Coll 28/112A ‘Persia. Tabriz – Monthly despatches of internal situation in Azerbaijan & misc. reports.’ [‎591v] (1185/1237)

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return with safety to the villages, however galling or ideologically undesirable
this may seem to their unwanted and unnecessary interfering political officers.
The Persian gendarmes must be chosen from a different type, preferably from
the country areas instead of from the towns, as at-^present. I he police must be
better trained and paid, and made more self-respecting than the shabby
nondescripts who serve little or no purpose as things are. I he higher oiticiaj^
should be better chosen and given more responsibility, with less bureaucracy an .
centralisation among the lower officials. In the country districts there will have
to be more freedom and less bullying, whatever the bureaucrats trained on the
ex-Shah’s lines may think. The Farmandar of Rezaieh told me that the need for
local bakshidars, or sub-governors of country districts, has been seen and
discussed and agreed to by the Tehran authorities, but there are difficulties in
getting the scheme under way. Two such sub-governors have been appointed in
the Salmas district, but when an attempt was made to appoint one in a Kurdish
area the usual Kurdish intertribal jealousy immediately displayed itself, and
various chiefs came to Rezaieh to say that on no account could that^ nominee
control oiy present their particular tribes. Thus, on the one hand no Kurd may
be acceptable, and on the other no non-Kurd will think of accepting such a post
until authority is restored and a posse of gendarmes sent with him to maintain
it, neither of which conditions is feasible at present. At Sauj Bulagh (which is
in the Rezaieh Ustan) the Kurdish notable, Chazi Mohamed, continues to keep
order, with the nominal approval of the Tehran Government, by means of a force
of mounted men, and sanction has been given to the adoption of this arrange
ment among the Mamash tribes under Amir Azad, further west, but although
the Farmandar has sent a message to the latter he has obtained no response as yet.
16. I would add a few odd impressions which may appear disjointed, but
may have some bearing on what is written above. Along the roads every
gendarmerie post outside the town is a ransacked ruin, with even windows and
door-frames torn out, and I saw no gendarmes except in Khoi, Dilman and
Rezaieh, where there are police also. The two largest official buildings in the
main square of Rezaieh still show every window smashed from a bomb which fell
five months ago. There are only three doctors left in that town of 50.000
inhabitants as against twenty-five before the Russian entry. Some of the
twenty-two missing were military doctors who left with the fleeing troops, and
the others have recently fled out of fright, including some employed at the Govern
ment hospital. It is only too true what the Russian commandant said, that some
of the leading men in Rezaieh went away to Tabriz during the last fortnight or
three weeks leaving their wives and children behind to the supposed danger,
partly out of a herd-like panic and partly probably because it was cheaper to
leave them there. There are several Jews in Rezaieh, one of whom had his house
burgled and the contents removed in carts, without any interference from anyone.
One Persian official asked for an appointment to see me at the inn where I
stayed, and, when I fixed 7 p.m., declined to come until next day, saying that no
inhabitant of any standing went out of doors after 6 p.m. I myself went about
after that hour and found it was true, although there was no curfew and although
perfect order had admittedly been restored some days before by Soviet patrols.
In the village of Burashan, near Rezaieh. a well-to-do villager was recently shot
and killed by people on his own roof when he went out to see what was happening;
he was followed by his wife, his son and the daughter of a neighbour, all of whom
were killed one after another; the assailants then ransacked the house, forcing
another son to show where any money or valuables were. This sounds like a
Kurdish exploit, but there are such a number of desperados of various races
reported in the district that identification is almost impossible. Many of the
notorious “ refugees ” from the Caucasus are here as well as at Tabriz, and
some Armenians are said to have come from Erivan. It is also stated that many
of the Assyrians who had to flee in 1918 to Iraq are now profiting by the absence
of frontier guards and returning to their old villages, where they must fend for
themselves as best they can for a time. The Assyrian (Chaldean) bishop whom I
met during my stay, however, doubted this story, but, as practically all the refugee
Assyrians whom we installed in Iraq after the war were Nestorians, he may not
have come across them yet.
17. One afternoon during my visit I went out shooting near an Assyrian
villao-e and met some of the villagers. They seemed just as nervous as anyone
else" ^and two who had been in Canada pressed me to help them to get back, one