WI: Omdurman ended like Adwa?

Well, you could certainly make Omdurman a bit of a cock-up- Kitchener accidentally exposed his flanks to a Mahdist charge half-way through and Major MacDonald had to do a bit of fancy manoeuvring to prevent the enemy from exploiting the gap. If Macdonald isn't there, or is too slow, or the Sudanese troops he commanded were less well-trained, the Mahdists might have overwhelmed him, and then fallen on the British wounded and massacred them too. Kitchener would probably still have won the battle, but it would have been a pyrrhic victory with heavy casualties like Tamai rather than OTL's crushing rout.

Beyond that, it's going to be difficult for Kitchener to lose the Sudanese campaign. Omdurman was an entirely different prospect to Adowa; British troops were well led, well trained, battle-hardened and well-supplied, unlike Adowa's Italian conscripts straight off the boat, and the Mahdists were far less competently led and equipped than Menelik's lot. Even then, the Italians only really lost through their own stupidity and political meddling.

What you could do to even the score a bit would be to make the Mahdists more open to diplomacy. OTL both the French and the Abyssinians tried to make deals with the Khalifa but were rebuffed; while an agreement between Abdullah Bin Mohammad and Menelik is a bit like Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact-esque, Menelik was shrewd enough to try in an attempt to cover his western flank. A successful deal might lead to Italian rifles being diverted from Abyssinia to the Sudan, or even Abyssinian expeditions towards Suakim and Berbera to divert British attention elsewhere- it's probably still not enough though.

Ultimately, by 1898 the British really wanted to smash the Mahdists and were willing to expend the necessary resources to do so, to keep the French out if nothing else. If Kitchener was forced to withdraw at Omdurman, he'd just go downriver, build up his forces and try again a few months later. In the practically impossible event that he was massacred, the British would have another martyr to join Gordon and Lord Roberts or somebody would have come along to finish the job.

If you want to keep the Sudan an independent state, Omdurman is far too late a PoD. What you really need is three things; Gordon withdrawing unscathed in '84, a Liberal Government in Westminster into the 1890s (no Home Rule?), and the Mahdi surviving to stabilise his new state. Then you might just possibly see PM Hartington or somebody using the Mahdists as a convenient barrier to stop French expansion in Central Africa. Still a bit of a stretch though.
 
The Madhists would need much better tactics for this one--IIRC they charged massed machine-guns thinking they were bulletproof.

EdT's got some good PODs there, with the exposed flank and the possibility of Italian rifles from Ethiopia.
 
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