Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces

5: Two Paths: The Birth of the Modern Iranian Armed Forces

FOLLOWING THE FIRST WORLD WAR the character of the two main contestants to become Iran’s dominant military force presented very different paths to the emerging modern nation-state. On one path was the promonarchy and authoritarian Persian Cossack Brigade, which had no tradition of being answerable to Iranian authorities or the Iranian people. On the other, the prodemocratic and nationalist Gendarmerie was allied to reform-minded liberals and had a good reputation from its battles against the Russians and British during the war. All things being equal, Iran’s earlier history suggested that the country’s modern armed forces would spring from an amalgamation of the positive and negative traits of these two forces. The catalytic impact of Russian intrigues and British dominance in Iran, however, propelled the Iranian military down the less promising and authoritarian path represented by the Cossacks and, in particular, by one Cossack officer, Reza Khan, the future shah of Iran. The subsequent unification of the armed forces avoided a potentially divisive split into two military services. Professionalism, sensible budgeting and procurement, and concern for the soldiers’ welfare, however, once again were ignored. Gendarmes and Cossacks As fears of Bolshevism grew in the West, Tehran was bullied by Great Britain into signing the Anglo-Persian Treaty of August 1919, making the country a British protectorate. At the start of 1920, Iran’s various military forces purportedly had twenty-five thousand men and depended almost exclusively on British financial support. The Persian Cossack Division, commanded by fifty-six antiCommunist 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 after the war from the two regiments that had remained in Tehran and stayed loyal to the government. It retained a handful of Swedish officers and made up another third of the Iranian 5 Two Paths The Birth of the Modern Iranian Armed Forces 126 Two Paths military. The final 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 officers and soldiers on its rolls, if not in its barracks. 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 Rifles 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 officers on the commission refused to sign the final report, however, and a third committed 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 committed 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 attitudes despite the reliance on British subsidies. The British, also desirous of stability, overlooked the gendarmes’ nationalist sentiments and supported the rebuilding effort, even providing the service captured Turkish rifles. 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 officers and men organized into fourteen regiments and independent battalions. Its recruits were all volunteers, and the officers were promoted from the ranks or commissioned from reestablished officer schools. The Anglo-Persian military commission reported that the Gendarmerie had “acquired an appreciable degree of efficiency, and is probably the most useful force, controlled solely by the Persian Government, which exists in the country.”1 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 fighters 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 often competed with the criminals by raiding caravans.2 The Persian Cossack Division had been undergoing its own transformation...