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Mesopotamian campaign
Part of the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I
British and Indian machine gunners, Mesopotamia, 1917.
Date
6 November 1914 – 14 November 1918 (4 years, 1 week and 1 day)
Location
Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq)
Result
Allied victory
Treaty of Sèvres
Territorial changes
Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire
Belligerents
United Kingdom
India
Australia
New Zealand
Kuwait (1914)[1]
Ottoman Empire Germany
Jam'iya al-Nahda al-Islamiya (1918)
Commanders and leaders
John Nixon
Percy Lake
Stanley Maude †
Charles Townshend (POW)
George Younghusband
Mubarak Al-Sabah
Agha Petros
Malik Khoshaba
Kâzım Karabekir
C.F. von der Goltz †
Nureddin Pasha
Halil Pasha
Sulaiman al-Askeri †
Ali İhsan Pasha (POW)
Strength
889,702 (total)[2]
447,531 (peak)[3][4]
c. 450,000[5][6]
Casualties and losses
~85,200 battle casualties[7]
11,008 killed
5,281 died of wounds
2,341 missing
12,879 captured
53,697 wounded
16,712 died of disease 154,343 evacuated sick
Total: 256,000 casualties
~89,500 battle casualties
13,069 killed
56,000 wounded or died of wounds
22,404 captured
~235,000 deserted, sick or dead to disease
Total: 325,000 casualties[8]
v
t
e
Mesopotamian campaign
Fao Landing
Basra
Qurna
Shaiba
Amara
Karbala
Nasiriyah
Es Sinn
Ctesiphon
Umm at Tubal
1st Kut
Sheikh Sa'ad
Wadi
Hanna
Dujaila
Hilla
2nd Kut
Baghdad
Samarra offensive
Jebel Hamlin
Istabulat
1st Ramadi
2nd Ramadi
Najaf
Khan Baghdadi
Sharqat
v
t
e
Theaters of World War I
Europe
Western Front
Eastern Front
Romania
Italy
Balkans
Serbia
Middle East
Caucasus
Persia
Gallipoli
Mesopotamia
Sinai & Palestine
Hejaz & Levant
South Arabia
Central Arabia
Africa
South West Africa
Togoland
Cameroon
East Africa
North Africa
Somaliland
Asia-Pacific
Tsingtao
Samoa
New Guinea
Central Asia
Naval theatres
U-boat
Atlantic
Mediterranean
Mexican Revolution
German interventions in the Mexican Revolution
The Mesopotamian campaign or Mesopotamian front[9] was a campaign in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I fought between the Allies represented by the British Empire, troops from Britain, Australia and the vast majority from British Raj, against the Central Powers, mostly the Ottoman Empire. It started after British amphibious landings in 1914 which sought to protect Anglo-Persian oil fields in Khuzestan and the Shatt al-Arab. However, the front later evolved into a larger campaign that sought to capture the key city of Baghdad and divert Ottoman forces from other fronts. It ended with the Armistice of Mudros in 1918, leading to the cession of Iraq (then Mesopotamia) and further partition of the Ottoman Empire.
Fighting began after an amphibious landing by an Anglo-Indian division at the fortress of Al-Faw before rapidly advancing to the city of Basra to secure British oil fields in nearby Persia (now Iran). Following the landings, Allied forces won a string of victories along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, including repulsing an Ottoman attempt to retake Basra at the Battle of Shaiba. The advance stalled when the Allies reached the town of Kut south of the city of Baghdad in December 1915. At Kut, the Allied army was besieged and destroyed, later dubbed "the worst defeat of the Allies in World War I".[10] Following this defeat, the Allied army reorganized and began a new campaign to take Baghdad. Despite fierce Ottoman resistance, Baghdad was captured in March 1917 and the Ottomans suffered more defeats until the Armistice at Mudros.
The campaign ended with a British mandate over Mesopotamia being established and change of the power balance following the Ottoman expulsion from the region. In Turkey, elements of the last Ottoman parliament still claimed parts of modern-day Iraq such as Mosul as being Turkish, leading to Allied occupation of Constantinople. The British mandate over Mesopotamia later failed as a large-scale Iraqi revolt fueled by discontent with the British administration took place in 1920, leading to the Cairo Conference in 1921. There, it was decided a Hashemite kingdom under heavy British influence would be established in the region with Faisal as its first monarch.
^Slot 2005, pp. 406–09
^"British Army statistics of the Great War". Retrieved 30 November 2014.
^Erickson 2007, page 154.
^A naval history of World War I, Paul G. Halpern, Routledge, 1995, ISBN 1-85728-498-4, page 132.
^Erickson 2001, p. 52: "the British ultimately sent almost double the number of men that the Turks did in that theater".
^"Turkey in the First World War". turkeyswar.com. Retrieved 15 August 2016.
^Smith and Mitchell, p. 224.
^Mikaberidze 2011, p. 950.
^"Mesopotamian Front | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1)". encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
^Christopher Catherwood (22 May 2014). The Battles of World War I. Allison & Busby. pp. 51–2. ISBN 978-0-7490-1502-2.
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