The Arabic word deen (دين)1 is often translated as “religion”, and it does refer to Islam, but this is not the same thing.

CHRISTIANITY AND “RELIGION”

The word “religion” derives from the Latin religio, meaning that which binds man to the heavens.2 In the pagan Roman Empire, this was about practice, not belief: “The focus of the term was on public, communal behaviour towards the gods of the state”.3 “Sacrificial offerings, the chastity of virgins, [and] the whole range of priesthoods” counted as religiones,4 and the purpose of offering these sacrifices and rites was to ensure the protection of cities from the wrath of the gods.5

Christians would adopt the word religio, but, in an instance that is far from unique, would turn it to an entirely new meaning.6 The Church was the sole religio for Christians with God, and the State was seen as a separate realm. Jesus had said, “Render … unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”,7 and Christians set out into the world with this understanding.8 The early history of Christianity, as a tiny sect suffering official persecution for three centuries, was the context for this, but the view did not change after Christianity triumphed in the Roman Empire. In the 420s AD, a century after the first Christian Emperor, Augustine contrasted the eternal and unchanging dimension of religion, the City of God, with the saeculum, a word initially denoting the span of human life that had come to mean the limits of living memory. Mortality defined the saeculum, a realm where the saecularia (secular things) were in constant flux as memory faded from one generation to the next, and in time death would take all things—men, the cities, the Empire itself.9

Christendom would split shortly after the millennium, with the Orthodox East and Latin West departing on variant courses. Yet in both there remained the duality of Church and State. Whether in harmony or discord, with one or other dominant, they were two separate institutions.10 The Papal Revolution would remake Latin Christendom to embed Augustine’s distinction between religio and the saeculum society-wide,11 and in the sixteenth century a second bout of revolution and schism would convulse the West that further sharpened the distinction. “By the end of the seventeenth century, it was … more and more common [for Western Christians] to confine religio and the religiones to the realm of the inner self”,12 to define the public space as “secular”, and, especially in the wake of the French Revolution that accentuated the trends of the prior two upheavals, Western notions travelled East.

It may seem obvious to many that an exhausted Continent after the Wars of Religion would want to remove religion from politics, to make it a private matter rather than an issue States fought over, but, as Brent Nongbri has so well put it, “the isolation of something called ‘religion’ as a sphere of life” that can be “separated from politics … is not a universal feature of human history. In fact, in the broad view of human cultures, it is a strikingly odd way of conceiving the world.”13 “Religion” and the “secular” do not exist objectively, irrespective of culture and geography: the worldview wherein reality can be divided this way is a historically contingent creation of Christian theology, institutionalised in the Latin West by the medieval Papacy.14

ISLAM AND THE DEEN

“Islam is not merely a system of belief and worship, a compartment of life … distinct from other compartments which are the concern of nonreligious authorities”, the late Bernard Lewis once explained. Islam “is the whole of life, and its rules include [among other things] civil, criminal, and even what we would call constitutional law.” Reflecting this, deen “conveys much more” to Muslims than “religion” does to Christians.15

The difference begins with the etymology. Deen is clearly related to the Hebrew word din (דין), and has cognates in other Semitic languages, Aramaic and Syriac among them, which derive from a root meaning “law” or “judgment”. The interaction in Arabic, by way of dayn (“debt which falls due on a given date”), led to deen denoting “custom”.16 (Some have argued deen is a Persian loanword, but this is not convincing.17) “What ties these terms together”, notes Nongbri, “is that they refer to social transactions, a far cry from the sort of private, internal, apolitical sense of ‘faith’ or ‘religion’.”18

“Deen” in the sense of “custom” would lead to the idea of “direction” (huda), as in a guide, the guide being God, and the direction being the suitable one for each person—linking back to the Semitic root of “judgment”. This is the framework for the Qur’anic term Yawm al-Deen (the Day of Judgment), when God will give direction to each human being, and the emergence of “deen” to signify “the corpus of obligatory prescriptions given by God, to which one must submit”, in the words of Louis Gardet.19 The close association between deen and islam (submission) was present early, in the phase when the Arab creed was an indeterminate Biblical monotheism. For the Ishmaelites or Hagarenes, as the Arab conquerors were known, the true expression of allegiance to God (the deen) was submission to Him (islam).20 The outlook would remain when what was by then an Imperial creed crystallised into a more exclusivist format—when, so to speak, “Islam” became a proper noun—around the ninth century AD.

The transition from the early creed—what the Qur’an calls Millat Ibrahim (the Way of Abraham)21—to Islam as we know it involved the generation of a Tradition that further “defined the obligations and prescriptions laid down by God” encompassed in the word deen, Gardet explains, and, while there was some contest about the details, these included: faith in Him; correct practice in daily living and worship, significantly following the example of the Prophet Muhammad and the Companions (Sahaba); and upholding the Holy Law (Shari’a), which regulates both the private and public spheres.22

As in Christianity, the historical context shaped Muslim understanding.23 In contrast to Moses, who was prevented from entering his Promised Land,24 and Jesus, who was crucified, the Prophet Muhammad was victorious in his lifetime. Muhammad was “the Seal of the Prophets”,25 and he was Head of State, with all that implied of enforcing the law, administering justice, making war, and making peace.

It should be emphasised, Muhammad and his Successors (Caliphs) did not create or give laws: Islam recognises no human role in legislation for God is the true sovereign of the umma (Islamic community) and the duty of His temporal deputies is merely to uphold God’s Holy Law.26 This is why, when the Tradition describes Muhammad putting his enemies to death, it reads to Christians as if they were enemies of Muhammad’s government and Islam, but the Tradition makes no such distinction. This complete fusion of what Christians consider “religion” and “politics” is what explains Islam’s pitiless treatment of apostates: to abandon the faith was not to make a personal choice; it was to defect from the umma, thus apostasy carried (and still carries) the connotation of treason,27 which until very recently all were agreed was a capital offence.

From this perspective, there is one sense in which “deen” conveys less than “religion”. “Religion” is intimately bound to the Church in Christianity, a whole apparatus with its own history, hierarchy, and sacramental role. There is no equivalent in Islam: the mosque is a building for worship and study, not an institution, and the imam, the “one who is in front”, is a functionary, not an ordained figure.28 (Shi’ism’s apparent exception to this rule is a very recent innovation.29) In classical Islam, therefore, to speak of “Mosque and State” is meaningless. Consequently, deen lacks the implied institutional meaning that “religion” has, and the languages of Islamdom—Arabic, Turkish, and Persian—were devoid of the pairs of words that signify the two realms: “religious” and “secular”, “sacred” and “profane”, “spiritual” and “temporal”, “ecclesiastical” and “lay”. It was not a deficiency in these very rich languages. Rather, the concept of the rival spheres did not exist, so no vocabulary was needed to describe them.30

SECULARISM AND ISLAM

Unlike in Christendom, where the pattern was countries containing religions, in Islamdom there was the deen containing countries. In Europe, the territorial unit—England, say—was the primary identity and the subjects could (eventually) have different beliefs about God. In the Middle East, there was some variation in political affiliation by territory—occasionally a local dynasty arose—and they were certainly aware of ethnic and cultural differences, but identity was defined by creed.31 There were Muslims, the umma with the Caliph at its head, and non-Muslims. That this classification was the only one that mattered can be seen in, for example, nineteenth-century Ottoman newspapers, which carried items such as: “There was an accident on the bridge, and one unbeliever was injured.”32 There was no polemical point being made; it simply reflected the Muslim assumption about the basic division in humanity.

Islamdom’s first experience with secularism was in the form of the French Revolution,33 which aroused some curiosity as it presented itself as non-Christian. The contemporary impact was minimal, but the long-term consequences, in inspiring reformers and transmitting the idea of nationalism, was very great.34 The first serious steps toward Westernisation, that is remoulding Islam along Christian lines, happened in the mid-nineteenth century, when the Ottoman Sultan was forced by the British to (nominally) abolish the jizya (non-Muslim poll tax) and slavery, and justified it in most Protestant terms by explaining that the words of the Qur’anic text did not really mean what they had for twelve centuries. Muhammad, it turned out, was an abolitionist all along.35 There were subsequent reforms of this kind, but discussing and internalising the justifications for them was hampered by an elemental problem.

Even as the notion of “secularism” began to filter into Islamdom, there were no words to describe it, and the vocabulary that did develop remains stamped with its alien origins. The Turks, interfacing for Islamdom with Christendom, were the first to encounter secularism, in the French Revolutionary period, and were then the first to apply it in the 1920s, creating a Republic that officially disestablished Islam. The word for “secular” in the Turkish Constitution is laik, a word obviously borrowed from the French laïque. The Persians also took in laik and adopted “secular” unadorned (سکولار). As Arabic is both a Muslim and Christian language, there was a word to hand for “secular”, “temporal”, etc.: alamani (lit. “worldly”). The word’s etymology and Christian roots would be occluded, and it would be revocalised as ilmani, but for many Muslims this did little to hide its foreignness.36

The turning point was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s decision, having directly remade Turkey as a Western nation-State, to abolish the Caliphate in 1924. This removed the linchpin of the umma, forcing upon the rest of Islamdom fundamental questions of legitimacy, allegiance, and identity, and did so at just the moment Western power and influence was at its height in the region.

Some, like the Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen), tried to bar the road, arguing that Islamdom had been brought low by too much “modernisation”, a thin disguise for Westernisation, which had taken Muslims very far from the authentic Islam that was the answer to the crisis. But the Brethren were contesting the laws of gravity in the circumstances. Most Muslim governments and intellectual elites took the opposite view, and in so doing—in arguing the disaster resulted from insufficient modernisation—they implicitly blamed Islamic rule for the backwardness. A brief liberal era dawned under Western tutelage and then Arab nationalism—hostile to the West but committed to Westernisation, a construct largely of Christian Arab intellectuals—swept all before it, until it, too, failed, symbolised in the defeat of the Arab war on Israel in 1967. After this, on the seventh day of the Six-Day War as some say, the long debate about what went wrong intensified in Islamdom and the Islamist prescription for how to put it right found more of an audience.

Islamism in its various forms—Sunni and Shi’a, Ikhwani and jihadi-Salafist, political and terroristic—shares the same core “objective of undoing the secularizing reforms …, abolishing the imported codes of law and the social customs that came with them, and returning to the Holy Law of Islam and an Islamic political order”.37 This was the central point in the writings and speeches of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1978-79, the first major victory of the Islamists, which has had an enormous impact in shifting the regional balance of sentiment and power against the modernisers/Westernisers.

Khomeini set out his vision in a manifesto a decade before the fall of the Shah. The argument, and charge, dominating the book is that Westerners and more particularly Westernisers, since Islamist ire has always been focused most intently on the internal enemy,38 have sought to limit the scope of Islam’s role in Muslim society, to negate the deen and shunt the scholars charged with upholding it off to the side, leaving them, like Christian clerics, to administer their houses of worship and speak only on matters of personal spirituality. It was this trend Khomeini was determined to reverse:

Do not allow the true nature of Islam to remain hidden, or people will imagine that Islam is like Christianity …, a collection of injunctions pertaining to man’s relation to God, and the mosques will be equated with the church. … God, Exalted and Almighty, by means of the Most Noble Messenger, sent … laws and practices for all human affairs and laid injunctions for man extending from even before the embryo is formed until after he is placed in the tomb. In just the same way that there are laws setting forth the duties of worship for man, so too there are laws, practices, and norms for the affairs of society and government. … All the voluminous books that have been compiled from the earliest times on different areas of law, such as judicial procedure, social transactions, penal law, retribution, international relations, regulations pertaining to peace and war, private and public law—taken together, these contain a mere sample of the laws and injunctions of Islam. There is not a single topic in human life for which Islam has not provided instructions and established a norm.39

Khomeini went on:

[Foreign “imperialists”] have tried with their propaganda and insinuations to present Islam as a petty, limited affair, and to restrict the functions of the fuqaha [jurists] and ulema [scholars, theologians] to insignificant matters. … The propaganda institutions of imperialism have whispered to tempt and persuade us to separate the deen from politics, that the ruhaniyat [Shi’a ulema] must not interfere in social matters, and that the fuqaha do not have the duty of overseeing the destiny of the community of Islam. Unfortunately, some people have believed them and fallen under their influence, with the result that we see.40

The irony is Khomeinism accentuated, rather than reversed, the Christianisation of Islam. The Revolution in its iconography was inflected with Marxism (a Christian heresy)—notably acting in the name of the “oppressed” (mostazafeen)—and in power the Khomeinists have created something unprecedented in the history of Islam, rule by men who can only be described as “clergy” in the Christian sense.41 All indications are that most Iranians have decided clerical entanglement in politics has gone too far and would like to try the secular remedy Christians adopted when they came to the same view.

The situation in Turkey is murky, though there are some signs of similar dynamics to those in Iran. In the Arab world, the trendline is much clearer. The polarisation since the 1970s has rendered the popular understanding of ilmani more as “godlessness” or atheism, even “immorality”, while those identifying with the word have become fewer and harder-edged in their attitude towards Islam.42 The attempt for a time to switch to “civil State” as a more genuinely neutral alternative has not been very effective, partly because it was closely associated with Egypt’s “Arab spring” experiment, which saw the Muslim Brotherhood elected and then removed in a bloody military coup, a sequence that satisfied nobody. The deeper problem is one that lexicography cannot paper over. What was apparent in the early 2000s, that secularism was “in a bad way in the Middle East”,43 that there was an increasingly “widespread Muslim rejection” of the concept,44 on ideological and utilitarian grounds, for being both alien and ineffective in reversing the socio-political decline, is even more true two decades later.

It is no accident, as the comrades used to say, that the most virulent form of Islamism since Khomeinism, the Islamic State (IS), emerged in the Arab world. When IS speaks of al-ilmaniyyun (the secularists), it uses the term virtually interchangeably with kufr (infidels, unbelievers) and murtadeen (apostates), and includes them on the list of subversives and traitors, with democrats and nationalists, who import and imitate Western ways that undermine Islamic society and the shari’a. The centrality of this belief in IS’s worldview is demonstrated in the movement’s reaction to the Gaza war. IS has exploited the increased space for antisemitism and Islamic militancy since 2023, especially in Europe and her daughters,45 but it has refused to embrace the populist and popular Palestine Cause as such, repeatedly condemning HAMAS and its allies and supporters as “nationalist” deviants, warring against Israel for the sake of the territory in former Mandate Palestine, rather than waging a jihad for the deen that targets Jews as part of a global campaign against infidels.

Marking ten years since the proclamation of the caliphate in 2024, the IS spokesman began his speech by saying IS’s greatest achievement was to have established a polity where Muslims were “governed by the deen of their Lord”, itemising the comprehensive system of State institutions that “spread virtue and suppressed vice”, and “demolished the idols of jahiliyya [pre-Islamic ignorance], patriotism, and nationalism”. The core of IS’s project, consistent with the Islamist movement since the 1920s, is to cleanse Islamdom of alien accretions,46 particularly those from Christendom and specifically secularism, and thereby restore the popular understanding of Islam to its (imagined) pure and pristine origins, thus enabling the restoration of the all-encompassing deen to govern the life of believers and the society they live in, namely a unified Islamic State for all Muslims.

IS’s methods provoke overwhelming revulsion in the Muslim world; the caliphal vision in principle rather less so. “The Islamic State … draws on, and draws strength from, ideas that have a broad resonance”, writes Shadi Hamid. “[Muslims] may not agree with the group’s interpretation of the caliphate, but the notion of a caliphate is a powerful one, even among more secular-minded Muslims” [italics original].47

ISLAM AND EUROPE

If secularism has not fared well in Muslim lands, what of Muslims in secular lands? The question of Muslim populations in Europe is a novel and recent one, emerging after the Second World War.48 What was not new was the source of the frictions encountered by the Muslim newcomers, which echoed the problems experienced by Jews, Christendom’s only minority for much of its existence. Muslims, after all, were being normal in their expectations of the writ of the divine. It was Christendom that had the strange perceptions on this front.

Christians had long used the term Ioudaismos as if it was a Jewish counterpart to Christianity, but what it had signified at those times when Jews used it was the Jewish way of life, the totality of what it meant to be Jewish: the language, customs, culture, and practices of a nation (ethnos) bound to one another and to a sacred territory centred on Jerusalem.49 The Christian offer of salvation by dissolving this distinctiveness and joining a universal brotherhood was more successful in the guise of the French Revolution, which provided a model that spread across Europe in the nineteenth century: Jews who set aside the Mosaic Law and other attributes of peoplehood could individually become citizens who followed the religion of “Judaism”.50 The backlash to this, Jews advocating a return to Ioudaismos in full, including a renewed drive to restore the Children of Israel to their homeland, would become known as “Zionism”.

Muslim migrants in the late twentieth century entered a Europe that in its own estimation had moved beyond tolerance—an inherently intolerant concept, suggesting a dominant group is putting up with certain things from minorities—to acceptance and equality. Works like James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough in the late nineteenth century had embedded the framework of “world religions”,51 a secular veneer on the Christian presumption that its values are universal, and “religious freedom” was the order of the day in the West, not least as a counterpoint to the half of Europe lost to the Soviet Union. Yet, as Tom Holland has written, this was exactly the problem: the notion “that all religions were essentially the same”, and that secularism “was neutral between all religions”, was a conceit “only those who believed in the foundation myths of secularism”, those who are products of Christendom, could believe.52 Western secularists in their own minds were treating all equally by asking, crucially without admitting what they were doing, the same price of acceptance from everybody: that they force their creed into the Christian mould.53 But the cost was not equal for all. Muslims felt the demand to undergo this Procrustean process as deeply traumatic—and understandably resisted it.54

The tension with Jews traditionally was between their particularism and the universalist aspirations of Christian States. The issue looked similar with Muslims in the early phase, when their numbers were small, the question being merely “integration”, i.e., getting the newcomers to accept Christianised perceptions of identity. The analogy with the Jews broke down fairly quickly, however, because the faultline with Muslims was not just their wish to retain their distinctiveness, but their rival universalism. Islam is a proselytising, “triumphalist” creed; its ideal is for all of humanity to see its truth. As Muslim numbers increased, and the second and third generations proved more “radical” than the first,55 the question of who should accommodate to whom became a live one.

The Muslim role in Western politics is increasing, in part through the Islamist alliance with the far-Left—the unholy alliance of the Black and the Red, as the Shah called this revolutionary force which toppled him—and more broadly as European Muslims gain proficiency in navigating a democracy. The “Muslim vote” is no longer ignorable in many countries, and between elections Muslims have availed themselves of all the usual means of influencing policy: forming organised elites to engage the State, communal mobilisation, turning economic power to political ends, sectional lobbying, securing representation across civil society, and the rest of it. This increasing Muslim assertiveness comes as Western hegemony fades, and with it the illusion that Christian assumptions are the norms of mankind.56 The loss of Western self-confidence that caused this retreat abroad infuses the approach domestically, a policy of the pre-emptive cringe.57

“Islam and Islamic values now have a level of immunity from comment and criticism in the Western world that Christianity has lost and Judaism has never had.” When Bernard Lewis said that nearly twenty years ago, the West had already been living under a de facto Islamic blasphemy law for some time. Left-wing anti-religious iconoclasm, once a powerful force in Western politics, has been replaced with a concern for Islamic sensitivities that extends even to a suffocating ambiguity about the morality of massacring the Charlie Hebdo staff. In the collision between the post-1945 Western taboo on antisemitism, and the prevalence of antisemitism among Muslims, it is the former that has given way. If some Muslims have the sense that it will be “third time lucky”, that demography and migration will accomplish what was thwarted at Tours and Vienna, one must grant that they have come by the perception honestly.

Such an outcome is by no means certain. There are countervailing indicators. Some younger Muslims have gone as far as joining with their non-Muslim counterparts in defining themselves primarily by Left-wing politics, including the social liberalism. Muslims rejecting Islam, even implicitly, is a fringe phenomenon and likely to remain so, but it is an interesting data point. The most remarkable thing is how many Muslims have internalised the idea of “the secular”, reshaping their identity from being part of an umma following the deen to being citizens of European countries who have a “religion”. Perhaps this will become the dominant perception of the faith and resolve the “integration” question. While it seems unlikely in the lifetime of anybody reading this given Islam’s exceptional resistance to secularisation, it remains a possibility. Another option, if neither side can reshape the other in its image, is the perpetuation of some version of the status quo, with Islam as an undigested component of Western societies, the stresses and strains of the relationship in various phases more and less visible and severe.

CONCLUSION

The main point I hope to have carried is that to translate deen as “religion” is an error. “Religion” is inadequate and misleading, projecting Christian assumptions onto a phenomenon born of a civilisation where such assumptions do not apply. A better one-word translation of deen would be “lifeway”.

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FOOTNOTES

The argument over whether what happened to the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16 constitutes genocide is the subject of a forthcoming post. Putting that article together has proven to be partly an engagement with the changing state of academic and public opinion in the West, which has now overwhelming settled on the conclusion that genocide is the correct description. A brief sketch of this intellectual history seemed interesting enough for a standalone piece.

THE EARLY HISTORY

Politics has loomed large over this subject from the beginning. There was significant Entente propaganda related to the Armenian massacres during the First World War. Britain was particularly prominent in this: one intelligence operative, Arnold Toynbee, produced The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (a.k.a. “The Blue Book”) in 1916,1 which expressed the genuine British outrage at the calamities inflicted on the Ottoman Christians, but also had an eye on drawing the United States into the war.2 This was among the reasons Entente propaganda also often blamed Germany as much as the nationalist Ottoman government of the Young Turks or Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).3 The attempt to prosecute accused CUP war criminals in 1919-20 was by the virulently anti-CUP post-war Turkish government that operated under Allied occupation and had political incentives to produce “legal” findings that vindicated Allied wartime propaganda,4 an objective made easier by the procedures in no way resembling fair trials.5 Toynbee’s work and the newspaper reports of the Constantinople trials are still cited as primary sources.

