Qualla: Amara War Cemetery

Amara War Cemetery: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Hassan Hatif Moson says he took the job in 1977. For decades, he swept the paths and pulled weeds from among the graves of soldiers who died before his grandfather was born. Nobody paid him after 1991. Ba'ath Party officials threatened him. He kept working. The Amara War Cemetery, pressed against a branch of the Tigris in southern Iraq, holds the remains of more than 4,600 Commonwealth soldiers killed during the Mesopotamian Campaign of the First World War. It is one of the largest British military cemeteries in the Middle East, and one of the most neglected.

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Amara War Cemetery: A Hospital Town on the Tigris

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Amarah became a major medical hub during the Mesopotamian Campaign. Seven general hospitals operated on both sides of the river, treating the wounded who arrived by barge and animal cart from battlefields upstream. The Tigris splits into branches here, and the cemetery sits just ...

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Amara War Cemetery: Victoria Crosses and Friendly Fire

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Three recipients of the Victoria Cross rest here. Lieutenant Commander Edgar Christopher Cookson was killed trying to cut through wire hawsers blocking the Tigris during the Battle of Es Sinn in September 1915, climbing onto a dhow under fire with an axe. Edward Elers Delaval Hen...

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Amara War Cemetery: Salt, Stone, and Memory

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The headstones did not last. By 1933, salts in the soil had so badly corroded the grave markers that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission removed them entirely. In their place, a memorial wall was erected with the names of the dead engraved on plaques. A Cross of Sacrifice stoo...

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Amara War Cemetery: Kept by Conscience

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The question of who has been tending the cemetery remains murky. When the BBC reported on the site in 2003, Hassan Hatif Moson told them he had maintained the grounds for over two decades without pay, supported in part by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, founder of the AMAR ch...

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Amara War Cemetery: The Weight of Forgetting

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. From the air, the cemetery is a rectangular patch of order in the sprawl of modern Amarah, a city of several hundred thousand people. The grid pattern of the graves is still faintly visible, though the perimeter wall is damaged and vegetation has encroached. The adjacent Indian c...

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