Egyptian soldiers fought Sudanese kin of shared Islamic faith as cannon fodder for Britain

Evidence

According to Sanüa, Egyptian soldiers rarely found a fair fight in African wars. Either they were sent by the khedive to fight people who had never waged war against them, as Alï Effendi mentions in the sketch about Khulkhäl Aga, or they were used as cannon fodder in the front lines by their British commanders, as Sanüa insisted was common practice. If Egyptians fought in the Sudan under the British, an issue that Sanüa increasingly wrote about in the 1890s while the British parliament debated the reconquest of Omdurman, then they were taking up arms against “brothers,” a kinship that Sanü`a claimed originated in their common faith. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 488

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the Egypt-versus-Sudan comparison: Sanü`a frames them as common-faith brothers forced into imperial service, a distinctly Egyptian vantage on the Sudan campaign that contradicts British framing.
• QUESTION: Worth pursuing how far Egyptian rank-and-file actually framed Sudanese foes as ‘brothers’ versus how far this is Sanü`a’s rhetorical construction.