The other main public works around this time were memoirs, from diplomats (most prominently, the U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Henry Morgenthau6), missionaries, Armenian survivors, and other eyewitnesses—or alleged eyewitnesses. Because another important phenomenon after the Great War was Armenian revolutionaries and activists fabricating luridly incriminating documentary testimony to influence Western opinion and policy towards Turkey, including the infamous Naim-Andonian Documents that contain forged telegrams purportedly from Ottoman Interior Minister Talat Pasha explicitly ordering the annihilation of the Armenians.7 Once the political contestation over the post-war settlement had ended in the early 1920s, there was a precipitate fading of interest as Europe retreated into itself and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk worked to embed his secular revolution in Turkey.

There was some revival of interest in the 1940s, again for political reasons, when activists and statesmen, in the shadow of the Holocaust, were pushing to encode genocide in “international law”.8 Indeed, Raphael Lemkin, coiner of the word “genocide” in 1944, was influenced by the Armenian case and saw it plainly as an example, though this is complicated because what Lemkin meant by genocide and the actual definition in the Genocide Convention are clean different things. The Convention was precise in defining genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such”. Lemkin’s concept of genocide was far more amorphous, incorporating not only violence against property, such as churches and libraries, which he termed “cultural genocide”, but social processes like assimilation.9

THE COLD WAR

Aggressive Soviet designs against Turkey from the late 1940s into the 1950s prompted further interest in the Armenian Question. Moscow had prevailed in the Second World War, conquering much of Eastern Europe from its former Nazi ally, and then set about conquests further afield. The Soviets tried military means in places like Iran, Greece, and Korea, and political means elsewhere, notably in Turkey.

The Soviets wanted to “revise”—read: control—the situation on the Turkish Straits, the Dardanelles and Bosporus, and the Armenians were Moscow’s chosen lever. In 1946, the Soviets initiated a global active measures campaign to present the “Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic” as the fulfilment of Armenian national aspirations, mobilising a massive wave of “repatriation” (nerkaght),10 then made territorial claims in eastern Turkey by proclaiming these were “Armenian historical lands” that should be added to Soviet Armenia and re-populated with Armenians.11 It was against this backdrop that a rare book on 1915 was published in Turkey, The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question (1950), by one of the few surviving prominent CUP officials, Esat Uras, effectively arguing the Russians were at it again in using the Armenians to try to dismember the Turkish State.12

Turkey joining NATO in 1952 forced Moscow Centre to adjust its methods of political warfare, turning away from the Armenian heartlands to the diaspora. The Soviets landed on the nascent Armenian genocide-recognition campaign as a mechanism to instrumentalise the Armenian diaspora, especially in the United States.13 It is impossible to imagine that the Cold War context, where Turkey was “a valued associate of the United States”, had no influence on the general aversion of Western elites to discussing the Armenian massacres up to the 1960s, and the view of academic historians who dealt with 1915 that it was as an “unrelieved tragedy”, which came about because of the Ottoman belief the State faced an existential crisis due to the internal Armenian rebellion in alliance with the invading Russians, a belief “doubtless greatly exaggerated, but [with] enough basis in fact” that nobody could say they would not have done the same to “save themselves” in similar circumstances.14

As previously explained:

[The Soviets encouraging the genocide-recognition movement] created some minor initial difficulties within Soviet Armenia, but the Soviet Revolution’s official theology had adapted to incorporate the “national liberation movements” within the Third World Strategy, and it was easy enough to channel Armenian national sentiment into this program. Space was made for Soviet Armenian publications arguing that 1915 was genocide, and these books, translated into English and other Western languages, circulated in Armenian émigré activist circles. These works were foundational to the movement that would in time pressure Western legislatures to recognise Turkey as guilty of genocide, and in parallel emerged Armenian terrorist organisations that targeted Turkish diplomats and civilians in the name of revenge for the genocide and forcing Ankara to abandon its policy of “denial”.

The two main terrorist groups were the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG), later rebranded the Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA), the “deniable” terrorist wing of the Dashnaks,15 one of the nationalist-socialist revolutionary groups that led the 1914-15 rebellion in the Ottoman Empire, and the Soviets’ Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).16 It was the activities of these terrorists in particular and ASALA specifically, in the early 1970s, the success of their “propaganda of the deed” amid the chic for the “guerrilla” or fedayeen embodied in the Soviet-dependent Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), that brought the Armenian massacres back into the international discussion in a serious way. The heightened interest, and focusing of resources, paved the way for the genocide-recognition movement to gain a foothold in academia—and, of course, triggered the counter-campaign by the Turkish government,17 to smother a too-long-delayed confrontation with the truth or to combat a scandalous libel, as one prefers.

Two of the prime movers in setting up the Western academic infrastructure of Armenian genocide-recognition were Richard G. Hovannisian and Vahakn Dadrian, both Armenian-Americans. Hovannisian was born in California in 1932 to a father who survived the deportations. Dadrian was born in Constantinople in 1926 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1947. Both were involved in Armenian diaspora politics, a milieu where the institutions—from youth groups up to lobby organisations like the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA)—are affiliated with the Dashnaks. It was moving in such circles Hovannisian met his academic mentor, Simon Vratsian, the last Prime Minister of the short-lived, Dashnak-led First Armenian Republic (1918-20), and Dadrian became closely associated with the Zoryan Institute, which is not a Dashnak institution, exactly, but it did have among its founders Gerard Libaridian, a hereditary member of the Dashnak Party.

A lot of the Armenian literature on 1915 available in the early 1970s was either the Soviet historiography itself, by authors like E. K. Sarkissian and R. G. Sahakian, or was derivative of these works and shaped by their methods. What Hovannisian and Dadrian wanted to do was create an academic corpus making the genocide case in a format respectable by Western standards. The dynamics in the Armenian diaspora would assist in this. As Libaridian later noted, there was a significant Armenian cultural upwelling from the 1970s onwards, which overall sharpened a collective identity, but it was a minefield trying to focus on specifics. The one issue that united everyone—the church, religious dissidents, the Dashnaks, the anti-Dashnak nationalists, the Communists who believed Soviet Armenia was the sole legitimate vehicle of national aspirations—was advocating for recognition of the genocide. Libaridian found this somewhat stifling: he had wanted the Zoryan Institute to look to the future as well as the past, to focus on issues like Armenian-Turkish reconciliation, but he was in a tiny minority. 1915 was “the beginning and end of everything” for Zoryan’s donors, researchers, and students, and he ultimately departed.

There was resistance to Hovannisian, Dadrian, and their allies at first. The reaction of some scholars who engaged the emerging genocide-recognition literature was downright contemptuous, seeing the dismal failures in handling sources and so on as inevitable in what was so obviously a political-activist project dressed up as scholarship.18 Specialists working in the Ottoman archives were similarly dismissive, contending that inter alia the Hovannisian-Dadrian theories fell to pieces on impact with the historical records that “manifest numerous efforts [by the Ottoman government] to investigate and correct a situation in which [peoples of all ethnicities and faiths] were being killed by a combination of revolts, bandit attacks, massacres and counter massacres, and famine and disease, compounded by destructive and brutal foreign invasions”, where everyone, “Muslim and non-Muslim alike, had their victims and criminals”.19

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THE TIDE TURNS

The balance of academic opinion was, however, to shift remarkably quickly. One factor was the academic neglect of prior decades, which provided an institutional blank slate on which Dadrian in particular could instantiate the basic contours of Armenian Genocide Studies that still powerfully influence the research agenda to this day.20 For instance, Dadrian responded to the earlier criticism by acknowledging that the Ottoman documents show a policy wherein “the deportees were to be protected, fed, and safely transported, and sanctions would be applied to those officials who mistreated the deportees or allowed them to be mistreated by others”, but he developed an argument that behind this “beguiling appearance of benevolence” were mechanisms of deception, a “two-track” system that hid the real orders for genocide.21 This argument is now part of the furniture in Armenian Genocide Studies, often rehearsed using the exact same sources and interpretations as Dadrian.22

Another contingent factor was that the Armenian genocide-recognition movement had become seriously organised in the 1960s, simultaneous with Jewish activism to undo the repression of the memory of the Holocaust at Nuremberg, and throughout the 1980s the movement in its academic form would converge with scholars of Jewish history and Holocaust-awareness,23 notably Israel Charny and Robert Melson, to enshrine the Armenian massacres in the broader Genocide Studies field as “the first holocaust”. These scholars cited one another in building up a foundational literature, and their sense of moral mission, of uncovering a hidden truth and righting a long-standing injustice,24 was attractive to the young just entering academia and more established scholars, and to scholars from disciplines as broad as history, the law, the political and social sciences, sociology, psychology, even medicine and English literature.25

The Armenian genocide-recognition movement also benefited from being part of the zeitgeist. It was in the 1980s that the trend of national and ethnic groups campaigning to have their past or present suffering classified as genocide really took off,26 and these political campaigns fed into an increasing academic fashion for regarding the Convention definition of “genocide” as too narrow and restrictive.27 The push came from other angles, too, notably those who wanted to criminalise war itself as genocide,28 a push that has not been abandoned. “Genocide” coming to be used very loosely in everyday language cannot be blamed on popular misunderstanding, since by now there are academic arguments for describing as “genocide” events where there is no bloodshed at all.29 Whether one calls it a paradox or just cynicism, the underlying effort has been to disassociate “genocide” from the Holocaust to make it more widely available, even as the word’s value to the various claimants derives entirely from the association, and the Armenians were far from alone in tacitly acknowledging this by framing their case in terms of its apparent similarities to the Holocaust.30

By the early 1990s, the Armenian genocide-recognition movement had prevailed in sentiment in academia,31 and its institutional dominance was essentially complete by the end of the decade, though Ottoman history has been a slight holdout.32 A signifier of this was the passage of a resolution in 1997 recognising the Armenian genocide by the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), an organisation much better known now than it was then. Another indicator was the publication of a book of essays edited by Hovannisian in 1999, where he decried the “uneasiness of civil libertarians” with “legislative and judicial prohibitions on denial” that the Armenian massacres were genocide.33 “The Armenian Genocide is not a hypothesis but a certainty”, wrote another contributor: to contest this is to victimise the “traumatised” and generally become “an accomplice to the prolongation of the effects of the genocide”, which must be stopped, by the courts if necessary; “the freedom of the historian” is not a relevant consideration in this picture.34

One could mark the change in just a few years. In 1994, Armenian activists in France sued Bernard Lewis for “negationism” because he had expressed the view that what happened to the Armenians in 1915 and the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews were different. During the trial, few academics or journalists actively defended the effort to prosecute Lewis for thought crimes; they mostly kept quiet, and there was even a smattering of articles worrying about the free speech implications.35 By the 2010s, mainstream academic journals were publishing articles saying that any appearance of debate on the Armenian genocide was “manufactured” by bad actors equivalent to tobacco industry lobbyists creating doubt about the link between smoking and lung cancer,36 and several more European States had passed laws making it a criminal offence for one side in an historical debate to express themselves.37

THE BROADER ACADEMIC CONTEXT

The process for establishing and reinforcing an academic orthodoxy is by now tolerably well-known: the citation cascade, asymmetric scepticism and burdens of proof in peer-review depending on whether the author supports the hegemonic view or dissents from it, a handful of books from the dominant faction becoming curricula references, the visible consensus deterring dissidents even wanting to enter the field, those dissidents who try to enter experiencing difficulties with hiring boards, and the dissidents already in the system getting gradually squeezed out by the decisions on promotion and tenure, the sources and allocation of grant money, the escalating social pressure and reputational cost of non-conformity, and, not to put too fine a point on it, death.38

To know of this process does not in itself prove or even suggest the consensus in any one field is wrong. It works very well to keep flat-earthers out of physics and creationists out of biology. By this stage, however, it would also be naïve to take for granted that an academic consensus generated by so very human a process represents reality.

To throw the issue into some relief we can look at Science, where (unlike history) there is generally (at least in theory) only one correct answer to a question, and still the issue of consensus and the evidentiary metrics it rests on arises. Parapsychology or “psi”—telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis—is a real thing by the standard evidence criteria of Science, having to its name a dozen meta-analyses validating hundreds of studies with statistically significant effects.39 Yet all of Science is not currently preoccupied with rewriting the laws of physics to take account of this because what everyone (except the factional devotees of psi) understands is that “psi is a control condition for science, an unwitting jester in the court of academia”: the actual revelation from these studies is that “the published literature [of Science as a whole] provides only a contorted reflection of the true state of affairs” and that “the academic system is broken [because] our standard scientific methods allow one to prove the impossible”.40

The brokenness can be seen from the other direction, where there is a consensus in Science that a phenomenon is real. A phenomenon can be validated by numerous converging lines of evidence from scholars in a wide range of disciplines applying their various techniques—with the consensus so solid that research has moved beyond arguments about validity to mapping the technical details of its functioning—and it is no guarantee that the phenomenon in question does, in fact, exist. For example, until recently, 5-HTTLPR was considered by scholars in genetics (molecular, human, and several other subfields), psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, neuroimaging, and psychopharmacology to be an important genetic factor in causing depression, and then it was not. This is not intrinsically a problem: self-correction is what Science is about, after all. No, the problem was, as Scott Alexander explained:

We “figured out” how 5-HTTLPR exerted its effects, what parts of the brain it was active in, what sorts of things it interacted with, how its effects were enhanced or suppressed by the effects of other imaginary depression genes. This isn’t just an explorer coming back from the Orient and claiming there are unicorns there. It’s the explorer describing the life cycle of unicorns, what unicorns eat, all the different subspecies of unicorn, which cuts of unicorn meat are tastiest, and a blow-by-blow account of a wrestling match between unicorns and Bigfoot.

As Alexander went on to note, this was a case that exemplified why minimising the “replication crisis” was misguided: the problem was not people overstating effects or the context-dependency of same. “The problem is more like ‘you can get an entire field with hundreds of studies analyzing the behavior of something that doesn’t exist’.” The fallout from 5-HTTLPR has virtually demolished candidate genes as a field.

Nor is Science immune to a false consensus driven by politics and self-interest. The ideological capture of the academic apparatus and medical bodies determining the “treatments” for children who believe they are transgender is now clear for all to see. A particularly tragic and larger-scale case is research into Alzheimer’s disease. Sharon Begley reported in 2019: “for decades, believers in the dominant hypothesis [that the build-up of beta-protein amyloid plaques cause Alzheimer’s] suppressed research on alternative ideas: They influenced what studies got published in top journals, which scientists got funded, who got tenure, and who got speaking slots at reputation-buffing scientific conferences.” Undoubtedly, there were some malign actors,41 but in the main “the amyloid camp was neither organized nor nefarious”, Begley wrote. “Those who championed the amyloid hypothesis truly believed it, and thought that focusing money and attention on it rather than competing ideas was the surest way to an effective drug.”

If this is the situation in so “hard” a subject as medical Science, one’s wariness—not nihilistic distrust, but scepticism—should be set higher in general for the findings of “softer” subjects like history, the humanities, and social sciences, and higher still for politicised fields therein.

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Post has been updated about the Soviet “repatriation” campaign

^FOOTNOTES

I have a piece out in the Manara Magazine of the the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum (MENAF), co-authored with Robert Clark.

The Armenian revolutionary movement in the Ottoman Empire, which began in the late nineteenth century with the intention of creating a national polity in eastern Anatolia, produced many heroes. Armenians among themselves still celebrate many of them to this day, such as: Andranik Ozanian, Aram Manukian, Garegin Pastermadjian (Armen Garo), Garegin Nzhdeh, Drastamat Kanayan (Dro), Arshak Gavafian (Keri), Kevork Chavush, and Hrayr Dzhoghk. These men worked to inculcate the Armenian national idea and led the armed campaign that sought to make it a reality, culminating in the uprising on the eve of Ottoman entry into the First World War, which not only the Armenians could foresee was the death knell for the Empire. Their names have been occluded to varying degrees by shifting political tides.

Armenian activists and publications from 1914-15 into the 1920s were entirely forthright in celebrating the successes of the nationalist revolutionaries who fought the Ottomans and generally did not disguise that this was done in direct alliance with Russia and the Entente.1 What curtailed this kind of thing was the remnants of the brief Armenian Republic falling under Soviet rule in 1920. The Soviets denounced the wartime rebels and “the Dashnak Republic” as “bourgeois nationalists”. There were changes in the 1950s after Turkey joined NATO and particularly by the 1960s. Moscow saw the utility of the campaign to have the 1915-16 Armenian massacres recognised as genocide in instrumentalising the Armenian diaspora for political warfare against Turkey, specifically the influential Armenian community in the United States.2 This created some minor initial difficulties within Soviet Armenia, but the Soviet Revolution’s official theology had adapted to incorporate the “national liberation movements” within the Third World Strategy, and it was easy enough to channel Armenian national sentiment into this program.

Space was made for Soviet Armenian publications arguing that 1915 was genocide, and these books, translated into English and other Western languages, circulated in Armenian émigré activist circles. These works were foundational to the movement that would in time pressure Western legislatures to recognise Turkey as guilty of genocide, and in parallel emerged Armenian terrorist organisations that targeted Turkish diplomats and civilians in the name of revenge for the genocide and forcing Ankara to abandon its policy of “denial”.3 The confrontational atmosphere and broad popularity of the “guerrillas” revived the Armenian willingness to incorporate the insurgents into the story of 1915, albeit often reframing their role as resisting genocide.4

Academics have been somewhat more hesitant to complicate the genocide debate by giving full recognition to the achievements of the Ottoman-Armenian revolutionaries in developing their movement from the 1890s, the consistency and efficacy of their provocation strategy over two decades, the scale of the rebellion they managed in 1914-15, and their political versatility in securing external support.5 This is a shame because it is a very interesting story in its own right, and foreshadows so many things.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE ARMENIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT

The organised Armenian national movement in the Ottoman Empire began in the 1860s, but it really took off in the 1870s against the backdrop of the “Great Eastern Crisis”.

A Christian revolt spread through the Ottoman Balkans starting in 1875, most importantly to Bulgaria, where the fierce government reaction electrified opinion in Christendom, leading to one of the first modern international “human rights” campaigns.6 In 1877, Russia stepped in and, after the traditional period of military calamity, overwhelmed the Ottomans. The Russian-dictated peace in the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878 so alarmed the other European powers—especially Britain, which had propped up the Ottoman Empire through most of the nineteenth century, in no small part as a bulwark against Russia—that the Congress of Berlin was convened to revise the terms.

In the superseding July 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Britain, having signalled a willingness to go to war to prevent Russia reaching its theological-strategic dream of capturing the Ottoman capital, Constantinople, and the Straits, managed to whittle down the Russian victory.7 London could not prevent the Ottomans losing control of Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia in the west, but it did secure the return of Macedonia to the Ottomans. Similarly, while the Russian annexation of territory containing Batum, Kars, and Ardahan—all cities with important Armenian minorities—was a fait accompli, Britain reversed Russia’s plans for the rest of the east. Russia was to have occupied the so-called Six Provinces in eastern Anatolia where the Ottoman-Christian population was most-heavily concentrated over the widest area,8 nominally only long enough to oversee “reforms”.9 The British and Ottomans understandably doubted the Russians would ever leave.

Britain instead settled for a clause on the Armenian Question in the Berlin Treaty that obliged “the Sublime Porte … to carry out, without further delay, the ameliorations and reforms demanded by local requirements in the Provinces inhabited by the Armenians”. Crucially, the Great Powers arrogated to themselves a right to “superintend [the reforms’] application”. Britain was the centre of humanitarian agitation about the “Bulgarian horrors” and demands for a morality-driven foreign policy. The clause appeared to satisfy British strategic and moral concerns, but it would prove the Russians much greater satisfaction.

The Ottoman Empire was used to being subject to European political and ideological influence,10 and to Ottoman-Christians being an important conduit. Almost as soon as the Ottomans got seriously enmeshed in the European State system they had to content with the destructive reverberations of the French Revolution, notably nationalism. Ottoman-Christians, with their conceptual and linguistic links to the West, were the most vulnerable to this Enlightenment contagion, and the Greeks were early victims. However, the Armenians were initially less affected,11 and well into the nineteenth century were known as “the loyal community”.12 The direct European interference in Ottoman internal affairs after 1878 was new, and this change cannot be disentangled from the reconfiguration of relations between the Ottoman State and its Armenian subjects over subsequent decades.

The nascent Armenian national movement burgeoned in an internationalised context, its political aspirations integrally tied to European patronage.13 The Bulgarian example—of Christian revolutionary organisations instigating a rebellion and international outrage at the Ottoman response leading to a Russian intervention that secured independence—inspired emulators among the Armenians.14 The difference was that as the Armenian revolutionary committees formed over the next decade, there was already a framework in place for their armed provocations to induce Russian intervention (and, as we shall see, this tacit cooperation that existed from the beginning would become ever-more direct over time). The 1878 treaty, which tried to square the sincere British commitments to Ottoman territorial integrity and improving the humanitarian situation for Ottoman-Armenians, had created a set-up where Russia could use the latter as a pretext to undermine the former.15

This did not go unnoticed. The Porte would come to see the Armenian national movement and the “international law” instruments surrounding it as a stalking horse for secession and foreign annexation of Ottoman territory. At a popular level, the corollary was increasing Muslim resentment towards Armenians and other Christians as a “fifth column”: a disloyal and threatening vector for foreign schemes against the Empire.

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ARMENIAN “NATIONAL LIBERATION” WARFARE

The first underground Armenian revolutionary entity, established in 1885, was the Armenakan Party, whose main leader was in France.16 The party was more liberal ideologically, ambiguous about violence; and failed to establish a broad base of support or much practical influence outside of Van. The two primary Armenian revolutionary committees were the Hunchaks and Dashnaks, founded in 1887 and 1890, respectively.17 These groups are sometimes called “Armenian Narodniks” and for good reason: ideologically, both combined nationalism and socialism in the manner of the Russian Narodniki terrorist-revolutionaries; not-coincidentally, both operated in an international milieu where the Narodniki were powerful; and both were created abroad and had among their leaders Armenians who had either been born in the Russian Empire or lived there most of their lives. The Hunchaks were founded in Switzerland, specifically in Geneva by men in close proximity to exiled Narodniki,18 and the Dashnaks originate in Russia itself. There was schism and factionalism, as so often occurs with extremist groups,19 but broadly they pushed in the same direction.

