Egyptian conscripts fought and killed their own rebel relatives

Evidence

In the event, forty-five officers were shot in front of their soldiers. Eventually the rebellion was brought down by Osman Bey, the colonel of the first regiment, which was on its way to the Sudan. Heading a force of 500 cavalrymen and 3,000 infantrymen of the newly trained troops, he attacked the center of the rebellion near Qina where the “lunatic Raḍwān” was hiding. The shaykh fled to the desert and arrest warrants were issued to all provinces to catch him. In two weeks’ time the rebellion was completely put down with more than 4,000 people killed. This was the clearest proof yet of the loyalty of the new troops and the Pasha was greatly impressed by them knowing that they did not hesitate to fight the rebels who were sometimes their own neighbors or relatives. In one incident it was reported that one of the sergeants of Osman Bey’s regiment, when attacking a certain village found his own father among the rebels, and failing to convince him to give in peacefully, proceeded to kill him. On being informed of this incident Mehmed Ali wrote to the Director of the War Department, Mehmed Bey Lazoğlu, praising the soldier and promoting him to the rank of lieutenant. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 410

Categorization

• CANDY: The sergeant killing his own father and being promoted is a grimly striking anecdote.
• BMF: The state demanding a soldier kill his own rebel father strongly evokes the absolutist-loyalty dynamics in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four / We (Zamyatin) where personal loyalty must be crushed—worth chasing the resonance against the Zamyatin on the shelf.