Battle of Broken Hill

An Afghan camel caravan in Australia, 1900

During the second half of the 19th century, as many as 4,000 Afghans were brought to Australia as camel drivers.[1] The Afghan presence in Australia can be traced back to 1860, when the Government of Victoria imported 24 camels from Afghanistan for use in the Burke and Wills expedition. Early European explorers faced great difficulties traversing the outback. Horses and bullocks, which had proven reliable on earlier expeditions in the bush, were rendered unusable by water scarcity and extremely high temperatures. Camels, which can travel for days without water and make excellent desert transport, were selected for such expeditions instead.[2] "Without the Afghans," journalist Bilal Cleland writes, "the exploration of central Australia would have been impeded, the establishment of the inland telegraph would have been delayed and many of the inland mining towns would not have survived."[3]

Upon arriving in Australia, the camel drivers established a series of informal settlements, colloquially known as "ghantowns".[4] In the 1860s, the Afghans built Australia's first mosque in Broken Hill.[1] By the 1890s, most of the Afghans living in the country were camel drivers, and they exercised virtually unlimited control over the camel driving business in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Central Australia. Most settled in Marree, Broken Hill, Alice Springs, Adelaide and Perth; all were men.[2] Since they were not intended as permanent settlers, they came to Australia without their families. Some went on to marry Aboriginal or socially disadvantaged and marginalized women.[1]

From the 1890s onward, attempts were made to prevent Afghans from working in certain industries. Efforts to remove them from the goldfields in particular led to much inter-communal resentment.[5] Tensions flared on 13 October 1894, when a White Australian bullock driver shot two Afghans performing ritual ablution at a watering hole, killing one and wounding the other.[6] The introduction of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, which formed the basis of the White Australia Policy,[note 1] reduced the number of Afghan camel drivers from several thousand to several hundred within a few years.[7] Historian Abdullah Saeed attributes their flight to the hostile atmosphere created by the policy. The sudden departure of many Afghans made it difficult for those who remained to retain their identity and resist assimilation into the dominant White Australian culture. Those who stayed behind were denied citizenship and experienced discrimination.[5] The advent of the automobile around the turn of the century further contributed to the decline and eventual demise of the camel driving business.[8]

Part of the rocky outcrop where the final battle took place

Mullah Abdullah was a cameleer and Muslim religious leader living in Broken Hill. His date of birth is uncertain. Authors Philip Jones and Anna Kenny write that he was born in 1850.[9] Other sources suggest that he was born in 1855.[10][11] He is believed to have been from Afghanistan or British India.[9] Historian Christine Stevens believes it is more likely he was from Afghanistan because he was literate in Dari, a variant of Persian that is only spoken in that country. He immigrated to South Australia around 1890. He may have come from a family of mullahs, a profession generally passed on from father to son and requires undergoing theological training at a madrasa. Abdullah moved to Broken Hill around 1899 and found work as a camel driver. He asserted himself as the spiritual leader of the town's small Muslim community and became the imam of the local mosque. His responsibilities included leading daily prayers and slaughtering animals al-Halāl.[10] In November 1906, Mullah Abdullah and another Muslim religious leader visited the Adelaide Gaol to read a prayer for the Afghan-born death row inmate Natulla Habibulla, who had been convicted of murdering his White Australian wife.[9]

Badsha Mahommed Gool was born in 1874 or 1875.[10][11][note 2] He was a Pashto-speaking Afridi from the Khyber Pass area straddling the border between Afghanistan and British India.[12] The region was under tribal jurisdiction and had a reputation for lawlessness and banditry. Gool came to Australia in his youth, likely at the turn of the century, and worked as a cameleer before leaving the country to enlist in the Ottoman Army at some point in the early 1900s. He thus pledged allegiance to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, who as the custodian of Mecca and Medina (Islam's two holiest cities) claimed to be the Caliph (or spiritual leader) of all Muslims. Gool returned to Australia around 1912, but with the decline of camel driving, he was forced to find work in Broken Hill's silver mines.[10][13] He likely lost his job in the silver mines following the outbreak of the war, which caused the demand for silver to plumet and led to many miners having their contracts terminated. While many of the other Muslims who were laid off enlisted in the Australian Army, Gool became an ice cream vendor.[14]

