"سيستان، بلاد فارس وسيستان" [و‎‎١‎٥] (٦١٧/٣٤)

an !i m ju Ss W1 ! 1 ° f course s00n be made ^st a carriage road and then a railway a
and then, of course, the English artillery which will then decorate Koh-i-Madk
Tehran 111 ^ great Weight t0 ^ utterailce8 of the English Minister in
Tlie opening of this road has inflicted a great and almost irreparable
blow on Russian trade with Persia. Seistan and Kohistan, from the point of
view of trade, have up to now turned to India from where they received
ioreign goods by the Persian port of Bandar Abbas, Only the increase in
power of the Bam mountain robbers has forced the native merchants to turn
towards the north, and through Khorassan to enter into trade relations with
Russia.
4 That bond has not yet succeeded in becoming secure, and doubtless this
new and entirely safe road, purposely made so as to be free from impositions
(the Persian trade caravans, by arrangement of the English, are freed on the
whole load from every local impost and taxation), will break this bond a^ain
and for a long time. The loss of Kohistan and Seistan is not for us so
important as the possibility of a considerable entry of English goods into
Khorassan.
‘ By and uith v hat means are we to fight the English competition there?
About this we must think much.”
This gives a rosy picture of the Nushki-Seistan route, which, I am afraid,
is far removed from the actual facts.
Hie Russian writer talks of the guards protecting the caravans from
Baluch robbers, but Lieutenant Webb-Ware gives a very different account.
In his diary for the 1st May 1897, Lieutenant Webb-Ware says Raids
through the most westerly portion of my district are a matter of daily occur
rence. Only a few days prior to my arrival at Assad Chah, a party of raiding
Eamani carried off two camels and one man; the man escaped. I have just
received information that a kafila was attacked near Tuzghi by another party,
and two men killed, while a party of the same tribe actually had the audacity
to march to attack us; that they saw good reason not to carry out their
amiable project was a source of much regret to all.
<( These same Damani are Persian subjects and live in, and raid from,
Persian territory. I would respectfully suggest, under these circumstances,
that the Persian Government be taken to task for permitting the existence of
this intolerable state of affairs.
“ The Damani in all do not number a thousand men, so the plea of
inability to coerce them cannot well be advanced.”
Again, in his diary for the 16th May 1897, Lieutenant Webb-Ware fur
ther reports that the Pishin horse trader, who was given a letter to me by
Mr. Barnes, the Agent to the Governor-General for Baluchistan, as mentioned
in paragraph 1 of my diary for the week ending 25th June 1897, and who was
turned back by the Persians at the frontier after his long journey of 644
miles across the desert, suffered severely on his return journey.
Lieutenant Webb-Ware says:—“On his way back from Koh-i-Malik
Siah, near Tuzghi, he was attacked by a party of 15 Sirhadi raiders. Erom his
account it would appear that he made a most plucky resistance, and it was
only after being severely wounded himself through the neck, and after one of
his camels had been killed outright, that seeing further resistance futile, he
and his small party of six abandoned their property and fled. This incident
will give you a very fair idea of the assurance of these trans-frontier raiders ;
it must be remembered that Surgeon-Major Oreagh had passed Tuzghi with
his large escort but four or five days previously. I fear that we will find it
an exceedingly difficult matter to put down raids in a country which lends
itself so naturally to them. Nothing could possibly be more fatal to the
reputation of the lately opened route and nothing will exercise a more adverse
influence in discouraging others from giving the road a trial than the experi
ence which this the pioneer party of Pishin merchants met with.”
Lieutenant Webb-Ware does not mention where these Damanis came
from, but presumably it is from Sarhad, and the first thing, I take it, to bring
home a sense of their responsibility to the Persian Government will be a formal