Persian gendarmerie
The Persian Gendarmerie ( Dschandarmeri-e Dowlati - Gendarmerie of the Government ) was a military unit of the constitutional government of Iran , built up and led by Swedish officers , which was formed in 1906 after the Constitutional Revolution . The gendarmerie was subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior of the government. It was planned as a military unit commanded by the government and as a counterweight to the Persian Cossack Brigade , which received its orders not from the government, but from Mohammed Ali Shah and later from Ahmad Shah .
Founding history
The establishment of a gendarmerie as the central military unit of the constitutional government was decided during the second session of the Iranian parliament in December 1910. The decision was part of a comprehensive reform program aimed at recruiting Italian advisers to build the gendarmerie, US advisers to build a functioning financial administration and French advisors to reform the police and judiciary.
However, the Italian government refused to send military experts to Iran after Britain and Russia opposed it. As a result, the Iranian government decided to start negotiations with Sweden on the deployment of military experts. An agreement was reached in January 1911 and Captain HO Hjalmarson and two other officers were sent to Iran in June 1911. By the end of 1911, this advance division was reinforced by seven more Swedish officers.
In the meantime, Morgan Shuster had taken up his duties as Chancellor of the Exchequer and set about reorganizing Iran's public finance and tax system. In order to emphasize the tax assessments, Shuster insisted on the establishment of the treasury's own gendarmerie ( Jandarmeri-e Chazaneh ). Under the supervision of Colonel Merrill, a powerful force of capable Iranian officers and a thousand men was quickly built up, who strictly followed Shuster's instructions. Shuster also made before Kadscharenprinzen not stop, who for years had paid no taxes and sparked with his uncompromising approach a domestic and foreign policy crisis that led in November 1911 to his resignation and the dissolution of the gendarmerie of the Treasury.
Hjalmarson took over officers and men from the Treasury as the core force of the government gendarmerie. At the end of 1912 the gendarmerie already comprised 3,000 Iranian officers and men, as well as 21 Swedish officers. In the following year the force already had 6,000 men. Hjalmarson stationed two regiments in Tehran and one regiment in Shiraz . In 1914 seven regiments were already in use, two of which were stationed in Tehran and the remaining five in Shiraz, Qazvin , Isfahan and Borudscherd .
The construction of the gendarmerie was associated with considerable costs. Wages and armament were initially financed from Russian and British loans. Hjalmarson reckoned an expansion of the gendarmerie to 12,000 men with three million tomans costs, which corresponded to half of the Iranian state budget. In the provinces, the costs of the gendarmerie sometimes exceeded the total tax revenue.
First World War
The main task of the gendarmerie was initially to secure the highways. With the outbreak of the First World War , however, the gendarmerie increasingly took on the role of a regular Iranian army. Iran had officially declared itself neutral and initially avoided being drawn into a war between the Ottoman Empire and Russia.
After the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia and the fighting spilled over to western Iran, political discussions about Iran's entry into the war became more heated. The Democratic Party advocated intervention in favor of the Central Powers , while the Russian and British-minded politicians wanted the Entente supported. The political discussion also took hold of the gendarmerie. The Swedish officers were predominantly pro-German. The Swedish Major Pravitz, chief of the 3rd Persian Gendarmerie Regiment in Shiraz, met Field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz in Constantinople on October 19, 1915 . Von der Goltz was responsible for all military activities in Iran on the German side. Major Pravitz explained from der Goltz that the south of Iran was easy to win, that the English could easily be driven out of Bushehr and that pressure could be put on the rear connections of the English in the Persian Gulf. On November 10, 1915, the gendarmes, led by Major Pravitz 5, took control of Shiraz, arrested the British consul and all British citizens, and set up a new administration. The cash holdings of the Shiraz branch of the British-owned Imperial Bank of Persia were confiscated. The governor of Fars province , Ebrahim Qavam, fled from Shiraz to Bushehr. British troops had now landed there.
After a part of the Members of Parliament, before the approaching Russian troops from Tehran to Qom had formed had evaded a "National Committee for the Defense of the independence of Iran" against the Anglo-Russian occupation, ordered officers of the gendarmerie in Hamadan , Kermanshah , Sultanabad , Isfahan and Yazd have similar actions as in Shiraz. In Hamadan, Colonel Pesyan disarmed the department of the Persian Cossack Brigade stationed there and convinced the Cossacks to join the gendarmerie and fight for Iran's independence against foreign troops. Many Cossacks followed his call and went to the gendarmerie. Despite considerable effort, the gendarmes did not succeed in defeating the Russian army decisively. A retreat to Kermanshah became necessary.
