no end. Hardly a day has gone by where the sun set without an attack, an explosion; without an innocent child being martyred. The British deep state has dragged the Middle East into a huge darkness, a major disaster, in pursuance of their ideal to become "the empire on which the sun never sets". The "mastermind", which martyred millions of innocent Muslims by raining bombs upon them and turned tens of millions of them into widows, orphans, refugees, invalids, injured and wounded to supposedly protect Arabs, to liberate and introduce them to peace and democracy, is the British deep state.