The Hunchaks were overtly devoted to independence—and ultimately to irredentism, wishing to conquer “Ottoman Armenia” first, and then expand this State to include Russian- and Persian-Armenians. The Hunchaks sought to indoctrinate Ottoman-Armenian “peasants and workers” with nationalist-socialist propaganda; to stir up protests and other forms of disobedience, such as refusals to pay tax; and to “elevate the spirit of the people” via terrorism, which was always framed as “self-defence”.20 The Dashnaks spoke more ambiguously of “freedom”, defined in Marxian terms, and tended to frame their objectives in an Ottoman context, even officially expressing wariness about external support.21 In theory, this made the Dashnaks the “moderates”, willing to engage the Ottoman government and settle matters internally with concessions on national rights and autonomy. In practice, the distinction eroded by the 1900s, if not before, with both committees conducting their campaigns through a combination of a legal political party and terrorism, exactly as the Narodniks did in Russia, with the difference that the Armenian revolutionaries acted with an eye towards inducing European Great Power intervention.

In May 1893, the British Consul in Erzurum, Robert W. Graves, met a captured Armenian from one of the committees, who echoed the Russian terrorist-revolutionaries precisely in his explanation that socialist ethics meant the ends justified the means and the worse the situation was for Armenians, the better the chances were for revolution. “He was paid for this work by funds from abroad”, Graves cabled to the ambassador in Constantinople, “and the attention of the movement was, he declared, to cause such disturbances in the country as should attract attention to the oppressed condition of his fellow-countrymen and compel the interference of foreign powers.” Graves met many more Armenian revolutionaries and reflected later in his memoirs: “They were quite cynical when remonstrated with on the wickedness of deliberately provoking the massacre of their unfortunate fellow-countrymen … without any assurance that the lot of the survivors would be any happier, saying calmly that the sacrifice was a necessary one and the victims would be ‘Martyrs to the National Cause’.”22

A report commissioned by the British ambassador to the Porte, Sir Philip Currie, noted in March 1894 that “the immediate aim of the [Armenian] revolutionaries is to incite disorder, to cause inhumane reprisals, and thus to provoke the intervention of the Powers in the name of humanity.” Interestingly, the report—without knowing it—documented another similarity with the Narodniks: the Armenian revolutionaries’ support base was semi-educated young men, while the mass of Ottoman-Armenians were indifferent at best. The secular and religious leaders of the Ottoman-Armenian population had opposed revolutionary doctrines emanating from the West for nearly a century,23 evidently with some success.

Also in 1894, the Armenian Patriarch in Constantinople, Khoren Ashekian, powerfully condemned the Armenian nationalists for sowing communal strife that could only lead to disaster for Armenians when the inevitable Turkish backlash arrived and the revolutionaries’ false belief the Russians would save them was exposed. The Hunchaks responded by trying to assassinate Ashekian, twice,24 setting the template for the Armenian committees’ behaviour and that of the many revolutionary movements to come, always at least as concerned with eradicating dissent in the community they claimed to represent as combatting the State.

Cyrus Hamlin, an American Protestant missionary to the Ottoman-Armenians since the 1840s and one of the founders of the elite Robert College in Constantinople, spoke to a Hunchak leader in December 1893, who explained that the Armenian revolutionaries planned to take their “opportunity to kill Turks and Kurds, set fire to their villages and then make their escape into the mountains”, whereupon “enraged Muslims will … fall upon the defenceless Armenians and slaughter them with such barbarity that Russia will enter in the name of humanity and Christian civilisation and take possession [of eastern Anatolia].” When Hamlin denounced this as immoral, the Hunchak responded: “It appears so to you, no doubt; but we Armenians have determined to be free. Europe listened to the Bulgarian horrors and made Bulgaria free. She will listen to our cry when it goes up in shrieks and blood of millions of women and children.”25

The Hunchaks, the leading Armenian revolutionary element in the first phase, had a strategy of provocation encoded in their founding program, Article 6 of which read: “The time for the general revolution will be when a foreign power attacks Turkey externally. The party shall [at that time] revolt internally.”26 As the above shows, this was not an abstraction: it was what the Armenian terrorists across all of the committees at ground level understood themselves to be doing. Sometimes it did not work at all, as with the arson attack in then-Ottoman-ruled Thessaloniki in 1890, which the Hunchaks were almost certainly behind. A third of the city burned down, but there were no indiscriminate reprisals on Ottoman-Armenians.27 And, as the Armenian committees were soon to discover, though not to learn from, the tactic might work insofar as it provoked massacres, without bringing a decisive, Bulgarian-level European intervention.

In August 1894, Hunchak fedayi (guerrillas), consciously seeking Great Power intervention, ignited an Armenian rebellion at Sasun that spread across eastern Anatolia.28 In a foreshadowing of 1915, the official repressive measures were accompanied by horrific massacres of Armenian civilians, many carried out by the “Hamidiye”, the Cossack-modelled irregular units of Kurdish tribesmen created in 1891 to protect the eastern frontier.29 European sentiment was duly aroused and in May 1895 the Great Powers presented a Reform package to Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876-1909), which he was obliged to sign in October. But the measures were not binding and were never implemented. Nonetheless, the political effect of Great Power intervention on the back of Armenian provocations was quite profound, even in the short-term, epitomising and exacerbating the confrontational communal-political trends in the Ottoman Empire. It was taken as confirmation of the Muslims’ darkest fears, with a concomitant escalation of repression that made 1896 a year that lives in infamy for Armenians even now, and yet it was also seen as strategic vindication by the Armenian revolutionaries.30

The magnitude of the Armenian revolutionary challenge was evident in Armenian rebels contesting control of the cities, notably Zeytun (now Süleymanlı) and Van, up to a late stage in the crisis in 1896. Even after urban fighting ended, Armenian revolutionaries staged a terrorist “spectacular”, a classic “propaganda of the deed”, by occupying the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople on 26 August 1896. It was indicative of intra-Armenian dynamics that the perpetrators at this stage were the Dashnaks: the Hunchaks had been enduringly wounded, physically and politically, by the 1894-96 events, and the Dashnaks would become the leading element of the national movement. European diplomats arranged safe-passage for the terrorists to France and the European press reported on their cause sympathetically, not least because the bank seizure touched-off a wave of pogroms against Armenian civilians in the capital that killed thousands before the Ottoman government could stop them.

The Porte tried to draw a line under all this with an inquiry to, inter alia, reassure Ottoman-Armenians of the State’s good intentions and to quiet foreign criticism. It backfired, predictably and absolutely, uncovering official failings and misdeeds the Armenian revolutionaries could use in their propaganda and focusing unprecedented international critical attention on the Ottoman government.31

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In July 1897, a Dashnak-led, Hunchak-supported contingent of Armenian fedayeen—the Russian-born Dashnak Sargis Mehrabyan is perhaps the best-known—invaded the Ottoman Empire from Iran and assaulted the encampment of the Kurdish Mazrik tribe on the Khanasor plain in Van Province. The raid was billed as revenge for the anti-Armenian atrocities in Van a year earlier, which the tribe was allegedly primarily responsible for. About 250 Kurds were massacred, many savagely mutilated. The Dashnaks insisted—and European reports of the event took their word—that those killed were all adult males; some accounts say women and children were among the dead.32

In March-April 1904, another Armenian revolt rocked Sasun. Hundreds of Dashnaks, led by Andranik, infiltrated the area from Russia, distributed weapons to local rebels, and began attacking Muslim villages, seemingly with the intention of provoking reprisals that could trigger European intervention. The Ottomans suppressed the revolt—the most prominent Dashnak martyr was Hrayr Dzhoghk—and thousands of Armenian civilians were reportedly massacred yet again, though the British Consul visited the area soon afterwards and said that, on the evidence he had seen, “it would be difficult to sustain charges of massacre and atrocities”.33

An Armenian revolt in Muş, west of Lake Van, in the summer of 1905, was relatively swiftly overcome, apparently with 5,000 fatalities all around.34

All through this period, less visible to foreign newspaper-readers, there was relentless Armenian subversion and guerrilla activity. A glimpse of this phenomenon can be seen in the life of Kevork Chavush, a Dashnak fedayi commander in the Sasun area. Working to raise nationalist consciousness among Armenians and create tensions with the State—over land, taxes, any flash-point he could find—Chavush was known as “the man with the dagger who was always ready to punish those who molested the defenceless people”. An example of what this meant was Chavush’s assassins, after the suppression of the 1904 revolt, stabbing a Kurdish chief to death in his home, along with his wife and children. Chavush was killed in a clash with Ottoman troops in 1907. Such deliberately terrorising assassinations were standard fare from the Armenian fedayeen.35

The nationalist coup in mid-1908 (“The Young Turk Revolution”), which brought the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) to power, changed the situation for a time. The CUP, though indelibly associated with the anti-Armenian atrocities of 1915, had worked with the Armenian revolutionaries in opposition and took a liberal approach to the Armenian Question in government. The CUP equalised rights for Christians, creating increased legal space for Armenian political activism, granting Armenians permission to bear arms, and brought Christians into the Ottoman army, while taking measures to reduce the Kurdish threat to the Armenians by disbanding the Hamidiye, imprisoning renegade commanders, and appointing local administrators committed to disciplining the Kurds.36

In response, the Armenian committees officially called off the terrorism campaign, until the cooperation with the CUP broke down in early 1912.37 The official stance did not always reflect ground reality in the provinces, and in 1911, as relations with the CUP frayed, there was a “politics by day, terrorism by night” dimension to the Dashnaks.38 In the meantime, the Armenian-CUP cooperation itself created new sources of trouble, namely blocs of opponents on either side. Some Armenians favoured the old ways of subsidiarity and among Muslims the CUP policies were broadly opposed for favouring minorities.39 These ultras made themselves felt, most notably in March-April 1909, with a failed Islamist and monarchist counter-coup in Constantinople, and an Armenian uprising in Adana incited by the local bishop, Moushegh Seropian, which spiralled into communal violence throughout Cilicia that is said to have killed up to 20,000 people.40

Chavush and people like him made a lot of effort to arm Armenian civilians in eastern Anatolia, and the stated justification was a good one: self-defence against the marauding Kurdish tribes, whose menace continued despite the political changes at the centre in the 1908-12 period, not least because—as we will get to—the Kurds could acquire arms from outside.41 As in many similar situations of instability and civil strife, this individually rational solution contributed to the overarching problem it was meant to solve. The Ottomans never formally lost the Six Provinces, as they did with the Balkans, but Ottoman State collapse at the periphery was the same at either end of the Empire. The de facto rulers in the east were the Kurdish tribal chiefs, some of whose nomadic militias were implicitly allied to the State, but pinpointing who was on who’s “side” in the Russo-Ottoman borderlands is damnably difficult. Kurdish tribal leaders and sub-leaders regularly fought against Ottoman gendarmes and troops. Armenian committees fought against the Ottoman government and sometimes fought with Ottoman State forces against the Kurds. The Ottoman government intermittently paid and even armed the Dashnaks to destabilise neighbouring rivals. The one constant was Kurdish attacks on Christians, a blend of ideological sectarianism and sheer banditry.42

THE RUSSIAN DIMENSION

It was in these troubled waters that the Russians were fishing by the late 1890s, a policy of meddling in the internal politics of the Ottoman Empire, specifically in the Six Provinces, that continued uninterrupted through the outbreak of the First World War up to late 1917 and in certain respects continued after the Bolshevik coup. The Russian dimension to events in eastern Anatolia in this period is so pervasive that, as Sean McMeekin has written, it is a “serious distortion of the truth to tell the story of the Armenian tragedy of 1915 without reference (or with only passing reference) to Russia. It is akin to writing about, say, the ‘bloodbath in Budapest’ during the ill-fated Hungarian Revolution of 1956 without reference to the Soviet Union.”43

The Tsardom had a habit of working with all sides to a conflict, and seeing conflict itself as advantageous, not any specific outcome.44 In eastern Anatolia, that meant Russia being the primary armourer of the Kurds and the Armenians. As Russia had no intention of assisting any of its clients to achieve particular purposes, only a modest outlay was needed to sustain a positive feedback loop of omnidirectional chaos that weakened Ottoman State power and authority. Ottoman troops were tied down in counter-insurgency operations, while support to the Kurds—so extensive there were Kurdish language institutes in Saint Petersburg—enabled depredations against the Armenians that increased Armenian calls for Russian protection.45 Into the bargain, the Ottoman government was often blamed by foreign States and humanitarian activists for Kurdish outrages, damaging the Porte politically, and the Armenian revolutionaries felt themselves ever-more reliant on Petersburg.46

Russian ambitions went beyond hiving off the “Armenian Provinces”. It was hoped in Petersburg to dismember the whole Ottoman Empire and annex large chunks, including the capital. It was in the wake of the 1894-96 Armenian uprisings and massacres that “Russia first began serious logistical research into the possibility of staging an amphibious operation at the Bosphorus”, and the Russians intensified the development of these plans after the violence in 1909. A Russian operational plan from this period envisioned “agents from the Christian population”—Macedonians and Bulgarians in Europe, Greeks and Armenians in Anatolia—preparing the way for a Russian invasion by cutting off rail lines to Constantinople, whereupon native Christians would “burn down all the wooden bridges spanning the Golden Horn and set fire to Stambul”.47

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The long Ottoman decline that began in the late seventeenth century culminated with the Ottoman defeat in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and the importance of this episode in shaping what happened in 1915 can hardly be overstated. Coming a year after Italy had taken Libya, it accentuated the general Ottoman sense of existential dread—that the Empire was defenceless against foreign enemies—and it was singularly unnerving, bringing the frontier dangerously close to the capital, and removing the Balkan territories that had “for long [been] the centre of gravity of the Ottoman Empire”.48 The Russian role, more reactive than enthusiastic it is true, was nonetheless key in organising the Balkan coalition that attacked the Ottomans.49

The impact of the Balkan defeat on the Ottomans heading into 1915 had at least three elements.

First, the public messaging cast a long shadow. The Russians led in lauding the outcome as a victory for Christendom, eliminating the final Islamic toehold in Europe. On the one hand, it drove home to the Ottomans that they were at their lowest ebb, in no condition to handle minor Christian States, never mind the Great Powers. On the other hand, it stoked an Ottoman Muslim thirst for anti-Christian revenge.

Second and related, the arrival in the Ottoman Empire of half-a-million Muslim refugees (Muhacir), uprooted after centuries of colonial settlement and bearing horror stories of massacres and worse, inflamed sectarian sentiment further. This was personal for some in the elite, since quite a number of the CUP leaders originated in the Balkans, including the Bulgarian-born Talat Pasha, the Party chairman and Ottoman Interior Minister (as well as Grand Vizier after February 1917). Muhacir atrocity narratives mobilised anti-Christian violence even before 1915 and in the events of 1915 a significant number of the perpetrators were the Muhacir, who had, by happenstance and some degree of design, been placed in the Christian areas.50

Third, the immediate-run Russian diplomacy and covert action that fused the Balkan events with the Armenian Question in everyone’s mind.

The Balkan Wars seemed to herald the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. In late 1912, Russia tried to organise the Kurdish tribes in the east into a unified force that could finish the job.51 Kurdish unity cannot be accomplished by any human force and it is an open question if God Himself would fare any better. Fortunately for Russia, it had maintained a diverse portfolio of clients in eastern Anatolia, and the Armenian option proved much more fruitful.

In December 1912, as the Ottoman Empire seemingly fought for its life against Russia’s allies in the Balkans, Armenian committee violence flared to life. Arshak Vramian, one of the Dashnak terrorists at the Ottoman Bank in 1896 and by this time an American citizen, told the French Vice-Consul in Van: “It does not matter if the Armenians are killed instead of living as they are living! We are determined to restart the revolutionary action we had suspended for four years”.52 Vramian had specified that he meant assassinations and the Mayor of Van, Bedros Kapamajian, an Armenian, was duly murdered.53

The same month, Russia put the Armenian Question back on the international agenda, coinciding, though not coincident, with a diplomatic-agitation mission to Europe by Boghos Nubar, a prominent Ottoman-Armenian activist. Nubar set himself up as head of the Armenian National Delegation in Paris and sent letters on behalf of the Armenian Catholicos to Russian diplomats imploring Petersburg to pressure the Porte into granting Armenian autonomy. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov seized on this to secure British and French backing for new Reform talks, while hinting broadly that Russian occupation of eastern Anatolia was inevitable. The tell as to the real source of Russia’s angst at that time was the raising of petitions calling for Ottoman-Armenians to be given Russian citizenship (a Russian Imperial tactic not-unfamiliar at the present time). The Ottoman government had generated a plan to resettle the Muhacir displaced from the Balkans in the Six Provinces and Petersburg wanted to thwart it “because the policy would have reduced Russian influence in the region”.54

The success of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) in particular in the Balkans provided an inspirational model, and the Armenian revolutionaries went all-in on terrorism as the means to accomplish their goals in 1913. The Dashnaks and Hunchaks refashioned their structures in eastern Anatolia along IMRO-style paramilitary lines. The Armenian guerrillas smuggled weapons into the Ottoman Empire on an unprecedented scale in early 1913 from Iran and Russia, where the Okhranka, the Tsar’s secret police, ensured that border guards looked the other way. The Armenian committees’ ostensibly principled “anti-imperialism” was all-but openly cast aside: Dashnaks met Russian officials and made clear their view of Russian imperialism as an emancipatory force. This sentiment spread wildly among the Armenian population. Aleksandr Olferiev, the Russian Vice-Consul in Van, reported gleefully in March 1913 that the “mood of Armenians” throughout the province, previously somewhat ambiguous, was now “one of complete Russophilia … the Dashnaks are completely on our side.” The next month, Olferiev documented that Van had become “an armed camp”: “all the Armenian merchants are stockpiling guns in their stores”.55

Russian delight was slightly disrupted by the Kurdish tribes, who, sharing in the common belief of the Ottoman State’s imminent demise, were emboldened to ravage the Christians on a major scale. Peterburg rather cynically protested to Constantinople on 29 May 1913, and was then unpleasantly surprised when, ten days later, the arriving Ottoman troops in Van were joined by 500 Dashnaks in putting the Kurds to flight. Armed revolt scuppered for now, the Russians redoubled their political warfare. Despite the complexity on the ground, with its clear evidence the Ottoman government was trying to protect the Armenian population even when it meant sending troops needed for a war that was closing in on its capital, the Russians escalated the international campaign accusing the Porte of atrocities against the Armenians and demanding Reforms “according to the 1895 draft”.56

A Reform treaty, over German objections, was forced on the Ottomans in February 1914: notably, it was signed solely by Russia on behalf of the European Great Powers. The terms would have infringed Ottoman sovereignty in the Six Provinces by creating a system of European inspectorates that not only judged the reforms’ progress but administered them. Germany was able to help the Ottomans slow-roll the implementation process—and the Great War ultimately prevented the inspectors, who had been appointed, taking up their posts.57 However, the sequence of events leading up to the treaty, its terms, and the repeated, menacing remarks of Sazonov during negotiations—threatening a Russian invasion if there was one more massacre of Armenians—“confirmed for the Porte that the whole Armenian reform issue was just a Trojan horse for Russian imperialism”.58

AND THE WAR CAME

It was not foreordained that the Ottoman Empire would join the First World War on the side of the Central Powers—or at all. Britain had tried to keep the Ottomans out of it, and many in the Ottoman government, more acutely aware than ever of the Empire’s weakness, favoured neutrality. However, the Ottomans had been moving closer to Germany for some time and the longstanding Ottoman-British alliance decisively broke down simultaneous with the outbreak of war in Europe.

During Kaiser Wilhelm II’s grand tour of the Ottoman Empire in 1898, he had ostentatiously declared himself protector of all the world’s Muslims. The Kaiser was genuinely, personally drawn to Islam and the rumour Germany now had a Muslim Emperor spread widely in the Middle East. Strategically, the Kaiser was thinking at this stage of working through the Caliph to raise a global jihad that would trigger rebellion among Britain’s Muslim subjects—and the Kaiser would, by 1914, have the same idea for Russia.59 German money and weapons flooded into the Ottoman Empire, German military personnel were increasingly prevalent throughout the Ottoman army, and German diplomats became influential over Ottoman State administration and decision-making. The construction of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway, which began in 1903 and would weaken Britain’s naval strength, symbolised this entanglement. One could be forgiven for thinking in mid-1914 that the Ottoman government had already gone over to the Germans.

In this context, it is debateable whether Britain “requisitioning” two fully-paid-for Ottoman dreadnoughts at British shipyards on 29 July 1914—the event often pointed to by Turks as determining Ottoman policy in the First World War—was cause, catalyst, and/or pretext.60 For one thing, the Ottomans had, as Britain feared, offered to send one of the ships to Germany.61 For another, when the Porte was officially informed of the requisition on 3 August, it had already, a day earlier, signed a secret treaty with Germany promising to come into the war on the Central Powers’ side if Russia got involved. Austria joined the treaty on 5 August—the same day the Ottomans publicly declared neutrality. Ten days later, a German Admiral, Wilhelm Souchon, was made commander-in-chief of the Ottoman fleet. By this time, Ottoman and German subversive missionaries had been dispatched to the Persian Gulf (then-under British control) and to Iran and Afghanistan (surrounding British India) to encourage them to jihad against the Entente. As we shall see, the Ottomans were effectively at war with Russia by September. The Ottomans then closed the Dardanelles to Allied shipping on 1 October.62 Whatever one’s interpretation of the causality, the result was the supremacy over the Ottoman State of a CUP cadre closely bound to the German General Staff.

Overcoming the neutrality faction in the Ottoman government was accomplished by the German-allied Ottoman War Minister, Enver Pasha, conspiring with Admiral Souchon to launch a naval raid against Russia in the Black Sea on 29 October 1914. The Russians had already begun their invasion by the time they declared war on the Ottomans on 2 November. Britain and France followed with war declarations against the Porte on 5 November. The Ottoman Sultan-Caliph proclaimed a jihad against the Entente on 11 November, and three days later the proclamation was read out in Constantinople by the ulema, along with five fatwas, lavishly paid for by Germany, declaring it a duty for Muslims to wage war on the Christian enemies of Islam, except Austrians, Germans, and Americans. Theologically, this made no sense, and in practice the distinctions were difficult to hold on to. The fatwas could easily be read as sanctioning violence against Christian civilians even in neutral European countries, and the popular interpretation—manifested within days—was that the call was for war against Christians, full stop.63 It is impossible to believe that this holy warmongering was not a factor in what happened in 1915.