In Kermanshah, in addition to the central government in Tehran, under the leadership of Nezam al Saltanah, a “national government” had been formed, which was committed to Iran's liberation struggle against the Russians and British. With German help it was possible to recruit a further 4,000 men and thus bring the gendarme regiments to 8,000 armed men. However, the gendarmes were only able to offer hesitant resistance against the 65,000 men of the advancing Russian Caucasus Army and in the end had to give up in May 1916. The Swedish officers went back to Germany or Sweden. The majority of the Persian officers and men withdrew to Baghdad . After a failed attempt to recapture western Iran with the help of the remaining gendarmes and the support of Turkish troops, the gendarme units stationed in western Iran disbanded completely. Many went back to their hometowns. Some also joined the Ottoman army or, like Colonel Pesyan, went to Germany and fought in the European theater of war.
The situation for the gendarmes also worsened in Shiraz. Ebrahim Qavam set up his own militia with British support. Captain Hjalmarson had to vacate his post as commander-in-chief of the gendarmes under pressure from the British and was replaced by Captain Nyström. He in turn handed over the command of the gendarmes from Shiraz to a commander who weighed in on the British and Ebrahim Qavam was able to return to Shiraz. Colonel Angman, the representative of the German consulate in Röver, and many Persian gendarmes who were considered anti-British were arrested. The deposed local commander of the gendarmes, Major Ali Qoli Khan Pesyan, and his cousin Gholam Reza Khan Pesyan committed suicide.
At the end of 1916 Percy Sykes reached Shiraz with the South Persian Rifles he had built . The gendarmerie division in Shiraz was dissolved and officers and men were integrated into the South Persian Rifles. Sykes took over 2,300 men in total. In addition, the weapons, barracks and administrative buildings of the gendarmes were used by the South Persian Rifles from this point on.
post war period
The units remaining in Tehran under Captain Nyström either behaved neutrally or supported the pro-British central government. They formed the core of the gendarme units rebuilt after the war under the Hassan Vosough government . At the beginning of 1920 the gendarmes again comprised 242 Persian officers and 8,150 men. The military command and training had been taken over by the three Swedish officers Gleerup, Lundberg and Lassen, who had stayed in Iran after the end of the First World War. Gendarmes were again stationed in all parts of the country. In February 1921 the gendarmes had already reached 10,000 men again.
The coup of February 21, 1921
The Persian gendarmerie was also involved in the putsch against Prime Minister Fathollah Akbar Sepahdar , which was organized on February 21, 1921 by Seyyed Zia al Din Tabatabai and Reza Khan, later Reza Shah Pahlavi , and which was mainly carried by the Cossack brigade . From 1919 onwards there had been a rapprochement between the units competing in all previous years. The majority of the Iranian officers of both groups rejected the leadership role of British officers for both the gendarmes and the Cossacks under the Anglo-Iranian treaty of 1919 .
The gendarmerie officers Kazem Khan and Major Masoud Khan Keyhan accompanied the Cossack brigade on their march from Qazvin to Tehran. The presence of these officers was intended to ensure that the gendarmes stationed in Tehran did not oppose the putschists. The gendarmes' regiment stationed in Tehran included officers like Major Habibollah Khan Shaybani who had worked with Reza Khan since 1920 and who were involved in the preparations for the coup. Hassan Arfa , captain in the second gendarmerie regiment in Tehran, played a decisive role in organizing the coup and made sure that his regiment did not offer any resistance against the Cossacks invading Tehran.
Prime Minister Sephadar tried to persuade the Swedish commander of the gendarmes Gleerup to take action against the Cossacks marching on Tehran. British officers managed to convince Gleerup that the Cossack march on Tehran was a rumor and that the Cossacks were only doing a military exercise.
The gendarmerie officer Kazem Khan became military governor of Tehran after the coup and Major Keyhan took over the Ministry of Defense. A state of emergency was declared in almost all major cities in Iran and the deputy governors and, in some cases, the governors were replaced by the local commanders of the gendarmerie. So Major Mohammad Khan Daranghi was military governor of Qom and Major Fath Ali Khan Saqafi Tuptschi took control in Semnan . In Mashhad , Colonel Pesyan arrested Governor Ahmad Qavam and sent him to the prison in Tehran. Pesyan even went so far as to proclaim an autonomous government of Khorasan in April 1921 after falling out with the central government in Tehran. In Kermanshah , Major Mahmud Khan Puladin arrested the local governor Sarim al-Dowleh.
