'Military report on Iraq. Area 9 (Central Kurdistan)' [‎10v] (25/394)

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Christian villages of the Amadia district were systematically
raided, and crops and sheep were everywhere destroyed and
lifted. The Goyan, who were responsible for the murder of
Captain Pearson, and the Guli took part in the rising with the
Barwari tribes of Amadia, but when the British punitive column
approached the town, the murderers fled to Goyan territory. Our
troops drove the Upper Barwari tribes from the mountains north
of the town, and then turned their attention to the Guli and the
Goyan.
Operations were concluded in September, and though the
tribesmen had eluded us in the mountains, we had succeeded in
inspiring them with a wholesome fear and a conviction that the
rising had been a mistake, and that they had been beaten on their
own ground. By October all sections, and, with a few exceptions,
all the leading offenders, had tendered their submission. They
were dealt with leniently, the punishment meted out by the
troops having been sufficient. Having appointed our own
nominees to Amadia and Barwari, and having provided them
with means to maintain their position, the troops withdrew in
December to Dohuk, half-way between Mosul and Amadia.
The border then remained superficially quiet, but it was
evident that underlying this attitude there was a general spirit
of unrest.
In October, Mr. Bill, I.C.S., who had succeeded Colonel
Leachman as Political Officer, Mosul, proceeded on a tour of the
Aqra district, to which an Assistant Political Officer had been
appointed soon after the armistice.
The mountains north of Aqra are the home of the Zibar
Kurds, while on the left bank of the Greater Zab are the territories
of the Shaikh of Barzan. The latter and Paris Agha, the chief
of the Zibaris, are mutually hostile on account of assistance given
to the Turks by Paris to capture Shaikh Abdul Salim, the
predecessor of the present Shaikh Ahmad. Abdul Salim was
afterwards hanged in Mosul.
The attempt to hold the balance between these two resulted
in the hostility of both to government, and they provided
a fertile field for Turkish propaganda, skilfully worked by
Haider Bey, an ex-Governor of Van. By his agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. the quarrel
between Zibar and Barzan was temporarily laid aside.
On his arrival in Aqra, Mr. Bill was obliged to levy a fine on
Paris Agha for having sniped at our gendarmes. Another Zibar
chief, Babekr Agha, who was on friendly terms with Shaikh Ahmad
of Barzan, was also implicated. These two malcontents, enraged
at being so summarily dealt with, communicated with Shaikh
Afimad, who sent his younger brother and 20 men to the assistance
of the Zibaris. These, with Paris Agha and Babekr Agha
altogether about 100 men, ambushed Mr. Bill and Captain Scott
near Bira Kapra in November, 1919, and shot them