The British Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, was greatly saddened by this turn of events, lamenting, “The Turkish Empire has committed suicide, and dug with its own hands its grave”.64 The CUP government had entered the war hoping to reverse the Empire’s decline, but soon confronted Asquith’s prescience, buffeted by the interlinked twin existential crises for the Ottoman State of external invasion and internal Armenian rebellion, which began before the war and escalated once it was underway, led by the Armenian terrorist-revolutionary committees that openly collaborated with the Entente, especially Russia, and drew on various forms of popular participation from an Armenian civilian population that in the main saw Ottoman dissolution as liberation. It was in these circumstances that the Armenian calamity took place.

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The Armenian Volunteers

The Dashnaks’ eighth World Congress—bringing together the organisation’s branches from Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Europe, and the United States—met in in late July 1914 in Erzurum,65 and concluded on 2 August 1914 with a public decision that Armenians should do their duty as citizens of their individual States, not get involved in foreign intrigue. The Ottoman-Armenian delegation cited this decision in refusing the reported offer of CUP representatives at the Congress to grant autonomy to “Turkish Armenia” in exchange for the Dashnaks helping to foment rebellion inside Russia. Turks are not shying at shadows in questioning the sincerity of this, and suspecting a Russian-coordinated rebellion against the Ottoman State was already in the works.66

In 1923, shortly after it was all over—the rebellion, the deportations, the massacres, the rise and fall of an Armenian Republic, and the Sovietization of what was left—the Dashnak leader and first Prime Minister of the Republic, Hovhannes Kajaznuni, bluntly stated:

At the beginning of the Fall of 1914, when Turkey had not yet entered the war …, Armenian revolutionary bands began to be formed in Transcaucasia with great enthusiasm … Contrary to the decision taken during their general meeting at Erzurum only a few weeks before, the A.R.F. [Dashnaks] had active participation in the formation of the bands and their future military action against Turkey. … We had no doubt the war would end with the complete victory of the Allies; Turkey would be defeated and dismembered, and its Armenian population would at last be liberated.

We had embraced Russia whole-heartedly without any compunction. Without any positive basis of fact, we believed that the Tsarist government would grant us a more-or-less broad self-government in the Caucasus and in the Armenian vilayets liberated from Turkey as a reward for our loyalty, our efforts, and assistance. … [W]e had lost our sense of reality and were carried away with our dreams. … We overestimated the ability of the Armenian people, its political and military power, and overestimated the extent and importance of the services our people rendered to the Russians. … The Turks knew what they ought to do and did it.67

This view was echoed by Kapriel Papazian, head of the Ramgavar Party:

[T]he answer given the Turks [in refusing to help ignite rebellion inside Russia] was based on a resolution adopted by the [Erzurum] convention. The fact remains, however, that the leaders of the Turkish Armenian section of the [Dashnaks] did not carry out their promise of loyalty to the Turkish cause when the Turks entered the war. … They were swayed in their actions by the interests of the Russian government, and disregarded, entirely, the political dangers that the war had created for the Armenians in Turkey. Prudence was thrown to the winds; even the decision of their own convention of Erzurum was forgotten, and a call was sent for Armenian volunteers to fight the Turks on the Caucasian front.68

As indicated in those quotations, the sentiment of the committees was general among Armenians. One of the leading historian-advocates of Armenian genocide-recognition has written of this time: “Although most Armenians maintained a correct [outward] attitude-vis-a-vis the Ottoman government …[,] the manifestations of loyalty were insincere, for the sympathy of most Armenians throughout the world was with the Entente”.69

It was in this heady atmosphere, with Russian deliverance and national liberation seemingly at hand, that many Armenians reacted to the Ottoman general mobilisation order on 3 August 1914, the day after the secret treaty with Germany, with open defiance, and the line between draft resistance and rebellion was a fine one. Thousands of Armenians conscripted into the Ottoman army deserted: some formed armed bands that clashed with the State; some, with the assistance of the Dashnaks, crossed the border into Russia, heading for Tiflis, where the Chief of Staff of the Russian Caucasus Army, General Nikolai Yudenich, already had an operations room to enlist Armenian volunteers. Many more Armenian civilians similarly voted with their feet and moved to Russia, a migration flow that would reach 200,000 by late 1915.70 Veteran Ottoman-Armenian revolutionaries, the deserters, and civilian volunteers were merged into Russian military units with Iranian-Armenians and Russian-Armenians, both from the Russian Caucasus “proper” and the slice of the Ottoman east Russia annexed in 1878.

One of the prominent Ottoman-Armenian representatives at the Erzurum Congress, Garegin Pastermadjian (Armen Garo), had signed-up with the Russians by mid-September 1914. Pastermadjian, a Dashnak terrorist at the Ottoman Bank in 1896 and a deputy in the Ottoman Parliament during the reconciliation period with the CUP, would command of one of the Armenian volunteer units that invaded the Ottoman Empire as part of the Russian army six weeks later.71 The commander of another of these units arrived about the same time, Arshak Gavafian (Keri), a roving Ottoman-Armenian insurgent, who had inter alia fled Sasun in 1904 and engaged in the Iranian “Constitutional Revolution” the next year.72 The dazzling Ottoman-Armenian Dashnak General Andranik, another unit leader, whose most recent round with the Porte was fighting alongside the Bulgarian rebels, arrived in Tiflis much earlier, on 2 August 1914, and was soon joined by Garegin Nzhdeh, another participant in the Balkan Wars, and Hampartsum Arakelyan, editor of Mshak, the leading Armenian-language newspaper in the Caucasus.73 Another of the unit commander’s present from early on, Drastamat Kanayan (Dro), had a very similar life trajectory to Nzhdeh: both were technically Russian-born but spent most of their lives involved in Ottoman affairs and lived long enough to collaborate with the Nazis in the next war.

The prestige of these men and many others proved magnetic in bringing Armenians, Ottoman or otherwise, into Russian ranks.74 By the end of August 1914, the Russian train-and-equip program for Armenian volunteers was so swamped Yudenich had to ask the Stavka for 25,000 more rifles. “The Russian army, then, actively sought to arm Ottoman Armenians [inside the Ottoman Empire] even before Turkey entered the war, with the full cooperation of the Dashnaks, General Andranik, and Armenian leaders in Tiflis. So, too, was the Russian Foreign Office involved, and at the very highest level.”75 We will come to this dimension of the Russian operation in more detail momentarily.

As participants in the enterprise make clear, the organisation of the Armenian volunteers into formal units was complete by mid-September 1914, and these units were attached to Russian army all along the line in the Caucasus. Other Armenians were trained by Russian intelligence for reconnaissance and sabotage missions.76 The Russian army had five Dashnak Armenian volunteer druzhinas when it invaded the Ottoman Empire in November 1914 and a sixth legion led by Hunchaks was soon added. There were also multiple smaller irregular volunteer detachments.77

The number of Armenian volunteers is, as with so many historical numbers, highly politicised and fundamentally unknowable. There were not less than 6,000 spread through the six druzhinas, and that increased considerably in short order. One of the Russians’ key Dashnak collaborators reported that “20,000 Armenian volunteers … responded to the call” to “take up arms against the Turks”.78 The British estimated the Russians had nearly 45,000 Armenian volunteers by the end of October 1914.79 Another Armenian volunteer said their number was 20,000 just “at the front” in Van by mid-1915.80 Armenian political leader Boghos Nubar puts the figure around 50,000,81 and Russian historians give the same figure, estimating that 11,500 of them were Ottoman-Armenians spread across twenty-three Russian units.82

Taner Akçam, a leading historian arguing the Ottomans committed genocide in 1915-16, has claimed that the Russians’ Armenian volunteers had a “far greater” psychological than military importance, in their impact on the “imagination” of the Ottoman leaders towards their Armenian subjects.83 Contemporary Ottoman, Armenian, and Russian sources all disagree with this, describing the Armenian volunteers as highly-motivated and proficient, playing a significant role in the initial military disasters for the Ottoman army in eastern Anatolia.84 It was in recognition of this Armenian contribution to Russian arms that Tsar Nicholas II made a personal visit to the Armenian Cathedral in Tiflis on 13 December 1914, where he was publicly hailed by Alexander Khatisian, the president of the Armenian National Bureau, who made a speech saying: “Armenians from all countries are hurrying to enter the ranks of the glorious Russian Army, and with their blood, to serve the victory of the Russian Army … Let the Russian flag wave freely over the Dardanelles and the Bosporus. … Let the Armenian people of Turkey, who have suffered for the faith of Christ, receive resurrection for a new, free life under the protection of Russia.”85 If there was “imagination” in the Ottoman government’s view of Armenian dynamics, it seems to have been shared by some significant portion of the Armenians themselves and the Russian Emperor.

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The Armenian Rebellion

The Ottoman government’s sense that an Armenian rebellion was in the works had been building over about a year by the summer of 1914, and not without reason.

Some consular reports suggest the Ottoman State’s crackdown on the Kurds in mid-1913 worked for a time to increase public security in the east.86 Other foreign dispatches in the same period suggest the lawlessness was worse than it had been for years. Regardless, the Ottoman government did not believe the ongoing stockpiling of weapons by the Armenian committees was for “self-defence”, not least because the government itself was increasing the amount of arms given to Armenians for that purpose.87 The Ottomans believed the committees’ strategy remained one of preparing for a rebellion in tandem with Russian intervention, which had been delayed by the diplomatic contingencies of mid-1913. It was a view not without foundation.

In mid-1913, the Armenian committees—the Dashnaks, the Hunchaks, and the Armenakan Party—had met in Van and agreed to form a united front, coordinating their revolutionary activity. As so often in insurgent alliances, the most ideologically radical and operationally violent element dominated, namely the Dashnaks (though the Hunchaks had been radicalising on their own). Similarly commonplace was the Dashnaks’ utilisation of this alliance to extend a shadow governance capacity—“taxing” Armenians in Van, for example—which normalised the population cooperating with the insurgents and gave the insurgents access to increasing resources that were used to provide goods and services, a feedback loop that progressively solidified the insurgents’ de facto control and legitimacy.88 Captain Molyneux-Seel, a British official at the Consulate in Van, argued in May 1913 that the committees’ alliance resulted from a meeting Van Dashnak leader Arshak Vramian had “with the Russian authorities” in Tiflis, and a month earlier Molyneux-Seel had reported to London: “[The Armenians have] thrown off any pretence of loyalty they may once have shown, and openly welcome the prospect of a Russian occupation of the Armenian Vilayets.”89

In January 1914, the British Vice-Consul in Van, Ian M. Smith, reported that the Armenian revolutionaries’ “secret importation of arms”, mostly from Russia, was on such a vast scale it was ceasing to be secret: “I have seen Armenians openly carrying these arms in the country districts … In Van it is said that the Armenians are now better armed than the Kurds”. Smith also noted the political dynamics pushing towards confrontation: within the alliance of Armenian committees, the Dashnaks were unquestionably supreme “owing to the more active and extreme policy it pursues”. This included the Dashnaks imposing themselves—and purging Armenian moderates—throughout Van province.90 Van would prove the seismic hinge point, but not yet.

In March 1914, a month after the Ottomans had signed the reform treaty with Russia, a rebellion erupted in Bitlis, just west of Van. It was led by Kurds, specifically a mullah named Selim Efendi al-Hizani. Mullah Selim and the 300 Kurdish chieftains who joined him nominally wanted the restoration of the shari’a and considered the CUP impious, but the Christian economic predominance in the east and the CUP disarming the Kurds had at least as much to do with it. The rebellion was put down by 2 April. The CUP regime at one level breathed a sigh of relief that the Kurds had targeted the government, rather than the Armenians, which would have created dire consequences for relations with the Great Powers at that moment. The warning was taken, though, with measures put in place such as “granting the local governors wider latitude to declare martial law and request military reinforcements, [and] Minister of the Interior Talat ordered that special attention be paid to protecting Christians from future attacks”.91

On the other hand, the Ottoman government was alarmed by the clear Russian fingerprints on the Bitlis uprising, despite ostensibly-friendlier diplomatic relations of late. Mullah Selim was defeated so rapidly because he had jumped the gun: if he had waited, several Kurdish powerbrokers who were actually in Russia would have returned with the weapons transfers they had been arranging. As it was, all the Kurdish chiefs could do was offer words of support, but it showed that Russia had not given up on its Kurdish assets, the disappointing realisation a year earlier that the Kurds could not be brought under a collective Russian-directed leadership structure notwithstanding.92 Ensuring nobody missed what had happened, Selim took shelter in the Russian Consulate and Petersburg refused to hand him over (he was still there when open war began in November). The Porte, therefore, tried to win the Kurds over by granting “financial subsidies, making leading Kurds senators, and pressing the Kurds of Istanbul to use their influence over their brethren in Anatolia”. It was yet another treatment that made the illness worse—and complicated the policy of protecting Christians—but the Ottomans were short of options, unlike the Russians, who could play the Kurdish and Armenian cards simultaneously in “eroding Ottoman control of Eastern Anatolia”, and it was working.93

Just over two weeks later, on 19 April 1914, Talat warned the provincial authorities in Adana and Aleppo that the Armenians in Zeytun and the region around Alexandretta (İskenderun) were smuggling in weapons and preparing for a rebellion. Then there was a lull and some in the Ottoman government began to think—or to hope—that their fears had been misplaced.94 In July, worrying signs reappeared, such as shipments of Russian weapons into the heavily-Armenian Eleşkirt Valley,95 and in the shadow of the Great War commencing the direst Ottoman fears started to manifest.

* * * *

There is a tendency, acknowledged even by those who strongly support recognising the 1915 events as genocide, for scholars to ignore the wartime Armenian rebellion in the Ottoman Empire because to mention it is perceived as giving ammunition to the “Turkish” argument that the deportations were just that, a security measure against a rebellious population with incidental, not intentional, fatalities.96 The unspoken issue is that any claim of genocide is inherently to make an analogy with the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry, and the Armenian rebellion greatly complicates such a parallel. It is a fact nonetheless.

The real debate is to some extent about the scale of the Armenian rebellion and most fundamentally about the connection between the Armenian volunteers and the Ottoman-Armenian insurgencies. One side sees a firm dividing line between the Russian-controlled “external” volunteers and “internal” rebel activity that was geographically local and had an indigenous impetus. The other side sees two prongs of a holistic Russian strategy. Armenian leaders contemporaneously largely took the latter view, as can be seen from Kajaznuni and Papazian above. Another example is Boghos Nubar, who said the invasion of the volunteers with the Russians was supposed to be the mechanism for igniting Ottoman-Armenian rebellion, that the volunteers would provide an example to their Ottoman “compatriots … in a common action to acquire the rights of autonomy”, as he put it.97 Russian officials said the same thing.98

From early August 1914, Armenian draft resistance was widespread in Zeytun, a city where Armenian nationalist unrest went all the way back to 1862, with recent rounds in 1895-96 and 1909. The committees soon appeared to organise Armenian demands that they be excused service in the Ottoman army and allowed to set up their own volunteer unit that would “defend” the city, i.e., administer it autonomously. This would have been refused at any time, but the language of “volunteers” at that moment, with what the Russians were doing in the Caucasus, naturally spooked the Ottoman government. The committees exacerbated Ottoman dread by reacting to the refusal with an armed revolt in Zeytun on 30 August 1914. The court house was attacked, Ottoman officers (and some of their families) were killed, and telegraph lines brought down. The guerrillas were scattered quickly, but not crushed. A low-level insurgency persisted in Zeytun up to December.99

The archives show that it was right around this time the Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov told the Tiflis command to begin arming “Armenians and Assyrian Christians” inside the Ottoman Empire so that they could act behind the lines for Russia as soon as war began, and Sazonov was insistent that the Armenians be ordered not to “undertake anything without our instructions”. General Yudenich, the man on the spot, more familiar with eastern Anatolia and aware of Russian limitations, wrote back on 29 August, in a memo entitled, “On the Arming of Ottoman Armenians”, that, if Russia embarked on this course of pushing the Armenians into rebellion without much greater resources devoted to it, it would leave the Armenians “to defend themselves exclusively under their own power” and in all likelihood this would result in the Ottomans “annihilating the Armenians”. Yet Yudenich then recommended smuggling “at least 20,000 rifles and accompanying ammunition” to Ottoman-Armenians, ostensibly so they could defend themselves. Interpretations differ on whether this is proof of Yudenich’s prescience about the Ottomans’ genocidal ambitions, or proof of Russian-instigated Armenian treachery that made the deportations inevitable.100

The Armenian committees at the time had no illusions about what a dangerous game they were playing with the lives of Ottoman-Armenians by allying with the Russians and plotting to rebel against the Ottoman government once war broke out, but after two decades of their provocation strategy this was more of an inducement than a deterrent. Aram Turabian, one of the Dashnaks’ chief propagandist-recruiters abroad (based in Paris), stated bluntly that the Armenian revolutionaries “knew very well to what they were exposing the innocent inhabitants of the regions of Armenia under Turkish rule; but in the history of a people there are moments when … it becomes necessary to sacrifice … a part of the present generation to safeguard the future”.101

The Russian plans to stoke internal Ottoman disorder via the Armenians were theoretically covert, but it was more of an open secret, given the integral connection with the overt Armenian volunteers program and the scale of what Saint Petersburg was up to.

In the first week of September 1914, the Ottoman ambassador in Tehran reported that the Russians were arming Armenians in Iran and the Caucasus, and the Russian Consul in Tabriz was recruiting more Armenians by promising to reward those who supported the Russian war effort with an Armenian State on conquered Ottoman land. Around the same time, Ottoman spies in Petersburg reported: “The Russian Government aims to win the support of the Armenians so as to provoke a revolt in Eastern Anatolia any time it chooses.” Ottoman military, police, and intelligence sources in eastern Anatolia all converged on the view that an Armenian rebellion awaiting the green light from Russia was being prepared. On 16 September, the Tsar issued a statement telling Armenians that “the hour of liberty” had “finally sounded”. The next day, the commander of the all-important Ottoman Third Army in eastern Anatolia notified his troops, “Russians, with the assistance of Armenians from Caucasia, have incited our Armenians with promises of independence”, and called for vigilance and counter-measures to interdict the flow of Russian weaponry to Armenian rebels.102

A military report on 24 September, after clashes between Third Army troops and Armenian rebels in Van city, once again took note of Russian weapons and ammunition pouring over the border.103 In Hopa, on 5 October 1914, the Ottomans confronted Armenian guerrillas estimated to number 800, all armed with Russian weapons. To the south, at Erzurum, Ottoman troops fought Armenian çete (armed bands).104 In early October, the Third Army informed the Ottoman General Staff that Russian-born Armenians who had experience in the Russian army were infiltrating the Empire with maps, money, weapons. On 20 October, a counter-insurgency raid in Hasankale (Pasinler) discovered Russian rifles in Armenian homes. Three days later, the Third Army reported the movement of large numbers of Armenian armed guerrillas in Muş, Bitlis, Van, and Erivan.105

What the Russians were doing with the Armenians was not unique. Foreign powers using disaffected nations within multinational Empires had been standard practice in European statecraft since Napoleon unleashed nationalism on the Continent a century earlier, and the Ottomans had learned to play this game, too. The pointed omission of Russia’s subversive activities from the Ottoman war declaration in November 1914 was a tacit acknowledgement the Porte did not have a leg to stand on with such complaints: since August, it had been enlisting Russian deserters in its army, and instrumentalising Russian Muslims through the Special Organisation (S.O., Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa) to instigate revolt in the Caucasus.106

This was not, as is sometimes claimed, because the CUP had pan-Turanist and/or pan-Islamic goals.107 Those elements of the Party had been repressed by 1913, and the Ottomans entered the war with rather modest aims: restoring sovereignty, specifically by ending the Capitulations; securing territorial integrity on the 1914 borders, with the only exception being the goal to recover Batumi, Kars, and Ardahan lost to Russia in 1878; and more generally weakening Russia as far as possible.108 The S.O. was deployed to stir-up trouble behind the Russian lines in pursuit of these objectives, not without success.109 (Within this framework, there is some truth to the argument—often made simultaneous with the pan-Islamism/Turanism one, bizarrely—that the CUP was pushing towards the creation of a demographically contiguous nation-State in Anatolia to present the world a fait accompli in the aftermath of the doomed Empire, though how consciously is unclear.110)

The bottom line is that the Ottomans and Russia were in all serious senses at war from September 1914 through their various agents and proxies.111 As part of this undeclared Russo-Ottoman war, eastern Anatolia was engulfed by violence for two months before the Russian invasion. The Russians were not the puppet-masters of every insurgent action in eastern Anatolia in September-October 1914, nor did they try to be. The Russians provided the support system to the principle elements of the violence, the communal civil war and the Armenian “national liberation struggle”, as they had for years, and were content for it to cascade into a downward spiral. In the chaos, many residents reasonably concluded that remaining unarmed bordered on suicidal, and, humans being what they are, many militias formed initially for local self-defence swelled to a point where they were capable of predating on their neighbours and did just that.112 With Russian weapons available to all, Armenian guerrillas attacked the State and looted and massacred Muslim villages, and Kurdish irregulars nominally loyal to the State, Turkish and Kurdish gangs, and Muslim villagers raided and massacred Armenian settlements.113 The blurring of motives and allegiances, offense and defence, hardly mattered to the Russians. What counted was that this all amounted to “a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions” for the Ottoman Third Army, which was waiting to meet the Russian invaders while barely holding on to its fragile supply-lines.114

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The Formal Outbreak of the Russian-Ottoman War

The Russian invasion of the Ottoman Empire on 1-2 November 1914, the Bergmann Offensive,115 targeted the Erzurum-Sarikamish Road, with a strong supporting attack towards Oltu and supplementary assaults on Karakose and Dogubayazit. The Armenian volunteer formations fighting with the Russian Army were particularly visible in the brief seizure of Dogubayazit. Ottoman losses were moderate and by the end of November, the front stabilised with Russia occupying a strip fifteen miles deep in the Ottoman Empire.116 Internally, however, the “situation went from bad to worse”.117

Leaving his post on the night hostilities began, Aleksandr Adamov, the Russian Consul in Erzurum, where the Ottoman Third Army was headquartered, sent a final dispatch to Petersburg saying that the Ottoman-Armenians of Erzurum and “all cities surrounding it, including Erzincan, Sivas, Mana Hatun, and Kayseri, not to mention in the villages and rural areas, … are awaiting with impatience the arrival of Russian troops who will free them from the Turkish yoke”. The Dashnaks in Erzurum, once close to the German Consul, had “turned fully Russophile” and “hidden their weapons in secret storage caches”, wrote Adamov: when “the Russians are right on their doorstep” they will rise in rebellion. Perhaps Adamov’s expansive vision of the assets Russia had inside a country it was about to invade were mistaken—the phenomenon is not unknown Russian history—but Sazonov took it seriously enough to send Adamov’s memo straight to the Stavka.118 And there were indications Adamov had not been wholly delusional.

