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

74 Stephanie CroninBrigade to a Division. 68 The odium which the SPR attracted was a mirrorimagefor the British of the resentment engendered by the Russian militarymission, and the linking of the two forces in the Sepahsalar Agreement gavethe Iranian government the opportunity to oppose and demand the removalof both contingents of foreign officers.The Iranian government was still wedded to the idea of a single nationalarmy under Iranian control. They wanted Allied help to finance it, and wereprepared to accept that it be officered by neutrals, as long as such officersrecognized Iranian sovereignty, but they were resolutely opposed to anotherforce along the lines of the Cossack Brigade. For Iranian opinion, the establishmentof yet another such corps rendered the eventual creation of anational army even more remote and was one more confirmation of the defacto partition of the country into a Russian-dominated north and a Britishsouth. The government, although without the strength to reject outright theBritish mission to the SPR, yet temporized and procrastinated, refusing andresisting acceptance of the Sepahsalar Agreement.Iranian reluctance to endorse Sykes’s mission turned the SPR into the hubof a wider conflict between Iran and Britain in the years after the First WorldWar. The force took on a symbolic importance for both countries. For Iranthe SPR was a visible reminder of a loss of sovereignty and the creeping dismembermentof the country, while the British saw the success of Sykesand his officers as vital to imperial prestige and as a way of cutting throughthe chaos resulting from war, new and growing nationalist opposition anddangerous experiments with neutral officers.In the early stages of the SPR’s life, most of its commissioned ranks andmany of its men were former Gendarmes and Sykes and his British officerswere unable to eradicate their deeply-ingrained nationalist and anti-Britishsentiments. 69 However, it seems that the main difficulty facing the British intheir task of constructing the SPR resulted from the vacillating attitude ofthe central government and its underlying hostility. Ultimately Sykes foundit impossible to create a coherent corps and to ensure the loyalty of officersand men in the face of the passive, and sometimes active, opposition of thegovernment, and the bitter enmity of nationalist opinion. 70 After the Iraniangovernment in March 1918 publicly declared its non-recognition of the SPRand denounced it as a foreign force, Sykes’s work began rapidly to unravel.Within a few months the SPR was fighting for its survival against enemiesfrom both within its own ranks and without. Two serious mutinies shookthe Fars regiment, while the force found itself overwhelmed by a tribal insurgencyled by the anti-British Qashqai tribal confederation.The SPR survived its political, military and organizational difficulties solelyas a result of immense British pressure on both the central government andthe provincial authorities in the south. During these years the numericalstrength of the force varied considerably. Between 1916 and 1921 theIranian element averaged around 6,000. By 1920 the two brigades, in Farsand Kerman, broke down into 47 British officers, 256 British and Indian NCOs,