'Military report on Tehran and adjacent Provinces of North-West Persia (including the Caspian Littoral)' [‎268r] (540/610)

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lias dismissed the Swedes from their executive commands in
the gendarmerie. He has coquetted with the Russian Bolshevik
Minister, but Russian officers have not been re-instated in he
Cossack division, and his object may have been to endeavour
V) raise money and at the same time to conciliate him for fear
of a renewal of Russian aggression in Gilan.
In North Persia the situation has accordingly improved. South Persia
In the South, on the contrary, it has grown worse. During Disbandment
the last two or three years the South Persia Rifles had achieved 1>er8i *
real success in putting down brigandage and establishing law
and order. The British and Indian Governments, however,
refused any longer to provide funds for their upkeep and the
Persian Government, between sheer inability to find the money
and hostility to the force from its British connection, took no
steps to take it over. Its disbandment, commenced in September
and completed by November, was followed by an immediate
recrudescence of brigandage along all the routes to the Persian
Gulf, and British and Indian trade in these regions (temporarily
at any rate) seems doomed.
By the end of 1921 there were no British officers or troops British troop*
remaining in Persia with the exception of one Indian battalion in 1>ftrsia ‘
at Bushire providing detachments at Bandar Abbas, Henjam
and Qishm Islands, Jask and Chabhar.
The total eclipse of British influence in Tehran and indeed - Dec j ine of
throughout the whole of Persia to an extent previously unparalle- British and
led has been mentioned above. Russian influence, however, has
not increased in the same proportion. The Persians were ready fl ue nce.
enough to join in the anti-British tirade and to take Russian
money, but M. Rotstein’s efforts to foment Bolshevism in Tehran
were not equally successful, and by' August this part of his propa
ganda had waned. He failed also to save his Jangall friends in
Gilan. His comparative ill success may probably be attributed
in part to the deep-rooted Persian suspicion of both of their
powerful neighbours, which is being fostered by Nationalist and_
pan-Islamic imovements and by the idea of self -determination of
small nations, and to the conservative Persian temperament,
with its dislike of innovation, and in part to the famine in Russia
and a shortage of money. The Russians have, nevertheless,
made much progress towards the recovery of their old position
in North Persia. They have re-occupied their Legation in
Tehran and their Consuls have returned to the principal towns
°f North Persia as far South as Isfahan, and a Russian I oreign
Trade Representative ” at Tehran with agents at the Caspian
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