sudanese troops

One reason that the British harbor such a visceral hatred for Sudan, is that they have never fully recovered from their experience with the Mahdist state, which lasted from the early 1880s to 1898.
This was an independent, sovereign Sudanese state founded by a charismatic Islamic leader--an ``Islamic fundamentalist''--which treated the colonial British as no other state had done.
 The Mahdi, according to a commemoration published in the Khartoum monthly Sudanow (December 1991), ``was the leader of the first African nation to be created by its own efforts'' and ``laid the foundations of one of the greatest states in the nineteenth century which lasted for 13 years after his death.'' His ``greatest achievement was his insistence on a centralized state and his success in building it.''
It is no exaggeration to hear in certain aspects of modern Sudan's fight for national unity and sovereignty echoes of the Mahdist heritage, although the current Sudanese government has no sympathies for the Islamic sect which the Mahdi led. The fact that the Mahdist experience took place during the lifetime of the grandparents of today's Sudanese, helps explain how that heritage has shaped the Sudanese identity.Two other expeditions failed which were of immense significance to the British. In 1882, Egypt came under British occupation, and Britain ruled the Sudan as well, through Cairo. The two expeditions were those of Col. William Hicks and ``the hero,'' Charles ``Chinese'' Gordon, nicknamed for his success in defeating the Taiping rebellion in China.
Hicks, a retired officer from the Indian Army, was sent as chief of staff, on behalf of the Egyptian government, to halt the Mahdi. Equipped with a total of 10,000 men, Hicks marched from Khartoum (the Egyptian administrative capital) toward El Obeid through Bara, from the north. Among his guides, unbeknownst to him, were a number of Mahdist agents who relayed information to the Ansar. Suffering from lack of food and especially water, Hicks and his troops were harassed, their communications cut, until they were surrounded and attacked by the Ansar in November 1883 at Shaykan. When the assault started, Hicks's troops, organized in the British square formation, fell into confusion and commenced firing on each other. All but 250 men were killed, including Hicks and a number of British journalists. The massacre of Hicks's force was hard for the British to comprehend. Gordon is reported to have believed that they all died of thirst, and that no military encounter had even taken place! The fall of Shaykan led to the success of the Mahdist revolt in Darfur and Bahr al-Ghazal, and the continuing attachment of tribal units to the Ansar forces.