The Persian Cossack Division, commanded by fifty-six anti-Communist White Russians, represented roughly a third of the armed forces and had received a windfall of arms and ammunition from the departing Russian troops. The Gendarmerie was reconstituted aft er the war from the two regiments that had remained in Tehran and stayed loyal to the government. It retained a handful of Swedish offi cers and made up another third of the Iranian military. The fi nal third was comprised of the South Persia Rifles and the regular army, which had been reduced to the Central Brigade in Tehran with approximately 2,200 offi cers and soldiers on its rolls, if not in its barrack.
A mixed Anglo- Persian military board recommended dissolving the Persian Cossacks and merging the remaining military forces into a national army based on the South Persia Rifl es under the Ministry of War. The gendarmes and other police forces were to be combined into a national police force under the Interior Ministry. Two of the four Gendarmerie offi cers on the commission refused to sign the fi nal report, however, and a third committ ed suicide in protest. The proposal died as Russian interventions in the north and problems in Great Britain combined to reduce London’s control over events in Iran.
Ahmad Shah and his ministers remained committ ed to the Gendarmerie concept, if only because some force was desperately needed to restore order. The Gendarmerie’s prestige was high among Iranians, and its officers maintained their anti- British att itudes despite the reliance on British subsidies. The British, also desirous of stability, overlooked the gendarmes’ nationalist sentiments and supported the rebuilding eff ort, even providing the service captured Turkish rifl es. The organization grew rapidly during the two years after the war to fill the void created by the Russian collapse in the north. By 1921, the force had nearly ten thousand offi cers and men organized into fourteen regiments and independent batt alions. Its recruits were all volunteers, and the offi cers were promoted from the ranks or commissioned from reestablished offi cer schools. The Anglo- Persian military commission reported that the Gendarmerie had “acquired an appreciable degree of effi ciency, and is probably the most useful force, controlled solely by the Persian Government, which exists in the country.”
The Gendarmerie was able to improve security along the roads and suppress banditry. It fared less well in military operations against tribal insurrections because of training and equipment shortcomings. Despite the gendarmes’ best efforts, order in the countryside relied on groups of dozens to a few hundred fi ghters belonging to the provincial nobles. Called sowars, these men were supplied to the nobles as needed by their village chiefs. Most were excellent horsemen and well armed but generally preferred to avoid direct confrontations. The sowars’ principal duty was collecting taxes for the landowner, but when not policing bands of thieves these men- at- arms oft en competed with the criminals by raiding caravans.
British Genocide in Iran: How the Colonialists Killed More Than Two Million Innocent Iranians?
