[benbreen]

The article says that skeletal evidence suggests the presence of a harness and rider, so at the very least it was a mount for a soldier, if not an actual "war" camel in the sense that it fought in battle. Relatedly, true war camels actually happen to be a personal interest of mine! I wrote a bit about Persian experiments with mounting swivel guns on camels toward the end of this blog post:

http://theappendix.net/blog/2014/3/behind-the-rocket-cat-ani...

[prawn]

I remember a photo of my grandfather with the Italian army in Africa, alongside his camel. Must've been the war in 1940. It didn't occur to me at the time to ask in-depth about what role the camel played specifically. He seemed reluctant to talk about war there, though I got the impression that he hadn't played an aggressive role and had mostly been moved from base to base rather than in any front lines.

[fsniper]

I do not know about the harness, but Ottoman's used camels as food. They have strength and ability to handle long and hard journeys and they are edible with high protein and fat content. It's a great food source for a long running army.