While Zeytun was more-or-less brought under Ottoman government control in the first week of December 1914, by then Armenian guerrilla activity had become commonplace, from sabotage operations, notably cutting telegraph wires, to (attempted) assassinations of Ottoman officials, the bombing of police stations, and brigandage on the roads. Most of this was concentrated near the front, in Erzurum, Bitlis, and Van, where two Armenian districts, Karçekan and Gevaş, were reported as being in full-fledged revolt on 21 December. But in January-February 1915, Armenian guerrilla warfare would spread across Anatolia, to Erzincan, Sivas, and Cilicia, among other places.119

The gathering momentum of the Armenian insurgency in early 1915 was especially alarming because the military picture had drastically turned against the Ottomans. Enver had ordered a major push against the Russians on 22 December, which had started well, with the Ottomans invading Iran up to Qotur and troops (led by a German officer) re-taking Ardahan on 27 December, but the detachment was too small to hold it.120 Russian reports praise the Armenian volunteers’ contribution to stemming the Ottoman offensive at this point.121 By the first days of the New Year, the Ottoman army had been surrounded and defeated at Sarikamish, and in the retreat over the next ten days probably 50,000 Ottoman soldiers were killed, half in combat and the rest frozen to death and struck down by disease in the mountain passes. Many of the 20,000 or so wounded died of typhus in the hospitals and thousands were taken captive. The Ottomans lost about two-thirds of the 120,000 troops Enver sent into battle.

The Ottomans absorbed this calamity with the additional misery that once the snows faded the Russians would begin a new offensive. What the Ottomans did not and could not know was that the Sarikamish offensive had achieved one vital thing: it derailed Sazonov’s plans to initiate a general Ottoman-Armenian uprising. Sazonov’s deputy cabled Tiflis on 17 December 1914, reminding Yudenich that “any order for an Armenian uprising must only be given after receiving prior agreement with the Foreign Ministry”, and subsequent cable traffic was finalising arrangements for such an order. Then came the Ottoman onslaught, in the wake of which the Russians somewhat got cold feet about an Armenian rebellion. Again, the Ottomans could not know this, nor the Armenians for that matter,122 and the signals from Russia seemed designed to actively mislead about their intentions.

Russkoe Slovo, one of the largest mass-circulation Russian newspapers, published a letter from an Armenian lawyer named Calkus on 24 January 1915 reading: “In Turkey’s eyes, … we were guilty of treason. Armenians confess to this treason without any further ado. … The Armenian is a traitor to Turkey because Turkey is not his mother but his stepmother. A growing number of Armenians are volunteering in the ranks of the Russian army. They are streaming toward Russia from the far corners of the world … They believe in Russia and Russia’s mission.” An Armenian deputy, the Kadet Mikayel Papadjanian, stated in the Russian Duma on 28 January 1915: “The Armenian population of Turkish Armenia joyously greeted our victorious [Russian] army. Armenians helped wherever and however they could, and prepared a hearty welcome for the Russians.”123

In mid-February 1915, a delegation of Ottoman-Armenian revolutionaries from Zeytun arrived in Tiflis saying they had 15,000 men ready to “pounce on Turkish [army] communications” if the Russians gave them arms and ammunition. Count Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov, the formal overall commander of the forces that had beaten the Ottomans at Sarikamish, met the Armenian rebel leaders personally. Vorontsov-Dashkov disclaimed any ability to help—Zeytun was too far from Russian positions, he said—but offered to put the Zeytun rebels in touch with Britain and France. One can say that Ottoman government fears about this—and they did very quickly learn about it—were to that extent overblown. However, the Armenians merely getting from Cilicia to Tiflis must have required significant Russian logistical support. Moreover, “Simply by meeting with the Zeytun Armenians[,] … Vorontsov-Dashkov had committed a deeply provocative act.” And it was no idle thing to connect Ottoman-Armenian rebels with the Anglo-French Allies.124

Back in November 1914, Boghos Nubar had offered Britain and France support in the Zeytun area: “Armenians in Cilicia are ready to enlist as volunteers to support a landing in Iskenderun, Mersin, or Adana. … [T]hey will rebel against the Turks if they are supplied with arms and ammunition.”125 By February 1915, the British and French were bombarding the Dardanelles, in visible preparation for an assault on the Ottoman capital, and after ditching their own plan to open a second front around Alexandretta—they settled for some British shelling of the coast—were engaged in a conspiracy with Ottoman-Armenian rebels to do it for them. Britain had made contact with Armenians in Cilicia, whom it planned to arm as “part of a scheme for the occupation of Alexandretta”, as a War Office cable of 4 March 1915 records. By that time, Britain had already arranged via Mikayel Varandian for the Armenian committees abroad to send 20,000 of their men—half from America, half in the Balkans—to Cyprus to be organised into an invading force to join the internal rising in Cilicia.126 Around this time, Armenians were seen coming ashore at Dörtyol, in Cilicia, from a British warship.127

In the event, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, convinced the British Cabinet to abandon the plans for a southern front using the Armenians to focus on a knock-out blow in Constantinople, but the Armenians in Cilicia had already gone ahead with their rebellion, quite possibly with Russian encouragement—the Russians had remained engaged in the Anglo-Armenian discussions through their London Embassy.128 Led by the Hunchaks, the armoury of the gendarmes in Zeytun was raided on 24 February 1915, and, in the emerging pattern of these revolts, numerous gendarmes were killed and the telegraph poles were destroyed.129 In early March, armed Armenian deserters tried to take over Zeytun and throughout the month armed combat continued, at one point with the rebels occupying an Armenian monastery for five days and killing ten soldiers from inside.130

In early April 1915, with the Ottomans having lost hundreds of soldiers in Zeytun and still struggling to pacify it,131 the commander of the Fourth Army took the decision to deport the Armenians to Konya, nearly 350 miles northwest, to eliminate the social basis for rebellion on this crucial military supply route. Despite stern instructions for the protection of Armenians and swift punishment of Muslims who violated these orders, the process was badly organised and Armenian deportees suffered: they lacked provisions and the soldiers reacted with inadequate vigour when Muslims attacked the convoy in various locations. This was the first instance of Armenian deportation and the lack of preparation testifies to its contingent and reactive nature. Of note, too, though Talat formally signed-off on it, the initiative came from the local military authorities; it remained an isolated case for some time; and the Armenians were relocated further into Anatolia.132 It is not the fact pattern one would expect if the CUP went into the war with a premeditated plan for the genocidal clearance of Armenians from Anatolia.

The Van Rebellion

Throughout the spring of 1915, as the attritional grind set in in the east, “Russian soldiers, guided by Armenians, raided Muslim villages in the Caucasus, Van, and Bitlis. Louis Mosel, a German officer, reported that in the Caucasus, ‘a large part of the population is fleeing death at the hands of Russians and their Armenian collaborators’.” The Germans tried asking the Armenian Patriarch to restrain his flock, but he said there was no point in him trying and Armenian historians agree he had been overshadowed by the Dashnaks in Constantinople “secretly encouraging the volunteer movement in the Caucasus”.133 Even in retrospect, Armenians present could be remarkably blasé about the anti-Muslim atrocities, for instance writing in passing that the rebels “disposed of about sixty Turks” living in one village.134 Inevitably, Muslims who survived the outrages of the Russians and the Armenians, whether volunteers or rebels, and were displaced into the interior, then revenged themselves on innocent Armenians.

Throughout the Ottoman east in early 1915, an especially inflamed form of the situation in preceding years played out as “national liberation” warfare and foreign invasion mingled with sectarian-communal violence, and the ever-marauding Kurdish tribes were under less State oversight than ever. Such was the situation around Van,135 close the Russian border and so long the centre of gravity for Armenian nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, where the Armenian revolutionary movement would fatefully reach the height of its success.

There is no doubt there had been massacres of Armenians in Van province in the early months of 1915, and this has led to a narrative wherein the Armenian rebellion that seized Van city in April 1915 was “a kind of preventive ‘Warsaw Uprising’.”136 The evidence adduced for this comes from some Central Powers officials, specifically Joseph Pomiankowski, the military attaché at Austrian Embassy, who described the Van uprising in precisely such terms, as “a desperate effort by Armenians, who witnessed the beginning of the murders and understood that their turn would come”, and German liaison officer, General Friedrich Posselt (“Posselt Pascha”), as well as some missionaries, notably two American Protestants, Clarence Ussher and Stanley E. Kerr, who claimed that 55,000 Armenians had been massacred by the time the Armenians in Van rose.137

The evidence is highly problematic. Pomiankowski, for example, was based in Constantinople and speaking years later. Posselt was stationed in Erzurum, and his testimony from that narrow vantage point differs sharply from the conclusion of General Otto Liman von Sanders, the overall head of the German military mission attached to the Ottoman Army from 1913 to 1918, who had access to all reports—German and Ottoman—from all over the Empire.138 The missionary testimony is self-evidently parti pris and formulaic. Nobody can take Kerr’s fatality figure seriously and in the case of Ussher, a British official had remarked as long before as 1905, “I myself know by experience that Dr. Ussher’s statements are unreliable”. An American diplomat added that Ussher was “most unreliable, and given to gross exaggeration owing to his innate dislike of Turks and his inordinate fanaticism”.139

The “Defence of Van” narrative does not just struggle for evidence on its own account: it is contradicted by the evidence of the local context, the actual course of the rebellion, and the broader context of the First World War.

Even without the admission of one of the Dashnaks on the council that administered Van under rebel rule that activity began in October 1914,140 the protracted build-up of arms by the Armenian committees in Van would cast doubt on the claims of a spontaneous “defensive” rising. The reality is that the military picture was the other way around by the end of February 1915: the Ottoman administration in Van was losing in the contest with the Armenian guerrillas. Across Van province, government buildings were being occupied and Muslim villages attacked and sometimes massacred. Quite a number of what the missionaries describe as Armenian massacres were Ottoman soldiers fighting rebels in areas like Havasor, Timar, and Başkale, where indiscriminate attacks and horrific excesses against Armenian civilians did indeed take place, and even more so Muslim villagers exacting “revenge”. But this was in a situation not of the Ottoman government’s making, where an escalating Armenian rebellion in Van was sufficient to tie down an Ottoman division by March-April that was intended for Iran (the Ottoman foothold in Iran grabbed in December was lost in April because of this) and in the districts of Çatak and Saray the State did not regain control until the autumn.141

Four of the Russians’ Armenian volunteer legions had been quickly grouped into the “Van detachment”, so named since it drew significantly on Ottoman-Armenians from that region, and focused its attention there.142 The Russians army had gotten bogged down before it could reach Van, though, so resorted to infiltrating armed Armenian bands trained in Tiflis—before war officially broke out and on a larger scale afterwards. As mentioned above, Ottoman intelligence had detected these movements, and the communications between the Armenians and Russians requesting weapons and supplies was rough enough that the Ottomans intercepted much of it.143 As the Armenian rebellion in Van crested and closed in on the provincial capital, the Ottomans tried to abort it via a decapitation strike: they succeeded in killing Arshak Vramian on 17 April, but the most important leader, Aram Manukian, an experienced Dashnak terrorist leader and one of the founders of the Armenian Republic in 1918, escaped. Manukian was able to impose a unified command over the insurgency and bring it into Van city, which fell to the rebellion on 20 April.144

The Armenian rebels were well-armed, able to draw on caches stored over eighteen months and more, and disciplined and organised enough, reinforced with rebels who flooded in from elsewhere in the province, to hold off three Ottoman police divisions, the First Expeditionary Force, and the Kurdish militiamen wielding heavy weapons, including cannons, for a month. The Armenian rebels in control of Van swiftly dispatched runners to the Russians, whose cause they believed their actions were helping.145 One of the letters approved by Manukian for Yudenich said that the Armenians of Van were “expecting Russian help every day”. The Russians were so proud of the letter they sent it to the Allies—though eliminated the word “Russian”, downplaying any sense of political coordination and portraying the Armenian appeal as a humanitarian one to the Entente generally. The Russians reached Van on 17 May in the form of a Cossack contingent guided by thousands of Ottoman-Armenian deserters, forcing the Ottoman garrison to retreat.146

On 20 May, the Russians’ Armenian volunteers, led by Sargis Mehrabyan, arrived in Van, followed shortly by the regular Russian army, who were greeted by cheering Armenian crowds. The commanding Russian General was given the keys to the city, and the Russian occupiers appointed Manukian head of the defence council administering the city.147 For the Armenians, this was deliverance: there was a joyous “night of orgy, a saturnalia”, sacking, looting, and burning Ottoman buildings.148 For the Muslims, the slaughter was unmerciful.149

While interpretation of the Van events has become the epicentre of controversy over 1915, this was not really so at the time. The Ottoman government, of course, saw this as the Armenian rebels acting as a fifth column in a premeditated operation to enable the advance of their Russian masters by seizing and handing over a city. German officials, some friendly to the Armenians, saw it the same way,150 as did the Armenians’ great champion, U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, who wrote to Washington of “an Armenian insurrection to help the Russians [that] had broken out at Van”.151 And the Armenians themselves agreed. The “idea that Van had been delivered to the Russians by the Armenian rebels” was not regarded contemporaneously as an accusation: “Armenian newspapers in the Caucasus boasted openly about this throughout 1915”.152

* * * *

When the camera is pulled back to survey the whole picture, one can understand why the Ottomans saw this as their nightmares becoming a reality. So soon after the insurrection in Zeytun, Van seemed to ratify the Ottoman perception that a generalised Russian-orchestrated Armenian rebellion was underway.153 In combination with the almost-exactly-simultaneous landing of Allied troops at Gallipoli on 25 April, how could there be any doubt Van’s fall was the first domino in a pre-planned Entente operation? The stated British and French intent was to conquer Constantinople, and thereby the Ottoman Empire, to open up a direct supply line to Russia—which was closing in, with its Armenian collaborators, from the east.154

It was while being attacked on two fronts, with the fate of the Empire at stake and the invaders having recruited an enemy within so far as the Ottoman government was concerned, that the arrest of the Armenian leadership in Constantinople was ordered on 24 April 1915, the event Armenians mark as the beginning of the genocide. The Tehcir (Relocation) Law, passed by the Ottoman Parliament on 27 May and publicly published on 1 June, ordered the deportation of the Armenian population from the militarily sensitive areas, starting with the Six Provinces in the east. The ferocious debate that continues more than a century later about whether this was a desperate exigency measure in the midst of an existential security crisis, with inherently tragic human consequences, or official cover for a long-planned policy of annihilation, will be taken up in a subsequent post.

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FOOTNOTES

The 536th edition of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), released on 26 February 2026, had as its main editorial a polemic accusing Al-Qaeda of being co-opted by the Islamic Revolution that rules Iran. The Naba article, entitled, “The Rafidite Co-optation of the Jihadists” (al-Istiqtab al-Rafidi lil-Jihadiyeen), builds off a line in the most recent speech by the official IS spokesman, Abu Hudhayfa al-Ansari, which was given a few days earlier. A translation of the article is given below.

The basic argument Al-Naba makes is that Al-Qaeda has been drawn into the Iranian camp since its leadership took shelter there in January 2002. Since Al-Qaeda has had a relationship with the clerical regime dating back to the 1990s and Al-Qaeda’s probable emir since 2022, Muhammad Saladin Zaydan (Sayf al-Adel), is based in Tehran, one would have to concede there is a point here. By IS’s account, this association has corrupted Al-Qaeda ideologically, as demonstrated finally and incontestably by the organisation’s most recent statements that ferociously condemn the American-Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic, in marked contrast to Al-Qaeda’s silence and worse when the U.S.-led Coalition assaulted IS’s “caliphate”.

For IS, Al-Qaeda being co-opted into Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” results from the inherent flaws in its doctrinal methodology (manhaj), which, rather than separate cleanly between truth and falsehood, has seen Al-Qaeda incline favourably towards misguided Islamists when they seem popular and powerful, notably HAMAS in Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It ended in tears in those previous cases and it will again with Iran, by IS’s reckoning.

The Rafidite Co-optation of the Jihadists

In his recent address, Shaykh Abu Hudhayfa al-Ansari—may Allah preserve him—shed light on the old deviation in the jihad arenas, and perhaps what most caught our attention was his statement about the jihadists falling “under Rafidi doctrinal guidance and co-optation”,1 and not the reverse. Some may pass over this phrase without understanding it, or some may think it an exaggeration or a fallacy, while Al-Qaeda’s members [al-qa’idiyyun] will convince themselves that it is a false slander, because it was issued by the only adversary [i.e., the Islamic State] with whom they “never cease” to dissociate, nor do they accept conciliation with it, nor permit appeasement of it, nor even neutrality towards it of the kind granted to the sects of apostasy in the East and West.

In order to understand this part of the address, we go back in memory to the period of the fall of the Taliban after the American invasion [in late 2001], and the displacement of many of the leaders and families of Al-Qaeda towards the border triangle between Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, especially in Zahedan [in the far-east of Iran]. There began the phase of Iranian doctrinal guidance and co-optation of Al-Qaeda, as confirmed by several recognised leaders of Al-Qaeda who are now deceased, not to mention the testimonies they left behind.

Iran exploited the condition of displacement and the siege imposed on Al-Qaeda, and opened its doors to them in order to contain and absorb them as a functional weapon within its “Axis [of Resistance]”, which had already absorbed many other Islamic movements, including the Palestinian organisations [i.e., HAMAS and Palestinian Islamic Jihad] that were expelled in the 1990s to Marj al-Zuhur in southern Lebanon; the leaders of Hizb al-Shaytan [“the Party of Satan”, i.e., Hizballah/IRGC] rushed to them and engaged in ideologically guiding and co-opting them, which produced this stark Palestinian factional alignment behind the Iranian Axis [that they are willing to stick with] until the end.

Iran repeated the same tactic with Al-Qaeda, to the extent that some leaders of the two experiences described the Iranian role as “a generous host”! In fairness, some of the hawks of Al-Qaeda rejected this Iranian approach for various reasons that were not purely methodological, while other leaders submitted and acquiesced, so Iran contained them for years and stored them [in reserve] for its black day, and by now they are at the top of Al-Qaeda’s [leadership] pyramid.

We have come to read statements from the “General Command” of Al-Qaeda, whose outward appearance is of Sunni alignment but whose inner reality is Iranian alignment, as if they were issued by one of the branches of the “Axis of Resistance”, albeit with a crude wrapping in the name of the umma and [pretended concern with] the fate of the umma. It is known that the term “umma”, as Al-Qaeda uses it, is an evasive term used to paper over all the methodological contradictions and everything that the umma cannot tolerate from the sects that are waging war against it.

It is necessary for us to point out that what we mean by Rafidite doctrinal guidance here is not in the methodological sense of Shi’isation; Iran has not imposed Shi’ism on its “Sunni” proxies and pawns. Iran does not want them as a Rafidite mass, but rather as functional pawns that stand with it in the face of the “sole pole” [i.e., the post-Soviet unipolar alliance led by the United States], as it was called in the most recent statement of Al-Qaeda.

The most recent statement of Al-Qaeda [released on 4 February 2026], which came after the American–Iranian tension reached its peak and coincided with other statements from the arms of the “Axis of Resistance,” stated that these American deployments “are not to fight a specific State” and that these “events concern it [i.e., AQC] and concern every Muslim”, that “all are targeted”, that “the legal position is an obligation to fight [the Americans]”, and that it does not permit “silence or watching”.

We did not find even a tenth of a tenth of this Al-Qaeda [call to] mobilisation and [use of the] language of decisiveness and fighting during the raging Crusader campaign against the cities of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Instead, its marathon speeches were overflowing with hatred and incitement against the mujahideen at the height of the Crusader assault upon them, and that global assault, according to Al-Qaeda, did not “target all” nor did it “make fighting obligatory”! Nor did that fierce assault “concern” Al-Qaeda! Whereas it has come to “concern” it today when the fire has drawn near to the Iranian ship and it is close to sinking.

This is the Iranian co-opting and doctrinal guidance of the jihadists, and it has appeared with complete clarity in this test, to the point that even the Crusader journalists singled it out and found it objectionable, while the followers of Al-Qaeda split over it into factions and sects: one group denied it entirely, thereby denying a long record from the history of its leaders; another group turned a blind eye to it; and another group began to justify and legitimise this alignment, invoking the same discourse adopted by the Ikhwani outfits at the height of the war on Gaza, which promoted a narrative whose meaning is that Iran and its Axis constitute the last line of defence for the umma of Islam!! This is what is implicit in Al-Qaeda’s most recent statement, which addressed the “governments of the region”, saying that they “will be eaten the day others are eaten”. So who is this “one being eaten” whom Al-Qaeda fears for, and with whom it threatens its opponents?!

In an insult to the intelligence of its followers, Al-Qaeda attempted to justify its Iranian alignment by dragging Afghanistan into the discussion, claiming that America’s “eye is fixed on Khorasan and the [Taliban’s Islamic] Emirate!”, the Emirate which the Crusaders granted to the Taliban under the protection of American aircraft, just as they granted those before them rule on the back of American tanks.

Similarly, the “General Command” strove hard to justify its alignment behind Iran by drawing a comparison between the American rhetoric surrounding the campaign against Afghanistan in the past and the campaign against Iran in the present, saying that America previously raised the slogan of a “War on Terrorism” and “the liberation of the peoples of the region”, just as it does today. The [Al-Qaeda] statement, however, omitted and only implied what it clearly meant: “just as it now raises the slogan of war on Iran”.

