HISTORY REPEATING: FROM THE BATTLE OF BROKEN HILL TO THE SANDS OF SYRIA
The Conversation
Oct 3 2014
It’s another hot Australian New Year’s Day, and 1200 people are
aboard a train bound for a picnic when a burst of gunfire shatters
the festive atmosphere. Police return fire, killing the attackers –
but not before four picnickers are killed and seven more wounded.
This is not a fantastic scenario: for several terrifying hours,
this was Broken Hill in outback New South Wales on January 1, 1915.
A century on, religion is still being abused for political purposes
by extremists. We have recently heard Islamic State (also known as
IS or ISIS) calling on Muslims around the world to attack and “kill a
disbelieving American or European … or an Australian or a Canadian
or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers”.
Those recent pronouncements have some echoes of the now
little-remembered 1915 Battle of Broken Hill. Similarly, the current
delays in protecting civilians in Syria and Iraq from the horror
unleashed by the IS – particularly the slow response of neighbouring
countries like Turkey – mirror the situation in 1915.
Then, as now, the world was acutely aware of the humanitarian
catastrophe that was unfolding in those same parts of the world. When
unarmed civilians were trapped in the Hakkari Mountains or the city
of Van, drastic action was required to save lives. Action that was
too slow in coming for too many.
The question now is whether we learn from history, or sit back and
watch more civilians die.
A call to action
The attack in outback New South Wales came only a few weeks after
Sheikh-ul-Islam, the Ottoman Turkish Empire’s primary religious
leader, declared a jihad (or holy war) on behalf of the government,
urging his followers to take up arms against Great Britain and the
Allies on November 14, 1914.
The sheikh’s declaration urged Muslims all over the world – including
those living in Allied countries – to rise up and defend the Ottoman
Empire. In part, his declaration read:
Of those who go to the Jihad for the sake of happiness and salvation
of the believers in God’s victory, the lot of those who remain alive
is felicity, while the rank of those who depart to the next world
is martyrdom. In accordance with God’s beautiful promise, those who
sacrifice their lives to give life to the truth will have honour in
this world, and their latter end is paradise.
Amanda Slater/Flickr, CC BY Click to enlarge
In modern parlance, Broken Hill could be classified as a “lone-wolf
attack”. The attackers were former Afghan cameleers named Badsha
Mohammed Gool, an ice-cream vendor, and Mullah Abdullah, a local imam
and halal butcher.
While the attack was apparently politically inspired, the attackers
confessed in notes they left behind that they were not involved in
any organised group or militia.
Remembering the lessons of genocide
Now, just as in 1914, Yazidis, Christian Armenians and especially
indigenous Christian Assyrians are being targeted in the name of Islam.
Just as it was in 1914, the 2000-year-old Christian presence in the
Middle East is threatened with extinction, even as we approach the
eve of the centenary of the 1915 Armenian and Assyrian genocides.
A century ago, the ideological forebears of IS targeted Christian
Hellenes, Armenians and Assyrians. Once the people were largely gone,
their physical heritage was targeted: churches, monasteries, schools,
hospitals, community centres, homes. Thousands of Christian holy
sites were systematically destroyed across Turkey, Iraq and Syria.
Just as before, religion is being abused for political purposes by
groups of extremists. Late last month, IS destroyed the Armenian
Church of the Holy Martyrs at Deir-e-Zor in north-eastern Syria, part
of their campaign to “cleanse” their “caliphate” of the presence of
“unbelievers”.
In a sea of inhumanity unleashed by IS, this was a particularly
barbaric act, as the Church of the Holy Martyrs and its associated
museum are dedicated to the victims of the Armenian Genocide.
The church served as a massive reliquary containing the bones of
Christian Armenians deported by the Ottoman Turkish Empire to the
desert wastes around Deir-e-Zor to die of hunger, dehydration or worse.
The sands in this corner of war-ravaged Syria contain dozens of mass
graves from World War One, the victims of a systematic campaign of
extermination by a government against its own citizens. The descendants
of the survivors are now part of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units
(YPG) militia of Kobane, including units of indigenous Christian
Assyrians who refuse to permit another genocide to occur.
Just as in 1915, while claiming to be unable to restrain the extremists
who hide behind the veil of religion, over recent months the Turkish
authorities have done little to help the international efforts to
confront IS, while permitting IS fighters vital access across its
borders with Syria and Iraq. This includes not doing enough to crack
down on alleged IS oil smuggling.
Turkey still denies that it has allowed the oil smuggling. But in
June, Turkish opposition MP Ali Ediboglu said that US$800 million
worth of oil from IS-occupied areas of Syria and Iraq had been sold
in Turkey. This equates to about US$1.2 million per day flowing into
IS coffers, according to industry sources.
While Turkish MPs have just voted to allow NATO to use the 60-year-old
Incirlik air base and potentially allow the Turkish military to enter
Iraq and Syria to join the fight against IS, it’s still unclear exactly
what action Turkey will take. Turkish Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz
has been reported as saying: “Don’t expect any immediate steps.”
Rescuing defenceless civilians
In World War One, small groups of specialist forces such as the
Dunsterforce rescued tens of thousands of Yazidis, Christian Armenians
and indigenous Christian Assyrians, placing themselves between the
largely defenceless genocide survivors and those who would wipe
them out.
The actions of men such as Stanley Savige (later Sir Stanley George
Savige) should be a source of pride for all Australians: individuals
standing up for what is right. Australia should draw inspiration from
such men in the long fight against extremism that lies ahead.
There have been enough parallels with 1915. Time to break the cycle
and save the fragments of Yazidi, Armenian and indigenous Assyrian
civilisation that cling to existence in Iraq and Syria today.
http://theconversation.com/history-repeating-from-the-battle-of-broken-hill-to-the-sands-of-syria-32146