Coll 28/112A ‘Persia. Tabriz – Monthly despatches of internal situation in Azerbaijan & misc. reports.’ [‎557r] (1116/1237)

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Course of Events .—It is not possibie to give a reliable account of the progress
of the fighting. The villagers are unreliable, the Persian official almost more so,
the Russians non-communicative. I feel satisfied, however, that the Kurdish
^ittack fell first on some newly established gendarme posts in the Baranduz valley,
^ Ind that some of the Shiah villagers tried to help the gendarmes. The gendarmes
were beaten and the Kurds set about trying to make the Shiahs give up their
arms, alleged to have been distributed by Serhang Hashimi or obtained from the
Persian army last autumn. The most extraordinary panic set in and villages
were evacuated by the Shiahs with or without the firing of the first shot. Pillage
ensued, of course. But somehow the word went round that the Kara Sunnis and
the Assyrians and Armenians had nothing to fear, that they could “ stay put
and that word was sufficiently definite to enable them to resist the panic, and
even to dare, as many of them did. to receive the goods and cattle, sometimes
even the owners themselves, from the neighbouring Shiah villages. With the
Russian political officers at my side it was quite impossible to enquire just how
this intelligence got around with any hope of a useful reply, but I may be able
to discover the truth later.
The Kurds several times came on right to the outskirts of the town. The
last occasion was on the 11th May, when both the Russians and the local
gendarmes stood forth to meet them. In the fusillade a Russian soldier was shot
in the leg, but the Russians said it was a gendarme who did it, firing wildly, and
asked that the relatively untrained gendarmes be made to deposit their arms at
their depot and not carry them about. They undertook to maintain order and
their request was agreed to. Thus did the Kurds succeed in defeating and
disarming the gendarmerie, and it is a fact that since the 11th May they have
been quiescent.
Present Condition of Affairs—1 have nothing to add to my telegraphic
reports about the number of deaths and the damage done. As regards atrocities,
I would add that I still do not believe that even the one woman whose case was
mentioned by the Minister of War had her breasts cut off before she was killed.
I similarly doubt if there was a single case of rape by the Kurds, and I blame
Christian riff-raff for some cases reported recently. It is, however, true that
some men had hot irons applied to make them disclose where the rifles were, but on
the whole it would be difficult to imagine a greater panic, a more abject flight,
for so little killing. Only the unhealthy circumstances which I have described
in paragraphs 4. 5 and 6 can have produced the present results.
The important fact, however, as I have tried to persuade my Russian
colleague, is not that the panic was unjustified and the results exaggerated, but
that many thousands of people did, in fact, flee from their homes and are, most
of them, still in the town. It seemed to me when I was looking at their houses,
their fields and vineyards a week ago that, if only they would get back to work
at once, the damage" would by po means be disastrous. The Governor-General
was spending 50.000 rials daily among them. He said there were 48,000 persons,
and there were certainly great numbers crowded into that small town. I have
put the figure at 30,000 and in the absence of any sort of statistics it is a guess
as good as any other. There were reports of typhoid and dysentery among these
refugees, under a score all told, so that there seemed, when I was there, to be no
immediate threat to health; but the Governor-General’s dole was not sufficient
for their needs and they were killing off animals both for food and for sale; they
were also going forth during the day and cutting down trees, which represent
capital, and which, in any case, were not their property. The less worthy
elements were stealing on the one hand and trying to get a bigger dole from the
Governor-General on the other. Altogether the situation was unhealthy, and its
most remarkable feature was the absence of any suggestion of leadership from
the Persian officials, although every day’s delay meant heavy loss.
Despatch of Persian Troops .—The news that the Russians had agreed to the
despatch of a substantial Persian force caused excitement, especially among the
Shiahs and the Kurds. The latter responded with the news that their kinsmen,
now migrating from Iraq to the Persian uplands, were coming over “ like ants ”
to their* assistance. For their part, the Shiahs were already savouring their
revenge on the Kurds, a bloody one, and were by implication blackening the faces
of the Russians and their friends, since Persian arms were to restore that order
which, according to them, the Russians had deliberately disturbed, and which
even their best friends had to admit they had failed to maintain, although it was
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