To cap it all, there was Al-Qaeda addressing those it called “the rational ones in the circles of decision-making”, and appealing for them to display wisdom and rationality in preserving and defending the lands and the people! We did not know that the term tawaghit had acquired a new coinage in Al-Qaeda’s lexicon to become “the rational ones in the circles of decision-making”. So is Al-Qaeda preparing to meet, or ally, or cooperate with the tawaghit, these “rational ones in the circles of decision-making”?! [This is of a piece with Al-Qaeda having] previously addressed the “conscious generation” not to evade military service in the apostate armies and called upon them to “make use of it”.

In the same vein, Al-Qaeda claimed that its fighting over the last few decades “formed a solid shield … from which the major States of the East benefited in competing with the sole pole!” And it denounced the “designation of peaceful groups as terrorist” and the “overthrow” of what it called “governments that identify themselves to Islamic action”. In doing so, it is reproaching Saudi Arabia and its counterparts in a crude “pragmatic” discourse, the implication of which is: rapprochement with the Islamists is something you could have used as a shield for yourselves against the current threats, just as we were a shield for [certain] States against other States [in the past].

All of these methodological calamities were uttered in a single statement by the “General Command” of Al-Qaeda, which they claim is based in Afghanistan. What prompted us to address it was the remark of Shaykh al-Ansari in the course of his discussion of the Rafidite doctrinal guidance of the jihadists, which has produced a temporary Al-Qaeda alignment behind Iran, because Al-Qaeda is addicted to moving between axes and alignments. It had nearly raised the sign of “Rabi‘a” on the day [the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed] Morsi came to power [in Egypt in 2012], and the bitter harvest became sweet; but when the ship of the Ikhwan sank, the “wise men” of Al-Qaeda returned to criticising them in the same long video series with which they had opened rapprochement toward them.

And today some of them seek refuge with Iran as a political alignment, accompanied by justifications whose invalidity has become clear at every stage, both legally and practically; tomorrow, after the Iranian ship sinks, Al-Qaeda will return to reviling and insulting Iran. Al-Qaeda will continue leaping from one vessel to another until it is finally faced with drowning—so when will you save yourself, O lost one, and make for the lifeboats?

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FOOTNOTES

Read the article over at UnHerd.

Abu Hudhayfa al-Ansari, the official spokesman of the Islamic State (IS) since August 2023, gave his fourth speech on 21 February 2026. The title of the speech, “The Right Guidance Stands Clearly Distinct from Error”, is drawn from the Qur’an (2:256). A brief summary and a translation of the speech are given below.

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A previous article looked at the terrorist infrastructure, sustained by Palestinians and centred on Lebanon, which formed the crucial external support system for the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution in Iran that brought down the Shah and ushered Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini into power. There was, however, a parallel network supporting the Iranian Revolution in Lebanon. In Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years (2006), Houchang E. Chehabi and Hassan I. Mneimneh give a survey of this other network (pp. 182-214), primarily through the life of one of its key operatives, Mostafa Chamran.

EARLY LIFE

Born in Tehran in 1932, Chamran joined the Liberation Movement of Iran (LMI) soon after it emerged as a religious splinter from the Mossadeqist nationalist National Front in 1961. The Iranians in LMI were the core of the other network in Lebanon that helped Khomeini to power, While LMI ended up having a generally confrontational relationship with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), there was an ambivalence in that they were not wholly separate from the Palestinian-reliant network. This was baked-in from the start. For instance, the LMI, while supposedly “moderate” or “modernist” with a certain aversion to the traditional Shi’a clergy, had among their founders “the Red Mullah” Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani, who was also the spiritual leader of the Mojahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK). MEK was a close collaborator with the PLO and under an alliance formed with Khomeini in the early 1970s acted as the terrorist wing of his Revolution in 1978.1

That there was always an international dimension to the Iranian opposition to the Imperial Government can be seen in Chamran’s story. As Chehabi and Mneimneh explain, Chamran lived in the United States from the late 1950s—he would obtain a PhD in engineering and physics from Berkley—and he was no rank-and-file member of LMI. Chamran was among the founders of “LMI Abroad”, an interconnected LMI contingent operating in the West.

With Chamran in the U.S. were Ebrahim Yazdi and Sadeq Ghotbzadeh, later two of the three leaders of Khomeini’s PR shop in Paris at the height of the Revolution and officials in the first post-revolutionary government. In France, there was Sadeq Tabataba’i, whose sister was married to Ahmad Khomeini, the Imam’s son, and he was a nephew of Musa al-Sadr (about whom more soon). Tabataba’i, another propagandist for Khomeini in Paris in late 1978, was (appropriately enough) Deputy Prime Minister for Public Relations after the Revolution. And perhaps most importantly there was Ali Shariati in Germany, the key ideologist in bridging the Black and the Red, the Islamists and Communists, who led the Revolution. A religious fanatic who had differences with Khomeini only over the exact power of the clergy in an ideal State and a sociologist steeped in the nascent “post-colonial” theology, Shariati was an ardent admirer of the nationalist socialists who drowned Algeria in blood and the main populariser of Frantz Fanon among the Iranian opposition.

The Persian translation of Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth that Shariati spread was created c. 1966 by Abolhassan Banisadr, never an official LMI member but always close to it and very much in the Red Islamist current. It goes without saying, Banisadr was a resident of Paris, and he was the third key official in managing Khomeini’s propaganda image and message after the Imam arrived in the city in October 1978. While Shariati died six months before the Islamic Revolution began, Banisadr accompanied Khomeini back to Iran in 1979 and became the first president of the Islamic Republic in 1980.

Chehabi and Mneimneh refer to LMI Abroad as the “radical” wing of the party, but if so it was only briefly: it was their doctrines and practices that came to define the LMI. Mehdi Bazargan, the founding leader of LMI who stayed in Iran, was crucial in misleading the American Embassy on Khomeini’s behalf during the 1978-79 crisis,2 and Bazargan was the first Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic.

After the defeat of Khomeini’s first rebellion in 1963, triggered by the Shah’s modernising “White Revolution” (specifically the provision of education to girls), and the Imam’s deportation—he went to Iraq in 1965 and stayed there for thirteen years—the Shah entered the decade where he was at the zenith of his power, memorably securing for Iran an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the West in the “oil shock”. Most of the opposition inside Iran, certainly the constitutional elements, went into abeyance. Chamran and LMI Abroad, by contrast, had been drawn to violence and set about enacting it, the authors note. Algeria had mesmerised them and this was the era when the Soviet “Third World Strategy” was thickening into a global campaign of subversion. Chamran and his set were hardly alone in feeling the allure of Cuba becoming a Soviet colony under the charismatic Fidel Castro, and attention was turning to Vietnam as American involvement deepened to hold back the Soviet onslaught fronted by Ho Chi Minh.

BEGINNING A TERRORIST CAREER

In “late 1963”, Distant Relations records, Chamran, Yazdi, and Ghotbzadeh negotiated with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Soviet-aligned leader of the radical camp in the Middle East, to set up an anti-Shah formation in Cairo, the Special Organization for Unity and Action (SAMA). Chamran was “chosen to supervise the military training of its members”, the beginning of a long career as a roving terrorist trainer. Iranian militants were trained at the SAMA camp for two years, but relations with the Egyptian despotism broke down. Nasser, a pan-Arabist, began to agitate against Iran in ways SAMA’s leaders felt threatened the nation, not the Shah. Nasser had taken to referring to “the Arabian Gulf” and labelled the Arab-majority Khuzestan province of Iran “Arabistan”, even supporting secessionists there.

By 1966, Yazdi had moved SAMA’s headquarters to Lebanon, a weak State home to camps run by the PLO, which would in time make it weaker still. Other SAMA operatives went to Iraq and set up camps in Baghdad and Basra. “Chamran was left in Cairo to wrap up operations there and joined Yazdi in Beirut a few months later”, Chehabi and Mneimneh write. “But in the spring of 1967, relations between Iran and Lebanon deteriorated and the resulting pressure of the Lebanese government forced first Chamran and then Yazdi to return to the United States.” SAMA was dissolved at this point.

The Chamran clique had in any case “concluded that the time was not ripe for armed struggle against the Shah and that therefore the fight against his regime had to take the form of inculcating students with a revolutionary Islamic consciousness, for which purpose Islamic Student Associations were created in the United States and Europe.” This mission was to prove highly successful. Among the Shah’s reforms was increasing access to education for the poor, including enabling them to be educated abroad. There were about 100,000 Iranian students in Europe and America in 1978 and instead of feeling grateful to the Shah for their opportunities, they became, in the main, a force-multiplying cadre of activists for the Islamic Revolution. Chamran himself did not remain in the U.S. for long.

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KHOMEINI’S PALESTINIAN-BASED NETWORK IN LEBANON

As the Palestinian-centric network for Khomeini’s Revolution has been covered in-depth already, that story will not be reiterated here, but it is important to have an outline of that infrastructure in mind to understand the other network, and Chehabi and Mneimneh confirm and add some interesting details.

When the attempt of Yasser Arafat’s PLO to take over Jordan in September 1970 ended in defeat and expulsion to Lebanon, the link between the Palestinians and the Iranian opposition was already in place. Senior MEK leaders were in the PLO’s Jordanian camps and followed Arafat to Lebanon. The attempt of a separate MEK cadre in Dubai to get to Beirut created a major diplomatic incident and brought Lebanon’s status as an incubator of Iranian radicals to wider attention. From Chehabi and Mneimneh:

The … [MEK] Dubai group was arrested before getting to Lebanon and the Dubai police put them on an aeroplane to Iran. Their extradition was thwarted, however, when their comrades hijacked the aircraft and took it to Baghdad, where Iraqi authorities [the Ba’th Party by this point] arrested the militants. When Ayatollah Khomeini refused to intervene with the Iraqi government on their behalf [for fear of compromising his sanctuary], Abu Nidal [real name: Sabri al-Banna], then-PLO representative in Baghdad, came to the rescue by arranging for them to be taken to Damascus after 40 days in gaol. In late January 1971, they arrived in Beirut with identity cards provided by [Arafat’s FATAH faction of the PLO] that pretended they were Palestinians. They spent about a fortnight at Shaykh Zinad camp near Tripoli [in northern Lebanon] before being taken to a camp near Tartus in Syria. In April [1971, FATAH] evacuated that camp, whereupon the Iranian guerrillas in training went to Beirut.

In Lebanon, MEK studied “ideology, sabotage operations, forging documents, and producing explosives”, Chehabi and Mneimneh continue. “Having undergone their training, individual Iranians would return to Iran carrying weapons concealed on their bodies and in their luggage. In Lebanon, they posed as Palestinians and, having received identity papers from [FATAH] that gave them new names, they enjoyed a certain amount of immunity on account of the ‘Cairo Agreement’ the Lebanese government had been constrained to sign with the PLO in 1969. To account for their faulty Arabic and Persian accents, they pretended they had been brought up in Afghanistan.”

MEK’s first attempt at terrorism within Iran, to disrupt the celebrations of 2,500 years of Monarchy in October 1971, was thwarted by SAVAK, the Shah’s political police, and most of its leadership inside Iran was arrested. MEK’s first official communique was published in Beirut on 9 February 1972. One of its leaders at that time, Mohsen Nejat Hoseini, says MEK’s “external branch … was active” in Lebanon, Syria, Aden, Baghdad, Paris, London, and Tripoli (Libya), with members “constantly travelling between these areas”. Hosseini adds:

Lebanon was, because of the relative freedoms it afforded, the most appropriate country for semi-clandestine activity in the Middle Bast, and so we chose Lebanon to be the centre of our international contacts and communications. Many of our initial contacts with militant and revolutionary organizations in other countries took place in Lebanon. Moreover, our comrades and sympathizers in Iran always came to Lebanon if they wanted to get in touch with the external organization. …

[Acquiring weapons was easy because i]n the south of Beirut there were brokers for arms deals. To gain access to the busy world of arms dealers, all one had to do was to gain the confidence of a short fat man who sat on a stool in a tea store and played with his worry beads. … He could deliver any weapons and equipment that were not too bulky at a prearranged place in Beirut. If no deal was possible with this man, there was always the barbershop … and if one ran into a problem there one could go to the grocery store[.]

Later in 1972, as MEK rebuilt, it reached a tactical alliance with Khomeini: MEK got greater religious legitimacy and the Imam got reach into Iran, as well as an indirect relationship with the PLO. In 1973, Khomeini established a direct relationship with the PLO. Khomeinist militants began to receive training soon afterwards from the PLO’s Force 17, an “elite” unit that evolved out of Arafat’s Praetorian Guard. The arrangement raised Arafat’s stature by making him a player in the Shah’s Iran, the most powerful and influential regional State at the time, and gave Khomeini greater freedom of action.3 Instead of relying on requests to MEK for actions inside Iran, Khomeini had his own soldiers trained in terrorism and intelligence by the Palestinians in Lebanon.

The other main Iranian terrorist group, the Communist Fedayeen, was already receiving training at the PLO bases in Lebanon. The Fedayeen ostensibly eschewed relations with either of the two big Communist powers, the Soviet Union and Red China, and in Lebanon rejected the “mainstream” Communists scene because it was connected to the Iranian Tudeh (Communist) Party, a KGB creature like all the other “fraternal” Parties. The Fedayeen enmeshed with the more marginal Lebanese Communist forces, like the Communist Action Organization in Lebanon, who opposed to the presence in the country of Syria, the Soviets’ great Arab ally. In practice, however, the Fedayeen was close to the Soviets, in its internal ideology and structure, and in its relations, receiving vast amounts of money and weapons via Moscow.

The PLO itself was deepening its relations with Moscow at this time, and MEK and the Fedayeen were particularly close to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a contingent of the PLO operationally controlled by the Soviet KGB. The two groups also utilised PFLP training camps in South Yemen and Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya, the one a Soviet colony and the other as good as. Qaddafi provided MEK and the Fedayeen—and Khomeini directly—with money, as he did many Lebanese factions. The unity of the external milieu that sought Revolution in Iran—Khomeini, the PLO, and Qaddafi, with the Soviets in the background—would be matched by internal unity in mid-1977 when the Mojahedeen and Fedayeen came into alliance.4

CHAMRAN AND KHOMEINI’S OTHER NETWORK IN LEBANON

Yazdi had been travelling back and forth to Lebanon even when he was based in Cairo, and developed relations with Musa al-Sadr, the effective leader of Lebanon’s Shi’is, whom he had known from their student days in Tehran. Al-Sadr, an Iranian by birth, was a traditionalist insofar as he had conventional clerical qualifications, did not subscribe to Khomeini’s revolutionary program for clerical rule (velayat-e faqih), and retained the patronage of the Shah of Iran, but he was “modern” in the sense of being more involved in politics and more brazenly so than was usual for the Shi’a ulema. During one of Yazdi’s trips to Lebanon, Al-Sadr “told him that he was looking for a director for the technical school he had established in Tyre and Yazdi suggested Mostafa Chamran”, according to Chehabi and Mneimneh. Chamran moved to Lebanon in 1971 to take the job.

Chehabi and Mneimneh record Chamran’s later explanation of what he did after arriving in Lebanon:

As soon as I settled in southern Lebanon in 1971, I started classes in Islamic ideology in the style of the Islamic Student Associations. From each village I chose one or two believing and Muslim teachers, totalling about 150. These would visit the school once a week and conduct sessions at which Sadr, Shaykh [Muhammad] Mahdi Shamseddin and Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah gave talks as well. There were discussions and criticism and little by little I joined the discussions and gave a series of ideological lessons. About half of these people left, the other remained and became the first core group of the Movement of the Deprived (Harakat al-Mahrumin). In Beirut we did the same, although there the difficulties were greater. … Thus we trained the best Shi’i youth, and it was these young believers who later became the cadres of the Movement of the Deprived and of Amal.

(There is a lot of foreshadowing there, especially the mention of Ayatollah Fadlallah, the spiritual guide of what became known as Hizballah, the Lebanon-based unit of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (IRGC) formed in 1979 to protect Khomeinism in Iran and export it beyond.5)

This was the beginning of a situation where, in broad strokes, Khomeini operated a direct apparatus in Lebanon that revolved around the PLO, comprising his own cadres and at various levels of remove the Mojahedeen and Fedayeen, while working—primarily through Chamran and the LMI—to cultivate loyalists within Al-Sadr’s infrastructure, which was separate and quite hostile to the PLO, yet intersected with it to some degree all the same. It led to a complex, lethal game where who was doing what for whom and why was murky, in real-time and to the participants themselves. Even in hindsight, unpicking it and explicating the alignments neatly is not always easy.

Khomeini had lieutenants in Lebanon before he began impacting the politics of that country, most importantly Jalaleddin Farsi and Mohammad Montazeri, and they reported back very negatively about Al-Sadr, shaping the Imam’s view. The crux was relations with the PLO. It is jumping ahead, but Farsi and Montazeri became lynchpins of the Khomeinist-PLO alliance during the Revolution and were prime movers in that alliance forging the IRGC afterwards. Farsi arrived in Lebanon in 1970 and rapidly took against Al-Sadr. He also was not impressed with Al-Sadr’s seminaries, did not take kindly to Al-Sadr’s indifference to the Maronite-dominated “Lebanese” Army watching over the Amal camp with its guns directed at Palestinian positions, and was outraged to find Al-Sadr passing intelligence to SAVAK on anti-Iranian activities in Lebanon. Montazeri, a young cleric, son of Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, was “one of Khomeini’s most prominent disciples”, the authors note, and while his connection to Lebanon was fainter—he spent most of his time travelling the world, proselytising for Khomeinism with the goal of creating an “Islamist International”—he had firm relations with the PLO and “was particularly close” to Colonel Qaddafi, a detail to keep in mind.

Solidifying Khomeini’s animus to Al-Sadr was his vital aide, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur, who was sent to Beirut in 1973 to arrange the details of the Imam’s personal line to Arafat. Mohtashamipur also knew Lebanon well already, Chehabi and Mneimneh note, having travelled there for military training soon after Khomeini went to Iraq in 1965 and Mohtashamipur continued travelling in and out of the country. Al-Sadr had sinned ideologically in a way Mohtashamipur could not forgive in June 1970, Chehabi and Mneimneh explain. That was when Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim died in Najaf, and Al-Sadr directed the Shi’a clerical council in Lebanon to recognise another of the Najafi hawza, Abu al-Qasim al-Kho’i, as the new marja (source of emulation), rather than Khomeini. Then there were Al-Sadr’s practical sins. When Mohtashamipur visited Al-Sadr’s learning establishments in the south, he judged the quality of education low and the discipline even worse, with the Lebanese and particularly African foreign students spending more time swimming in the sea and visiting bars at night than reading. “The seminary was more like a sanatorium than a centre of knowledge and learning”, Mohtashamipur fumed. Above all of this was the Lebanese Shi’a-Palestinian tension.

The PLO’s disregard for Lebanese sovereignty after its arrival in 1970—the sense of Sunni Palestinians trying to take over a second country and turning Lebanon into a nest of international terrorists—destabilised Lebanon’s delicate sectarian balance. It angered the Christian-led government, and the clashes between the PLO and the Christian militias were what mushroomed into all-out civil war in early 1975. It was in the south, however, where the PLO was most intrusive, its bullying gangs roaming the Shi’a-majority zone, resented all the more for being foreign and Sunni. And alongside building a State-within-the-State that eroded what little power the Shi’is had, the PLO’s cross-border terrorism provoked Israeli incursions from as early as 1968. Mohtashamipur recognised early, Chehabi and Mneimneh document, that the Shi’is, including the ulema, were blaming the PLO for the consequences of Israel’s actions in southern Lebanon.

This put Khomeini in a bind. On the one hand, even if the Imam had not needed the PLO to build his revolutionary cadre, Khomeini was already attuned to the Palestine Cause as a useful mechanism for mass-mobilisation and genuinely desirous of Israel’s destruction. On the other hand, Khomeini worried that an open breach between the Lebanese Shi’is and the Palestinians would make the Shi’a stepchildren, in the phrase of the late Fouad Ajami, look bad in front of Islam’s Sunni majority, and if Khomeini publicly turned on Al-Sadr it would cut off his points of entry into the Lebanese Shi’a population and especially its clerical hierarchy, which were important to his plans. In the event, the turmoil of the Lebanese civil war was to be Khomeini’s salvation, the beginning of a pattern that still holds, wherein Khomeinism thrives on chaos and violence, no matter how much people delude themselves that the Islamic Revolution values “stability”.

Al-Sadr, after long resistance, bowed to the inevitable and took the plunge into the world of militias, creating the Amal Movement in 1974, with Chamran as its military leader, ostensibly against the threat from Israel, but Al-Sadr’s eyes were on the Palestinians.6 In the short-term, this ambiguity worked. Internally, it allowed Al-Sadr’s followers to elide, in their own minds and in their presentation to others, the question of whether they regarded the Palestinians as more menacing than the Israelis, an ideological Rubicon few wanted to cross. Chamran’s own “attitude to Palestinians was marked by ambiguity”, Chehabi and Mneimneh write. “He supported them wholeheartedly in their struggle against Israel, but at the same time witnessed the nefarious effects of their tactics for Shi’i villagers living near the Israeli border”. Chamran was particularly incensed that the PLO, while “compensating” the families of its PLO “martyrs” made no such payments to the families of the Shi’a villagers the PLO got killed.

Al-Sadr’s stance was political shrewd enough that even the PLO accepted it for a time—a crucial time, when Amal was in formation. Arafat lent Chamran FATAH “instructors” to train recruits at the Amal camp near the Syrian border. Indeed, Arafat personally “visited the camp a number of times”, according to Chehabi and Mneimneh. While Chamran’s mission was primarily to train Lebanese Shi’is, he would claim that “hundreds of Iranians were also trained at this camp”. Given that the authors document—even if they minimise—Chamran’s connection with MEK, saying they were “on friendly terms” and Chamran helped the Mojahedeen with the logistics of smuggling weapons into Iran, it is strange that there is no consideration of whether the Fedayeen and Mojahedeen were among these “hundreds”. In either event, this overlap was enough to worry the Shah’s government. The Iranian ambassador in Beirut complained about the Amal camp in 1974 and the same year the Shah severed relations with Al-Sadr because of the association with Chamran.7

Reality was destined to overtake Al-Sadr, though. War is a great clarifier and Al-Sadr’s equivocations over ideology and affiliation rather quickly came to seem less convincing and adroit, and more incoherent. It gave Khomeini an opening to offer a clearer doctrine to Al-Sadr’s followers, and Al-Sadr himself would fall victim to the tangled web he tried to navigate.

