War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and ... - Oguzlar.az

2 Building a new armyMilitary reform in Qajar IranStephanie CroninIn the early years of the twenty-first century the United States and Britainfind themselves, as a consequence of their resort to war, the resulting collapseof indigenous state structures, and their own post-war policies, onceagain directly involved in military reform and state-building in the MiddleEast. In Iraq and Afghanistan, US and British missions have undertaken thereconstruction of military and police forces, defining their projects in termsof building up local military forces to the point at which these forces wouldbe politically reliable and capable of guaranteeing domestic peace and security.In this, they place themselves within a tradition of Western-sponsoredmilitary reform in the Middle East which has a long and problematic pedigree.The nineteenth century saw a plethora of European military missionsarrive in the Middle East and North Africa from all the major powers, Britain,France, Germany, Italy, and Russia, as well as from minor and supposedlyneutral countries such as Sweden. The twentieth century saw a renewed eruptionof military missions, notably to Iraq and Transjordan, under the aegisof the mandatory system, while after the Second World War the United Statesbecame the principal supplier of military advisers, especially to Iran. The narrativebelow looks at the history of one Middle Eastern country’s experiencewith Western military missions, an experience which extended over a protractedperiod, and which was to have a profound impact on the configurationof Iranian nationalism.In the first decades of the nineteenth century, when the Middle East andNorth Africa first began to attract the sustained attention of European imperialismand colonialism, Arab, Ottoman Turkish and Iranian polities beganwhat was to be a protracted experiment with army modernization. Thesedecades saw a mania in the Middle East for the import of European methodsof military organization and techniques of warfare. Everywhere, in theOttoman Empire, North Africa, Egypt and Iran, nezam-e jadid (new order)regiments sprang up, sometimes on the ruins of older military formations,sometimes alongside them, unleashing a process of military-led modernizationwhich was to characterize state-building projects throughout the regionuntil well into the twentieth century. The ruling dynasties in these regionsembarked on army reform in a desperate effort to strengthen their defensive