So the winners of the coup were clearly the officers of the gendarmerie. They received important political positions in the central government and in the provinces. The only immediate winner from the Cossack Brigade who carried out the military part of the coup was Reza Khan. He became commander in chief of the Cossack Brigade.
resolution
Reza Khan, who was promoted to commander-in-chief of the Cossack brigade by Ahmad Shah after the coup, had received the title of "Sardar Sepah (Army Commander)". In his capacity as Sardar Sepah, he refused to take orders from Defense Minister Keyhan, an officer in the gendarmes. Orders for the Cossack Brigade came from Ahmad Shah, albeit directly. In order to end the conflict between Reza Khan and Masoud Khan Keyhan, Prime Minister Tabatabai appointed Keyhan Minister without Portfolio and Reza Khan Minister of Defense in May 1921.
As one of the first official acts, Reza Khan replaced the military governor of Tehran Kazem Khan, who had meanwhile been promoted to captain of the gendarmerie, with a Cossack officer, General Ansari. Captain Kazem Khan was initially promoted to Chief of General Staff, but was replaced a few months later by the Cossack officer Jahanbani.
As Defense Minister of the Tabatabai cabinet, Reza Khan developed the concept of a unified national Iranian army , the core of which was to form the Cossack brigade, and in which no foreign officers were to have a leadership role, be it Swedish officers, as with the gendarmes, or British officers, as provided for in the 1919 Anglo-Iranian Agreement . As a first step in the military reform initiated in mid-May 1921, the gendarmes were removed from the decision-making area of the Interior Minister, to which they had been assigned since their foundation, and assigned to the Ministry of Defense. Thereafter, the three officers 'schools located in Tehran, the Cossack cadet school, the gendarme officers' school and the military academy from the time of the Austro-Hungarian military mission in Persia were merged into a single, reformed military academy.
After Seyyed Zia al Din Tabatabai's resignation on May 23, 1921, the officers of the gendarmes under the new Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam finally lost their political support. Reza Khan also remained Minister of Defense in the Qavam cabinet. On December 6, 1921, Reza Khan announced the dissolution of the gendarmerie as an independent military unit and its integration into the newly formed Iranian army with Army Order Number 1. All Swedish officers were dismissed. The previous headquarters of the gendarmerie was taken over by Brigadier General Jahanbani.
Swedish commanders
| Surname | period |
|---|---|
 General Hjalmar O. Hjalmarson
|
August 1911 - February 1915 |
|
Colonel Nyström
|
March 1915 - late 1916 |
|
Colonel Gleerup
|
August 1918 - December 1921 |
bases
headquarters
- Tehran ,
Garrisons
See also
literature
- Eric Carlberg: På uppdrag i Persia. Glimtar från en trettioårig vistelse under solens and lejonets teck. Nature and culture, Stockholm 1962.
- Stephanie Cronin: The Army and the creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910-1926 (= Library of Modern Middle-East Studies. 11 (recte: 12)). Tauris Academic Studies, London a. a. 1997, ISBN 1-86064-105-9 .
- Stephanie Cronin: Gendarmerie . In: Encyclopædia Iranica , online, 2012.
- Mohammad Fazlhashemi: Swedish Officers in Persia, 1911-1915 . In Encyclopædia Iranica , online, 2006.
- Markus Ineichen: The Swedish officers in Persia. (1911-1916). Angels of peace, world gendarmes or trade agents of a small power in the late age of imperialism? (= Spirit and work of the times. No. 96). Peter Lang, Bern et al. 2002, ISBN 3-906769-22-4 (At the same time: Zurich, University, dissertation, 1999).
- Policing Persia - The Work of the Swedish Gendarmerie. In: The Times , December 27, 1913.
Individual evidence
- ^ Stephanie Cronin: The Army and the creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910-1926. 1997, p. 19.
- ^ Stephanie Cronin: The Army and the creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910-1926. 1997, p. 28.
- ^ Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz : Memories. Edited and edited by Friedrich von der Goltz and Wolfgang Foerster . Mittler, Berlin 1929, p. 424.
- ^ Stephanie Cronin: The Army and the creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910-1926. 1997, p. 41.
- ^ Hassan Arfa: Under five Shahs. Murray, London 1964, p. 89.
- ^ Stephanie Cronin: The Army and the creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910-1926. 1997, p. 52.