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THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION

Once the Lebanese Civil War erupted in 1975, the Shi’is suffered terribly. Al-Sadr looked to Yazdi for advice on publicising the Shi’is plight in the West, and Chamran used his teaching position to recruit for the Amal militia. It was in these early months that the division with the PLO sharpened, though interestingly Chamran was less inclined to blame Arafat. “As Chamran tells the story,” Chehabi and Mneimneh record, “Arafat was favourably disposed to Amal but the Communists who infiltrated the PLO and its member organizations begrudged Musa Sadr his support among the poor and did their best to harm Amal in the field. They did so by deserting their Amal allies at crucial moments exposing them to enemy fire or provoking the [Phalangist] Kataeb to attack Amal positions. … When hungry Shi’is turned to the better-off Palestinians for assistance, they were told to ask Musa Sadr to help them.”

The LMI’s Sadeq Ghotbzadeh, by now based in France, was another frequent visitor to Lebanon. Ghotbzadeh tried to reconcile the PLO and Amal, meeting Nabih Berri (the Amal leader since 1980). Here one can see the messy matrix in Lebanon, where the war of all against all was so total—between and within all communities and political persuasions—that describing “sides” cleanly is often very difficult. Chehabi and Mneimneh write: “[Ghotbzadeh] was of course close to Musa Sadr and Chamran, but he also maintained close ties with the PLO; in fact he briefly manned its Paris office after the assassination [in January 1973] of the PLO representative in Paris, Mahmud Hamshari, until a replacement was sent”.8

There were some signs of progress: “when LMI [and Amal] activists organized a memorial service for Ali Shariati in [June] 1977, Yassir Arafat attended and gave a speech.” It was a mistake to read too much into this, though. As Chehabi and Mneimneh amusingly note: “Arafat’s close relations with various Iranian opposition groups did not prevent him from periodically approaching the Shah through intermediaries to ask for money.” A more telling straw in the wind was that “[Jalaleddin] Farsi was the only major Iranian oppositionist not to attend Shariati’s memorial service in Beirut, implying that by organizing it under the auspices of the LMI and Amal, Yazdi and [Ghotbzadeh] wanted to profit from Shariati’s popularity.” The upshot was that Ghotbzadeh’s “efforts [to reconcile Amal and the PLO] came to naught, for Arafat had a low opinion of the LMI’s tactics for overthrowing the Shah and worked more closely with Jalaleddin Farsi and the Mojahedin [MEK]”. As the Islamic Revolution loomed, lines were being drawn and they would harden as it unfolded.

When the Islamic Revolution stirred in January 1978, Lebanon became the nerve-centre, feeding PLO-trained militants into Iran and the Soviet-oriented Palestinians themselves joined in force before the end. As Khomeini escalated into the endgame in late summer of 1978, he moved to clear the board. The Qom hawza that could have given the Shah an ideological counterweight was neutralised, its younger clergy suborned by Khomeini with Qaddafi’s money and its elders intimidated from inhibiting the Revolution by Khomeinist militiamen, rendering Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari a virtual prisoner in his house.9 As the Shah looked to repair relations with Al-Sadr as an alternative, Khomeini, Arafat, and Qaddafi conspired to lure Al-Sadr into a trip to Libya; he was last seen in Tripoli on 31 August 1978, his exact fate a mystery from that day to this. The Imam moved to Paris in October 1978. Yazdi joined him; Ghotbzadeh and Banisadr were already there. Together they would lead a campaign of political warfare, with the complicity of the Western media, that combined with the mayhem Khomeini orchestrated inside Iran to destroy the Shah by January 1979.

ISLAMIC REVOLUTION IN IRAN

On 17 February 1979, six days after the Islamist-Marxist coup against the Interim Government, Arafat was received in Tehran. It was billed as the first visit by a “Head of State” after Khomeini’s triumph was complete, a marker of how important the PLO had been to the Islamic Revolution. Just as symbolic, Chamran returned to Iran the same day, after two decades away, merging Khomeini’s two Lebanese networks within Iran. Overall, there can be no doubt the PLO-centric network was the more important to the Islamic Revolution, in the struggle with the Shah and in the regime created afterwards. However, this does not mean the other network did not have some momentous impacts, one of which was being significantly responsible for preventing the PLO itself gaining influence in post-revolutionary Iran.

Chamran “took a leading role in the formation of the Revolutionary Guards”, Chehabi and Mneimneh note, and the PLO may well have come up with the idea. The PLO had some military forces in Iran—they had helped with the terrorism during the Revolution—and Montazeri asked Arafat to bring in more FATAH troops to train the new IRGC. The proposal was blocked and the PLO’s military role inside Iran after the Revolution would transpire to be brief and limited, in no small part because of Chamran, according to Chehabi and Mneimneh. Chamran was able to exert influence in part through his LMI allies who had been appointed by Khomeini to front the provisional government. Chamran’s motives were strategic in part, but at root he was bitter about the PLO’s behaviour towards Amal and suspected Arafat’s role in Al-Sadr’s “disappearance”. It was inconceivable to Revolutionaries at this time that the Imam was behind it.

The PLO’s diminution in Iran after the Revolution was not solely due to Chamran and the LMI faction. Iran’s revolutionary clergy in general were wary of the Palestinian militants’ lack of devotion to the shari’a, in particular a “perceived loose sexual morality” within FATAH.10 Whether they knew about Arafat is unclear. And what did for Arafat ultimately was his usual antics in trying to play all sides off each to his own advantage. It worked in the Arab states; it cut no ice with Khomeini. Arafat was swiftly put in his place, which did not involve influence over Iranian internal affairs, and once Arafat sided with Saddam Husayn’s Iraq in the war against Clerical Iran he was cut adrift until the early 2000s.

A similar experience awaited Khomeini’s other erstwhile allies, many of whom thought they could ride the wave the Imam had called up to power and then send the old man to a seminary. Their discovery of who was using whom was swift and brutal.

Chehabi and Mneimneh document that all of Qaddafi’s contributions to the Islamic Revolution—the money and weapons, sullying what was left of his public image by so blatantly murdering Al-Sadr for Khomeini at the crucial moment, publicly celebrating the fall of the Shah, and granting immediate political recognition to the Imam’s regime—did not even buy Qaddafi the right to a State visit, despite a direct request. When a lower Libyan official was finally allowed into Iran in late April 1979, Khomeini ostentatiously demanded that he ask Qaddafi to locate Musa al-Sadr, while reassuring his guest he was not accusing the Maximum Leader of anything. Qaddafi’s Libya and Khomeini’s Iran would retain the solidarity so common among anti-Western rogue States—its like an axis or something—but there was a certain frostiness between the rulers.

Of Khomeini’s Iranian allies, such liberals and democrats as there were in the Revolution went first, the symbol of their destruction being the banning of the National Democratic Front in August 1979. LMI was next, its role in prettifying the Imam for Western audiences and the Iranian middle-class having ended. Bazargan’s government was felled three months later. Bazargan and Yazdi were consigned to irrelevance, with occasional official harassment. Ghotbzadeh was not so lucky: he ended up before a firing squad. MEK had read the situation and tried to fight, but its closeness to Khomeini’s infrastructure was its downfall: despite some terrorist spectaculars against the Khomeinist leadership, half of MEK’s troops had defected to the IRGC almost immediately after the Revolution,11 and it was simply too weak to resist. By mid-1981, MEK’s leader, Masud Rajavi, had fled for his life. Then came the turn of the Left, which had abandoned its principles to ally with the Islamists when it seemed to promise a road to power. At least they got to go last. The Fedayeen and Tudeh were taken apart in 1982-83, their lack of vision holding to the end. Factions of each sided with Khomeini in eradicating the others: the hope was to save themselves; the result was to leave them defenceless when the Imam came for them.

Having prevailed over Montazeri’s proposal that the PLO should be involved in the IRGC in an ongoing capacity, Chamran led the Guardians to war against the Iranian Kurdish rebels in the summer of 1979 and batted the hornet’s nest by saying “he detected the same tactics [from the Kurds] as in the anti-Amal operations of the Lebanese and Palestinian Left”, Chehabi and Mneimneh report. Montazeri’s wing of the Islamists and the Left accused Chamran of being a MOSSAD and CIA agent, a potentially lethal charge at the time. He survived it, partly because Montazeri fell from favour. Montazeri defied Khomeini by going to Libya for the celebration of Qaddafi’s decade in power on 1 September 1979 and Montazeri then started calling Foreign Minister Yazdi and Prime Minister Bazargan “Zionist” agents, jumping the gun on the Imam’s move against the LMI. Because of these political missteps, Montazeri was sidelined and the cooling of Iran’s relations with Libya confirmed, both sources of immense satisfaction to Chamran, who blamed Qaddafi (reasonably) for Al-Sadr’s presumed murder, with (again) no inkling of Khomeini’s role.

Chamran was named Minister of Defence in late September 1979 and was the only official to keep his position when Bazargan’s LMI-led government fell in November after the seizure of the U.S. Embassy. Chamran’s position as defence supremo would bed down and once Saddam invaded Iran in September 1980 his stature rose further. Chamran was killed at the front in Khuzestan on 21 June 1981. His great antagonist Montazeri would not long outlive him: Montazeri was killed exactly a week later in the massive bombing in Tehran that wiped out much of the leadership of Khomeini’s Islamic Republican Party (IRP). The bombing was the last gasp of MEK by the Islamic Republic’s account. Rajavi went in exile a month later alongside Banisadr, the last man standing of the LMI-associated faction. Banisadr had been president from February 1980 until the day before Chamran died, when he was removed by the Imam for making the mistake of thinking being head of government entitled him to independent views on policy. Interestingly, in the impeachment “process” by which Khomeini deposed Banisadr, the only person to defend Banisadr was Montazeri’s father, a premonition of where his relationship with the Imam would end up.

ISLAMIC REVOLUTION IN LEBANON

The slightly odd circumstances surrounding Chamran’s death, and the fact it occurred simultaneous with both the final sweep of the LMI-linked cadre in the Revolution and the Khomeinist offensive against Amal manifesting, have led some to wonder if those who eliminated Chamran’s old friend Al-Sadr had a hand in it. Such theories hinge on the idea that Chamran was a “pro-Amal” holdout in the Iranian revolutionary regime, thus would have been despondent that “the consolidation of hardliner rule in [Iran in] the summer of 1981 cut [Amal] off from conceivable sources of Iranian patronage”, as Chehabi and Mneimneh write (p. 269), which in turn restricted Amal’s reach and left elements of the Shi’i population, notably in Dahiya, looking for new protectors. The dynamics and causality appear to have been quite otherwise, though.

The question about Chamran’s life to which nobody seems to have an answer—Chehabi and Mneimneh do not even attempt one—is when Chamran went over to Khomeini, but he clearly did go over to Khomeini. Thus, when the authors note that Chamran was elected to Amal’s leadership council in April 1980, at which time he was also serving as Defence Minister of Iran, he was Khomeini’s man in Amal, rather than Amal’s man in Tehran. There is every appearance that Chamran used his position in Amal, as an ideological-military instructor while in Lebanon and then as patron in Iran, to consciously spread Khomeinism within Amal’s ranks, which was the key to Amal’s diminishment at the Khomeinists’ hands.

The tactic of crippling former allies from the inside out was not new. As mentioned, shortly after the Revolution, the IRGC—that part of the PLO-trained Khomeinist apparatus that moved to Iran—had, under Chamran’s rather close administration, annexed the chunk of MEK that had covertly turned to Khomeinism. The stay-behind part of the Khomeinist apparatus in Lebanon, which would overtly declare its existence in 1985 as “Hizballah”,12 repeated the same trick, consuming parts of its former PLO host, including from Force 17,13 and assimilating elements of the other network from Amal.

The groundwork for the move against Amal was quite extensive. There were those in Amal won for Khomeinism by Chamran’s ideological instruction. The late March/early April 1980 dissolution of the “Iraqi” Khomeinist Dawa Party and Amal’s apparent absorption of the Dawa cadres was really more like mass-infiltration.14 Then there was the onset of the inevitable direct clashes between Amal and the PLO in the spring of 1981, which weakened Amal militarily and, crucially, politically. Fighting the Palestinians was deeply unpopular and could so easily be cast as making Amal “Israeli agents”—even to its own members. In these ways, the Khomeinist foothold in Amal was reinforced and expanded. The June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and Berri joining the national “Salvation Council” furnished the pretext for open schism. Later that month, a protégé of Chamran’s, Husayn al-Musawi, denounced Berri as a traitor and led a mass defection to create “the Islamic Amal”, a splinter duly folded into Hizballah. By the late 1980s, the Amal remnant would also be effectively subordinated to Hizballah.15

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FOOTNOTES

Read the article over at UnHerd.

Since the United States, supported by Israel, launched the military operation—or “limited combat operation” or intervention or war, as you prefer—against the Islamic Revolution that rules Iran on 28 February, the intended purpose has been rather difficult to pin down.

THE U.S. MESSAGING

President Donald Trump, in his first remarks hours after Operation EPIC FURY began, said the mullahs had “attempted to rebuild their nuclear program [after the June 2025 American-Israeli operation] and continue developing long-range missiles” that threaten Europe, American troops around the world, and “could soon reach the American homeland”. The U.S. would, therefore, “destroy their missiles”, “raze” Tehran’s missile program “to the ground”, and enforce the U.S. policy that Iran “not obtain a nuclear weapon”, as well as “annihilate” the Iranian Navy and ensure the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) could “no longer destabilise the region”.

While Trump did not exactly say regime change was a war aim, he concluded his speech by telling the IRGC, the regular army (Artesh), and the Iranian police, “lay down your weapons” or face “certain death”, and told the Iranian people, “The hour of your freedom is at hand. … When we are finished, take over your government. … This is the moment for action; do not let it pass.”

To give a flavour of U.S. messaging since then:

• Trump on 1 March, speaking after it was confirmed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (“a wretched and vile man”) and most of his military commanders were dead, said the U.S. had “very strong objectives”, but decided not to bore us with what they are. The nearest Trump came to defining objectives was saying that the “massive operation” was to “ensure security”, and alluding to the “dire threat” posed by a regime that raises “terrorist armies” possessing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, which the U.S. is not going to permit.

• Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on 2 March: “This is not a so-called regime-change war … This is not Iraq. This is not endless. … This operation [has] a clear, devastating, decisive mission: destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, no nukes. … [There will be] no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise”.

• Trump on 2 March said, “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground”, though the U.S. “probably” would not need them for this mission, whatever that is. Trump at least offered the assurance: “We’re right on schedule”.

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio on 2 March professed himself baffled by “what the confusion is” over the administration’s “very clear goal”: “The United States is conducting an operation to eliminate the threat of Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by their navy”. In terms of the timing, Rubio said, “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action”, which “would precipitate an attack against American forces”, so Trump “made the very wise decision” to go in “pre-emptively” to avoid casualties. Rubio also said “orders had been delegated down to the field commanders” because of the imminence of an Iranian attack, so the operation began “automatically”.

• Trump on 3 March said he had reached the conclusion after negotiating with the “lunatics” that rule Iran that “they were going to attack first”, so he gave the order to initiate hostilities and called on the Israelis to join in, indeed, “I might have forced their hand.”

• Rubio on 3 March said: “Iran is run by lunatics, religious fanatic lunatics … The President made the decision to … take away their missiles, take away their navy, take away their drones … so that they can never have a nuclear weapon.”

• Hegseth on 4 March said, “America is winning decisively, devastatingly and without mercy”, and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, clarified that this meant destruction of nuclear-weapons sites, missiles, and the IRGC Navy.

• Hegseth on 5 March said there had been “no expansion in our objectives” and that they were “actually simplifying”. There were references to “these objectives” and “clear objectives”: it remained hazy what they are. The targeting of the IRGC Navy and Iranian officials responsible for ordering attacks on civilian demonstrators were mentioned.

• Trump on 6 March said “unconditional surrender” was the only acceptable outcome.

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WHAT TO MAKE OF ALL THIS

Rubio’s 2 March remark about Israel’s role will be taken by those prone to seeing tentacular Jewish influence behind world events as vindication, and Trump’s direct contradiction of Rubio the next day will hardly matter to those who believe the Zionist Elders are capable of plotting global domination and then losing the blueprint. On planet earth, the importance of this episode was underlining the administration’s flailing public diplomacy: it tried a talking point and swiftly withdrew it when the negative feedback poured in.

If one exercises the “heroic flexibility” the late Khamenei recommended in another context, it is just about possible to synthesise the administration’s messaging into a half-way coherent story of military action triggered by ominous developments in the Iranian nuclear-weapons and ballistic missile programs, and some kind of imminent attack being planned, with the consequent mission being the destruction of both programs, necessitating the suppression of air defences and the eradication of the IRGC Navy to protect American forces and prevent moves to close the Strait of Hormuz that would damage the world economy. Confining the Islamic Revolution within Iran’s borders or eliminating it entirely appear to be what one might call Schrödinger’s objectives, or aspirations.

To start with the narrative about why now. Trump’s claim that Clerical Iran has “attempted to rebuild their nuclear program” since Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER—a maidenly codename next to the Team America designation of the current round—is narrowly true. The Islamic Revolution will never cease its ambition to acquire at least a latent nuclear-weapons capacity,1 and these intentions are very important. With such regimes, the only ultimate solution is their removal. The question before us, however, is whether, eight months on from the last intervention, the Iranian regime had reconstituted its atomic resources and gotten so close to the nuclear-weapons threshold that another intervention was immediately necessary? All available evidence is that the answer is “no”.

David Albright, one of the few nuclear-weapons experts to avoid compromising his analytical integrity for the sake of politics in the Obama years, emphasises, because of his experience, Tehran’s intentions as a permanent threat, but the evidence of the Islamic Republic’s activities since June 2025 does not point to an imminent threat. There have been “salvaging operations and potentially rebuilding” on the weaponisation side since MIDNIGHT HAMMER, but it is “minimal”, says Albright. The devastation to the centrifuges means “you have a program that no longer really exists”, Albright continues, and while there are “remnants”, especially uncertainty over the quantity of enriched uranium, plus presumable hidden sites, the primary danger from them at the present time comes if security at (what’s left of) Iran’s nuclear facilities evaporates amid a regime collapse.

Notably, too, there have not yet been any airstrikes on Iranian nuclear-weapons sites. As a general military proposition, that is not necessarily surprising: those targets are more complicated and time is needed for intelligence-gathering to ensure no fallout and so on. The anti-nuclear strikes are likely to come in a later phase of the operation and some sites are probably off-limits altogether, like the Bushehr reactor, which was untouched last time in conformity with U.S. and Israeli assurances to Russia. If the clerical regime was on a crash course to build “The Bomb”, though, one can imagine a campaign that handled that emergency first.

The rebuilding of Iran’s missile program does seem to have been faster. In the first days of the war, Tehran hit nine countries with missiles—Israel, all six Gulf States, Jordan, Cyprus—and fired at Turkey. The ostensible target in most cases was a U.S. base and six American servicemen have been killed, with eighteen wounded. That said, this has now virtually stopped, a result certainly of the U.S. and Israel quickly destroying the launchers, but also it seems because of depleted Iranian missile stockpiles. At a minimum, it should induce some scepticism about the higher (generally Israeli-sourced) estimates in circulation of the Islamic Republic’s current missile arsenal and potential production capacity. The notion of Iranian missiles threatening the U.S. “homeland” any time soon is fanciful.

As to the idea of an imminent Iranian attack on the U.S. forces in the Middle East, there is simply no evidence for this, and the Pentagon reportedly acknowledged as much to Congress in a closed-door briefing after the operation began.

* * * *

What, then, motivated Trump to do this? It is all speculation until we get the memoirs, or a press leak, but the political situation Trump got himself into after telling Iranians on 13 January to continue protesting because “HELP IS ON ITS WAY” [all-caps original] seems likely to be part of it. This was days after the clerical regime slaughtered Iranians en masse.2 That Trump then entered into nuclear negotiations with the Iranian regime—which “executed” prisoners Trump claimed to have saved—disheartened Iranians and fuelled media criticism on the “TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) theme that is known to enrage him. There are few principles Trump is wedded to in any reliable sense, but saving his personal face is one of them.

Trump once spoke of a two- or three-day operation; his most recent comments indicated more like four weeks. There is nothing inherently wrong with this: it is a sign of the silliness of the times that the phrase “endless war” exists as a criticism. If a State has objectives it is worth going to war over, achieving them takes as long as it takes, and the enemy gets a vote. The problem, of course, is when the political leadership has chosen war as a messaging strategy, with objectives that are, if not quite non-existent, ill-defined and/or unstable, and there is every reason to believe that has happened here.

To give an example. Earlier this week, after reports that the CIA was arming Iranian Kurdish militants based in Iraqi Kurdistan,3 and that they were preparing to invade Iran, Trump declared: “I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it.” The support of Iranians for the U.S.-Israeli operation so far, even from those personally impacted by the bombing, is remarkable among such a deeply patriotic population. Trump’s embrace of actors Iranians see as separatists was, therefore, quite shocking. If there was anything that could change Iranian opinion it would be a perception that the Islamic Republic is defending the country’s territorial integrity and the U.S.-Israeli operation threatens it. Someone seems to have gotten in Trump’s ear about this and yesterday he said, “I don’t want the Kurds to go into Iran.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a still more pointed and detailed statement last night publicly repudiating any intentions to divide Iran.

It was the right outcome in the end, but it is an alarming indicator all the same. It is not as if, after all, the Kurdish groups could have made much difference to the military balance inside Iran, but their deployment backed by the U.S. and Israel would have had devastating political consequences. It should not have taken several days for a point as basic as this to be understood. It suggests there has been insufficient planning, and that the source of the problem is confused directives from the political leadership that is casting around for tactical options without the constraint of any overarching strategic framework.