The Germans believed that the construction of the Berlin–Baghdad railway would give them access to the Middle East's plentiful oil resources and allow them to threaten British India. Given the Royal Navy's undisputed dominance in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, in the event of war, German military strategists proposed using Mesopotamia as a land bridge to provide arms to mujahedin in Afghanistan, who would then carry out attacks against the British.[15] A similar course of action was envisaged being implemented elsewhere. As part of this strategy, the Germans sought to exploit Muslims' perceived religious zealotry and stoke revolts in the overseas colonies controlled by the United Kingdom and France, and German officials publicly proclaimed "Muslim liberation from European rule" as one of their aims. Kaiser Wilhelm stated that he wished to see "the whole Mohammedan world" be thrown into a "wild revolt". Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, the Chief of the German General Staff, wrote that it would be prudent of Germany to encourage an "awakening of the fanaticism of Islam."[16]

On 2 August 1914, Germany and the Ottoman Empire concluded a secret treaty cementing their alliance. The Ottomans sought to recapture the territories they had lost in previous years, and the Germans reasoned that Ottoman gains in the Caucasus would force the Russians to divert troops from the Eastern Front.[17] On 29 October, the Ottoman Navy launched a surprise attack against Russia on the Black Sea coast. On 2 November, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, and the United Kingdom and France declared war three days later.[18] The United Kingdom's declaration of war effectively brought Australia into the war against the Ottomans as well, angering a sizeable portion of the Australian Muslim population. [19] On 11 November, Sultan Mehmed proclaimed a jihad, or holy war, against the Allied countries, calling upon all Muslims to carry out attacks against the "infidel".[20]

The attackers left notes connecting their actions to the hostilities between the Ottoman and British Empires, which had been officially declared in October 1914. Believing he would be killed, Gool Mahomed left a letter in his waist-belt which stated that he was a subject of the Ottoman Sultan and that, "I must kill you and give my life for my faith, Allāhu Akbar." Abdullah said in his last letter that he was dying for his faith and in obedience to the order of the Sultan, "but owing to my grudge against Chief Sanitary Inspector Brosnan it was my intention to kill him first."[26] Turkish sources claim that the letter from the Ottoman Sultan was a forgery, and that the Turkish flag found with the perpetrators was planted. It is claimed that the incident was attributed to Turks in order to rally the Australian public for the war.[27]

The actions were seen as representative of enemy aliens and Germans in the area were the focus of violence, as it was believed that the Germans had agitated the assailants to attack.

Souvenir hunters quickly tore Gool's ice-cream cart apart and scavenged the scene of the train attack looking for expended cartridges.[11] That evening, a crowd gathered on Argent Street. The townsfolk squabbled over whether the attackers were Afghans or Turks, and whether the attack had been instigated by the Germans.[28][29] On the evening of Friday 1 January the mob then made its way to the German Club on Delamore Street,[28] cutting the hoses of the firemen who came to fight the flames to ensure the building was completely destroyed.[26][30] The club had been empty since the start of the war, when all Germans living in Australia were rounded up and interned.[13] Singing patriotic songs and cursing the Germans, Turks and Afghans, members of the mob tossed stones through its windows, forced their way inside and set it on fire.[28] Someone shouted, "now for the camel camp!"[28] At 9:30 p.m., the police entered the local mosque and conducted a search, in response to allegations that a constable was being held hostage there, which were eventually deemed false. As they were leaving, the officers saw the mob approaching the ghantown.[28] The mob demanded to be given the assailants' corpses, but the police refused. They were prevented from entering the encampment by soldiers and policemen, who stood on guard all night.[29] Undertakers contacted by the local authorities refused to have any part in burying the two assailants' remains.[31] Following the deaths of the perpetrators, the Cameleers were offered the bodies so they could be buried according to Islamic burial rites. However, the local Cameleers refused to accept them as they stated they were angry at the actions of the perpetrators and refused to wash the bodies according to Islamic practice nor have them buried within the "Mohammedan" section of the cemetery.[25] There was no further violence against the Afghan community.

