Coll 28/112A ‘Persia. Tabriz – Monthly despatches of internal situation in Azerbaijan & misc. reports.’ [‎553v] (1109/1237)

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it is evident that for the time being Persia has reverted to the old days of tribal
unruliness and insecurity.t.
5. I took this oppomnity to ask the Governor what was the sequel to the
killing of two Russians tty Kurds, of which he had informed me when I visited
him at Khoi on the 20th May (see the penultimate sub-paragraph of my despatch
Ko. 15 of the 24th May). He confirmed that the Russians took no steps to punis^g^
the killers, that they had chosen the way of negotiation. The leaders concerned
had been brought to Khoi to meet him and had agreed to return the stolen
animals. Now, he says, all is quiet.
6. Having thus, with obvious satisfaction, described the state of affairs in
his district the Governor spoiled the effect by confessing that when he had invited
the chiefs to tell them about the passage of the Persian troops through Khoi to
Rezaieh, one of them, the important Kotas Agha, did not respond. More than
that, his men pillaged a village in the neighbourhood on the 31st May, just after
the troops had passed. Gendarmes from Salmas had later managed to kill three
of Kotas Agha’s hfen (in some cowardly ambush, according to another informant),
and after some negotiation the Russians had permitted the Kurds to recover the
bodies. The Governor of Tabriz, who called on me immediately afterwards,
continued the story from this point. He had just received a telegram reporting
that Kotas Agha' was planning an attack on the town of Salmas itself, and
stating that the commander of the Soviet detachment there had given the warning
to the local commander of the gendarmerie. Reinforcements had been sent. It
hardly seems likely that the Kurds would attack a town where Russian troops
are quartered.
7. I mentioned to Mr. Kabiri a telegram which the Governor of Tabriz
received two days ago, and which stated that some Maku Kurds had begun to
pillage. Mr. Kabiri was not able to say much about it beyond the fact that some
Jalili Kurds, the same whom Reza Shah exiled to Kazvin and who moved back,
empty-handed, as soon as he had gone, were known to have started looting. But
he was anxious to tell me a frontier story concerning a Kurd, a Mullah Mahmud,
who lives in a village some 8 miles from the Turkish border. Being involved
in a feud with some other Kurds, he and his family invited relatives from across
the frontier to come and help them. A fight took place, and Mahmud’s side was
worsted. Some fifty animals were driven away from his village across the frontier "V
and sold in Turkey, but, more serious, one of the Kurds from Turkey was killed.
Mahmud subsequently received a visit from a Turkish bimbashi and two gendarme
officers, who, according to the Governor, offered to arrange that Mahmud should
have further help from Turkey against his enemies m Persia. The Turks
withdrew when the Kathoda protested against their intrusian into Persian
territory. The Governor’s deduction was that the Turks, or some of them, are
interested to feed the fires of Kurdish unrest in this country, but I think it more
likely that they were concerned to investigate the death of a Turkish citizen and
that if they offered help it probably meant that they would try to recover
the stolen animals. The story illustrates the state of disorganisation in the
frontier zone.
8. I questioned the Governor about smuggling across the Turkish frontier,
and he said that without doubt a great deal was being illegally exported, and
particularly grain and animals. The Russians were buying a good deal, but
more than twice what they were taking from the Khoi and Maku regions was
going to Turkey. There are tribes who have kinsmen in Turkey, and it is easy for
them to organise this traffic. The Governor went so far as to say that the peasants
around Maku had sold to the extent that they had not enough left for themselves.
Until recently Maku was in the district of the Governor of Khoi; now a separate
governorate has been set up, and Mr. Kabiri professed to be anxious to have j
Maku put back under his control. He said that he had told Tehran that unless
this was done he could accept no responsibility for the leakage into Turkey of the
produce of his district. I doubt whether he could do much, as things are, to stop
that leakage, even if Maku were in his district again, and I suspect that his
protest to Tehran was more of an intimation that they must not expect him to
do anything to remedy matters, rather than a genuine request for the restoration
of Maku.
9. It surprised me to hear a Persian Governor place the blame for the
trouble with the Shahsevans so squarely on the shoulders of the gendarmes and
their civilian helpers. Mr. Kabiri bluntly accused them of using the order to