Those who orchestrated the burning of the German Club were never prosecuted.[31][29] In response to the shootings, the owners of Broken Hill's mines decided to terminate the employment of all their foreign-born employees. Attorney-General Billy Hughes argued that the attack demonstrated "the necessity for rigid supervision of all enemy subjects."[32] "The authorities' precautionary measures ensured that their killing rampage remained an isolated event in Australia."[33]

The next day the mines of Broken Hill fired all employees deemed enemy aliens under the 1914 Commonwealth War Precautions Act. Six Austrians, four Germans and one Turk were ordered out of town by the public. Shortly afterwards, all enemy aliens in Australia were interned for the duration of the war.[30]

On Sunday 3 January thousands of people assembled in Broken Hill to witness the funerals of the four victims.[34]

The Sydney journal The Bulletin published a burlesque of the incident in the style of German propaganda, suggesting the Germans lauded the attack as a victorious military battle between Turkish forces and recruits on a troop train. Supposedly the Turkish attackers killed 40 and wounded 70 (ten times the real figures) for the loss of only two dead. The parody was, for some reason, taken seriously by other newspapers, which published it almost verbatim as a genuine example of German propaganda. The story was picked up by international papers in the US, the UK and NZ. When clippings from the foreign papers filtered back to Australia in serving soldiers' letters to home, it only reinforced the belief that the story in the Bulletin was true. Australian newspapers revived the story as an example of German mendacity during the Second World War, and even as late as 1951 in Broken Hill's own Barrier Daily Truth paper.[35]

Three days after the attacks, a miner discovered three sheets of paper hidden underneath a rock, two of which contained the assailants' suicide notes.[13] Abdullah's note was written in Dari.[36] Gool's message was written in Urdu. In his suicide note, the latter pledged loyalty to the Ottoman Sultan:

I am a poor man and belong to the Sultan, the Sultan Abdul Hamid, in whose country I have been four times to fight. I have got no chance now to fight. I have got a paper from Abdul Hamid with his seal. The paper is in my belt. I will fight and kill your people because your people are fighting my country. This I am doing because I feel it so much. I have no enemies among you, and nobody told me to do this. I have told nobody as God is my witness and nobody knows except us two.[37]

Mullah Abdullah's suicide note offered insight into his motives, suggesting that he was motivated more by personal grievances than by religious extremism or nationalism:

I am a poor sinner in the sight of the Almighty, and I supplicate his mercy. I am a poor resident of this country. I gave another name for my own purpose. One day the inspector accused me. On another occasion, I begged and prayed, but he would not listen to me. I was sitting brooding in anger. Just then the man Gool Badsha Mahomed came to me and [we] made our grievances known to each other. I rejoiced and gladly fell in with his plans. For my faith and in obedience to the order of the Sultan of the Koran: but owing to the grudge against the inspector it was my intention to kill him first. Beyond this there is enmity against anybody. I swear this by God and on the Koran.[37]

Since their discovery, the authenticity of the suicide notes has been brought into question.[11]

In the late 1970s, Ayten Kuyululu intended to turn the story into a film, The Battle of Broken Hill. Initially she planned to direct the film herself but found backers unwilling to fund an unknown female Turkish director, so Donald Crombie took over as intended director. Her efforts were however unsuccessful.[38][39][40]

Nicholas Shakespeare wrote the novella Oddfellows (2015) based on this event.[21]

The battle is the subject of the song "Battle of Broken Hill" by the Sydney-based Celtic-punk band Handsome Young Strangers, found on their 2016 EP of the same name.

In 2014 the Greek Australian genocides scholar Panayiotis Diamadis noted that the attack occurred only a few weeks after the declaration of jihad (holy war) on 14 November 1914 by Sultan Mehmed V and Shaykh al-Islām (primary religious leader) Essad Effendi of the Ottoman Empire against Great Britain and the Allies.[41][42]

The Australian government refused requests to fund a commemoration of the event for its 100th anniversary.[43] A ceremony marking the centenary of the event was held at Broken Hill railway station on 1 January 2015.[44]

A 2019 Turkish film by Can Ulkay, Türk Isi Dondurma (Turkish Ice Cream) presented a highly fictionalised version of the story.[45]