A similar indication is given in the reporting that Trump is considering sending “a small contingent” of U.S. ground troops into Iran. What for is, once again, opaque, but securing uranium stockpiles would seem to be one purpose. It is not encouraging that this decision is being made midstream in a war where concerns about the nuclear-weapons program are the most consistent element of the messaging.

A terrorist wearing clothes with an Islamic Republic flag shot up a bar in Texas hours after the EPIC FURY operation began, a criminal gang which is a known cut-out for the IRGC has thrown an IED at the U.S. Embassy in Norway, and IRGC spy-terrorists have been arrested in Britain, Azerbaijan, and Qatar this week while planning attacks, against Jews in the former two. It is unclear how much preparation Trump made for the Islamic Revolution retaliating like this, and if any consequences will be visited on the regime for this behaviour.

Meanwhile, the surprise about the efficacy of the Iranian Shahed drones, after seeing them in action for four years as part of Russia’s war on Ukraine, is perhaps the strangest element so far. On the plus side, it has publicised how extensively Ukraine is already contributing to NATO and the security of other Western friends. It makes it ever-more absurd to deny Ukraine formal membership in the Alliance.

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* * * *

From a public-relations or propaganda perspective, avoiding unequivocal objectives is highly advantageous for the Trump administration: critics cannot call the Iran operation a failure because there are no agreed metrics by which that judgment can be made, and supporters can ascribe to it vast and subtle strategic designs. Of most immediate relevance to Trump, this ambiguity is helpful in managing the vexing question of whether this is one of those “regime change wars” he and his (strangely absent) Vice President, J.D. Vance, have spent years denouncing. While the Iranian regime still stands, the MAGA base is assured the war is not about toppling it; should it fall, the Leader can be credited with being “a fighter” who drew a line “after 47 years of Iranian belligerence” and American timidity, as Hegseth put it the other day.

Whether as a direct war aim, or a wished-for by-product, there can be little doubt regime change has been on Trump’s mind. Some of the targets struck, starting with the Rahbar, make no sense unless the intention is to at least test the possibility of destroying the regime, and Trump has said as much. In an interview on 1 March, Trump said: “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario.” Just today, as Iran was selecting its new Supreme Leader,4 Trump said the new man is “going to have to get approval from us” and is “not going to last long” if he does not. It is open to doubt whether what has happened in Venezuela—removing the top personnel, yet leaving the system in place—qualifies as regime change, but the transformation of the country into an indirect American colony is a change. The plans for replicating the Venezuela scenario in Iran have apparently hit a snag as “most of the people we had in mind [to be the new ruler] are dead”, according to Trump. But that is the least of it.

A Venezuela scenario in Iran relies on the idea that the U.S. can keep killing the current leadership cadre until it reaches down to a layer of people, especially in the military, who are willing to come to terms with the U.S. and rule according to its key interests. The problem with this is that the Islamic Revolution is an ideological movement which from inception had hostility to the United States and the broader West as core elements. UANI’s Kasra Aarabi put it well: “The IRGC is a highly radicalised and indoctrinated force. So the idea of them switching sides … is unlikely.” The scale of what is required to neutralise the Revolution as a factor in Iranian life, and get to a point where people amenable to the U.S. are able to take power stably, given the vitality of the Revolution’s votaries and the depth of its ruling structure, amounts to a thoroughgoing regime change. In short, the Venezuela option does not exist in Iran, and the implications for the possibility of regime change are not positive.

The Islamic Revolution has only ruled in Yemen for a little over a decade and it has shown itself to be immensely durable, able to withstand internal challenges on multiple fronts and sustained external intervention. The Revolution has had nearly half-a-century to entrench in Iran, to infiltrate every sector of the society, raise three generations in its ideology, and recruit hundreds of thousands of armed men who believe God wants them to protect the rule of His viceregent on earth. It is not absolutely impossible that regime decapitation, damage to IRGC security nodes, the activities of Israel’s ground assets and agents, and internal Iranian rebellion combine just right to unravel the clerical regime.5 But, absent that black swan, it is most unlikely Trump can overthrow the Revolution in Iran with a month-long air campaign.

* * * *

Many have a normative opposition to interventions in the Middle East and/or to Trump, and in the circumstances it is understandable that many more will conclude this is a war launched on false premises, without any serious plan, and therefore cannot be supported. For Americans, there is the additional concern about what Trump will do with the additional powers and prestige that accrue to a President in wartime. These arguments might well persuade even Iran hawks, especially since the Islamic Republic is likely to survive this, and Trump could well botch things from the other direction by calling the operation off too soon, before Israel—which has some semblance of a plan—can work through all of its strike packages, as he did last June.

My own view is that one need not deny any of the problems with Trump’s Iran operation, nor try to rationalise this as being about more than it is—a thesis currently getting a workout is that this is a grand strategy move in the competition with Red China—to believe that what Trump has done is beneficial for the Western Alliance in three important ways.

First, Trump made a promise in the name of the United States to the people of Iran and, whether it was wise or not to have done so, once made it was morally and strategically vital for all of us that it was upheld. Now it has been. A lot of the people who ordered the massacres of Iranians, many of them long owed retribution for their crimes against us, have had their accounts settled.

Second, the clerical regime has been seriously degraded, and any steps towards weakening it should be welcomed. The physical disarmament and State debilitation has downsized Tehran’s ability to threaten the West and its regional allies for some time, and when the Islamic Republic restores its threat capacity to an unacceptable level the precedent is in place to deal with it. Which is the final and most important gain.

Third, Trump has decisively broken the taboo on using force against the Islamic Revolution inside Iran. In prior dealings with the regime—especially over the nuclear-weapons program—the threat of Western military action was mostly felt as a constraint on the West, enabling Tehran to control the diplomacy by threatening to walk away. In the future, that will not be the case.

It is somewhere between amusing and infuriating to see Trump and his supporters, conspiratorial anti-warriors on the Iran Question until so recently, justifying this operation by saying it is in effect self-defence because the Islamic Revolution has been at war with the civilised world for forty-seven years and is steeped in the blood of our people. It happens to be true, though. The Islamists swept to power in Iran in 1979 declaring war against the West and the State system safeguarded by the United States, manifested in the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the keeping of its staff as hostages for 444 days. The failures of Western policy towards Iran from that time onwards have always been the result of an excessive willingness for accommodation. That time has now surely passed. “This deal or war” is a much less persuasive sales pitch for accommodationism now Trump has exposed the Islamic Revolution as a ramshackle despotism that can do very little if the U.S. chooses the latter option.

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NOTES

Read the article over at The Telegraph.

Since 1979, the West has struggled to accept that the Iranian regime is not a normal government but the central node of a transnational Revolution—essentially an Islamic Soviet Union, with the same relentless drive for infiltration and political warfare.

It is this that explains why, while the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was celebrated inside Iran, a number of mosques and Islamic centres in Britain—which appear to be loyal to the Islamic Revolution’s ideology—have declared themselves to be in mourning.

The Al-Zahra Centre in Watford, for instance, announced that an event would be held on the evening of March 2 for “Remembering Our Father”, with a picture of Khamenei dominating the notice.

The advertised speaker was Sayed Hussain Makke, who has publicly expressed support for the Iranian regime and its proxy Hezbollah.

With this background, the people of Derbyshire were understandably alarmed when Makke turned up last year to run a “Spiritual Warrior” camp for young boys, and Australia banned Makke from entering as a national security threat.

In London, meanwhile, the Islamic Centre of England (ICE), located in the leafy suburb of Maida Vale, proclaimed in a poster its “deep sorrow and heartbreak” at Khamenei’s demise and started prayers to “mourn the martyrdom of the Imam of the Ummah (global Islamic community)” on Sunday.

This is hardly surprising: ICE was allegedly controlled by the Supreme Leader’s representative in Britain until recently. The Charity Commission ostensibly ended this situation in 2025 after a three-year investigation of ICE. But little has actually changed, testament yet again to the inadequacy of the Charity Commission.

The Ahlul-Bayt Islamic Society chapter at University College London, one of the country’s best universities, sent public “condolences for the martyrdom” of Khamenei and is holding a mourning event for “the fallen”, Khamenei and his senior officials, on Wednesday.

Ahlul-Bayt bills itself as a “non-governmental” organisation, but it has defended its actions by comparing Khamenei to the Pope and—this being 2026—offered “mental health” support to those dealing with this “unimaginable loss” by encouraging them to remember “this is not the end to resistance”.

On Wednesday, a candlelight vigil will be held for Khamenei, sponsored by the Islamic Centre of Manchester (ICM), which self-describes as “one of the oldest Iranian Islamic centres in the UK” and is widely believed, certainly by anti-regime Iranians, to be associated with the Iranian regime.

This is particularly worrying in an area where communal relations are already visibly fraying. The Gorton and Denton by-election last week was marked by blatant Islamic sectarianism, and late last year there was the Heaton Park synagogue attack and a subsequent planned attack against Jews that would have been one of the worst terrorist atrocities in British history if it was not thwarted.

Both were the work of Islamic State loyalists, but they were capitalising on a surge of anti-Semitism and Islamist self-confidence triggered by the Iranian-directed pogrom in Israel on October 7 2023, a symbiosis between the Islamic State and the Islamic Republic that is depressingly familiar.

Mosques and Islamic institutions supporting Islamist Iran are not, however, unique to Britain. The evil influence of the Islamic Republic can be seen as far away as Australia.

The religious nature of the Iranian Revolution has allowed it to exploit the liberal principle of freedom of religion—and Western neuroses about “Islamophobia”. It is long past time that this ceased. Western governments should shut down religious facilities that are being used for subversion by a foreign power.

Gavriil Korganov, whose name is sometimes Anglicised as Gabriel Korganov, was born on 3 May 1880 in Tiflis in the Russian Empire, what is now Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia. Korganov was from a military family and joined the Tiflis Cadet Corps in 1897. Two years later, Korganov enrolled in the Mikhailovskaya Military Artillery Academy in Saint Petersburg and went on to the General Staff Academy. Korganov would become a General in the Imperial Russian Army. Korganov’s only other known association is the Freemasons, which he joined at some point before the First World War.

Even before war broke out, Korganov was down in the Caucasus organising the Armenian volunteers—both Russian-Armenians and Ottoman-Armenians, some of them deserters from the Ottoman Army—who were conducting a rebellion against the Ottoman government. Once the Ottomans were officially at war in November 1914 and Russia invaded the east of Empire, the emboldened Armenian guerrillas expanded their activities yet further and in time became organised into conventional military units that fought as auxiliaries of the Russian Army.

The Bolshevik coup in Russia in November 1917, and the Communists signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Germans who brought them to power in March 1918, took Russia out of the Great War and opened space for the formerly-Russian-backed Armenians to proclaim their own Republic in May 1918. Korganov served this Armenian State, but it did not last long. In a joint invasion at the end of 1920, the new Turkish Republic took parts of western Armenia and the Soviet Union conquered the remnant, turning it into a “Socialist Republic”, which gained independence when the Soviet Enpire collapsed in 1991 and is the territory of Armenia as it exists today.

Korganov wrote a memoir of his involvement in these events in 1927, while in exile in France, entitled, La participation des Arméniens à la guerre mondiale sur le front du Caucase (1914-1918) avec 19 schémas. The book was originally published in French and Emanuil Egiaevich Dolbakyan created a Russian translation. A rough English translation is given below. Korganov died in Paris on 8 January 1954 and is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

The Participation of the Armenians in the World War on the Caucasus Front (1914–1918), with 19 Schematics

[PAGE 5]

PREFACE

The World War once again confirmed the truth that, no matter how humanity evolves and no matter how widely humanistic ideas spread throughout the world, the right of peoples to independent existence can be upheld only through armed struggle.

The Armenian people, having lost their independence several centuries ago but jealously preserving their national identity and culture, could not but take part in the great universal conflagration, especially on the Russo-Turkish theatre of war, which included, among other things, the territory of historical Armenia, precisely on the side of the Entente Powers, toward which they were driven by the course of their own history, their national interests, and their political aspirations.

From the very first days of the war, the Armenians enthusiastically responded to the call to join the ranks of the Entente armies and fulfilled their duty to the end.

Numerous volunteers poured in from all sides to stand beneath the banners of the Entente armies or, where circumstances permitted, to form independent military units.

A revolution broke out in Russia, which led to the collapse of the Russian army and its withdrawal from the Transcaucasian front. And it was precisely upon the shoulders of the Armenians that the heavy task of defending Transcaucasia fell, and Armenia, having

[PAGE 6]

created its national forces, entered the struggle on the side of the Allies as a belligerent State.

Deprived of all assistance, even of communication with their allies, the Armenians courageously and steadfastly endured an unequal struggle, often in situations that seemed hopeless, for seven months and yielded only two months before the conclusion of the general armistice that ended the World War (the Turks entered Baku on 15 September 1918).

This prolonged, stubborn struggle without external assistance, by compelling the Turks, for their part, to divert a portion of their forces there, delayed the loss of Transcaucasia by seven months, which was of great significance for the Asiatic theatre of war.

The war, although it inflicted unprecedented human losses upon the Armenians, led to the creation of the Armenian State, however small the latter may have been, and however uncertain its political organisation.

The vital forces of the Armenian people heroically withstood the historical trial, and the first stage on the path to the rebirth of Armenia was achieved.

In order better to understand the conditions in which the Armenian forces found themselves in the course of the events described in the present book, it is necessary to cast a glance not only at the military operations but also at the political situation as it existed in that epoch.

Not all parts of the present account could be described with equal completeness and documentary precision owing to the absence in many cases of archival materials, partly lost and partly inaccessible due to their being located in the territory of the new States that emerged in Transcaucasia.

For this reason, the present work does not claim to be a gapless account of the events it describes,

[PAGE 7]

but it contains not a single fact that has not been confirmed either by official documents or by eyewitness testimony.

I have written nothing about the actions of Andranik in Karabakh because he himself related them in his memoirs.

Considering my sole aim to be to give a faithful general picture of the importance of Armenia’s participation as a State fighting on the side of the Entente Powers, I have refrained from describing the heroic actions of individual persons, believing that in historical moments which a people experiences, it is only the manifestation of the will, unity, and sacrifices of the whole people that should be studied, and not the exploits of individual representatives.

Moreover, by describing the brilliant exploits of certain specific individuals and passing over in silence the no less glorious deeds of others, of whom I may not have known, I might have been accused of partiality.

However, I consider it my duty to recount how many Russian officers, Russian by nationality, with remarkable selflessness assisted us in our unequal struggle. I cannot fail to mention the names of General Vyshinsky, who held the post of Chief of Staff of the Armenian Corps and before that the post of Chief of Staff of the Caucasian Army; General Deev, commandant of the fortress of Kars; Colonel Morel, former military attaché of the Russian embassy in Tokyo, who, when the Russian troops were withdrawing from the Caucasus, was in Erzindjan at the moment of the fatal crisis; Colonel Zinkevich, former Chief of Staff to Generals Andranik and Silikov; and finally Colonel Efremov with his officers’ detachment, in which officers worthy of respect served as ordinary soldiers. Unfortunately, I am unable in a brief preface

[PAGE 8]

to list all the names deserving the highest gratitude from the Armenians.

I have entitled my book “The Participation of the Armenians in the World War,” but my narrative does not claim to be a historical work fully exhausting this subject, and I would be happy if the materials that served me as the basis for the present work might in some measure prove useful to future historians in studying the historical epoch in which the Armenian people passed through such terrible trials and displayed so much courage and self-sacrifice.

[PAGE 9]

CHAPTER I: FORMATION OF ARMENIAN LEGIONS

The Russian Armenians, subject to compulsory military service since 1886, participated en masse in the Great War, in the ranks of the Russian army.

Throughout the entire duration of the war they provided nearly 13% of their total population.

Fulfilling their duty as loyal subjects, the Armenians, taken as a whole, defined their attitude towards the events that were unfolding and towards the world war that was beginning.

Turkey’s participation in the war, alongside the Central Empires, no longer left any doubt as to the choice of that attitude.

The historical experience of 1877–1914 had clearly demonstrated that all the reforms concerning the Armenian vilayets in Turkey and aimed at safeguarding the physical existence and the culture of the nation had remained dead letters, resulting only in periodic massacres of the Armenian population.

The victory of the Central Empires and consequently of Turkey would have meant the annihilation of the remnants of the Armenian population in Turkey and would even have threatened the existence of the Armenians of Transcaucasia.

This situation imposed upon the Armenians a supreme effort of all their forces. Thus, not content with participating in the war in the ranks of the Russian army,

[PAGE 10]

they requested authorisation to form volunteer legions on the Caucasus front.

According to the plan conceived, these legions were to be composed of elements exempt, for various reasons, from military service; of persons who had not yet reached or had already passed the prescribed age; and of Armenians who had arrived from abroad.

This proposal was received by the High Command of the Caucasian front in a more or less ambiguous manner.

If, on the one hand, there was an advantage in using during the war elements animated by a fierce hatred toward the enemy, thoroughly familiar with the theatre of war, speaking the native languages and dialects, and having ties among the local populations, on the other hand there was the danger of forming national units, in view of the possibility of a development of separatist sentiments.

After numerous negotiations, in the middle of the month of September, the “Armenian National Bureau” in Tiflis received authorisation to form in the Caucasus four Armenian volunteer legions. Their formation was completed toward the end of October 1914, that is to say at the very moment of Turkey’s declaration of war. The strength of these legions reached 2,500 men, with 600 men in reserve.

Their command was entrusted to Armenian national heroes: Andranik, Dro, Amazasp and Keri, all four seasoned partisans in the struggle against the Turks.

The legions were not assembled into higher units, but were attached to various corps and groups of the vast Caucasus front, as they were considered useful especially for reconnaissance service; this explains their almost equal distribution across the entire front.

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CHAPTER II: THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE WAR, OCTOBER 1914–JANUARY 1915

Before proceeding to the history of the Legions, it is necessary to indicate, as a whole, the general situation on the Caucasus front.

The order of battle of the Caucasus Army at the beginning of the war against Turkey was as follows:

1st Region of Batum. — 4 battalions under General Liakhov, covering the right flank and maintaining order in the district of Tchorok.

2nd Region of Olti. — General Istomine: 8 battalions, 24 guns, 12 sotnias of Cossacks. Operational direction: Olti–Ide–Erzeroum.

3rd Region of Sarikamiche. — General Berkhman: 24 battalions, 92 guns, 24 sotnias of Cossacks. Operational direction: Sarikamiche–valley of Passène–Erzeroum.

4th Region of Kaglisman. — General Prjevalsky: 6 battalions, 6 sotnias of Cossacks maintaining liaison between the Sarikamiche group and the Erivan detachment.

5th Region of Erivan. — General Abatsieff: 14 battalions, 32 guns; 24 sotnias of Cossacks intended to penetrate into the valley of Alachkert and to cover the line of communications Erivan–Dilijan–Tiflis.

6th Region of Makou. — General Nikolaïeff: 1 battalion, 12 sotnias, 4 guns. Operational direction: Makou–Bayazid–Van.

[PAGE 12]

[PAGE 13]

7th Region of Azerbaijan. — General Tchernozouboff: 7 battalions, 24 guns and 24 sotnias of Cossacks, to maintain order in Persian Azerbaijan and cover the left flank of the army.

On the very day of the declaration of war, the troops of the Sarikamiche, Kaglisman, and Erivan groups crossed the frontier and drove back the Turkish advance guards, which were completing their concentration based on Erzeroum.

On 8 November the Russian troops, after sharp fighting in their favour, occupied the entire valley of Passène and part of the valley of Alachkert. The line of the front ran from Ide, by Mount Djilik-Gheul, Khopik, Minidighvan, Déli-Baba, to Karakilissa of Alachkert.

The Turks, having completed their concentration on 10 November, launched a counter-attack in the operational direction Erzeroum–Sarikamiche. After several days of fighting, which lasted until 19 November, the Sarikamiche group of General Berkhman entrenched itself on the line Khoroum–Akhalik–Khorassan–Tarkhodja.

During the first engagements in this direction, the legions did not take part in the operations, but from 19 November the 4th Legion was incorporated into the 2nd Turkestan Corps, which had arrived at Sarikamiche and Karaourghan to reinforce the right flank of the Sarikamiche group.

From Karaourghan the legion was directed toward Aghvéran and then toward Ide, towards which the column of General Istomine, coming from Olti, was advancing at the same time.

On 29 November the legion seized, after sharp fighting, the village of Liavsor and continued its advance toward Ekrek, situated 10 kilometres south of Ide, while maintaining liaison between the right flank of the 2nd Turkestan Corps and the group of General Istomine, which, meanwhile, had occupied Ide.

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From the beginning of the month of December the enemy had displayed feverish activity, and on the 22nd of the same month he attacked the Sarikamiche group and the Olti detachment.

While conducting a frontal attack against the Sarikamiche group and thus holding it in its positions, the enemy simultaneously launched his offensive against the Olti detachment, with the evident intention of reaching the Kars–Sarikamiche line and by this manoeuvre cutting off the main body of the Caucasus Army from its base.

On 22 December the 4th Legion, pressed by the Turks, received the order to withdraw toward Ide, but as this town had already been evacuated by the Russian troops, it had to force its way with the bayonet through enemy detachments, which had already occupied part of this mountainous region.

Having reached Nariman, the legion was obliged to divide into two columns and suffered serious losses before being able to reach Sarikamiche and Merdének.

After the reinforcement of the Sarikamiche group by the 2nd Turkestan Corps, the Kaglisman detachment of General Prjevalsky received the order to advance toward Déli-Baba, the troops of General Abatsieff having already occupied Karakilissa of Alachkert.

After the occupation of Déli-Baba, the 3rd Legion, which formed part of General Prjevalsky’s troops, formed with other units a special detachment, whose task was to guard the Kara-Derbent pass in order to ensure liaison with the valley of Alachkert.

On 19 November the legion had its first encounter with the enemy near the village of Aaghueze; it then successively drove back the Kurdish hordes and, after sharp fighting, occupied the villages of Pirsahan, Kapanak and Khosrovéran, thus making itself master of the massif that covered the southern pass.

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On 24 November the legion, being judged too far advanced, was recalled to Alagheuze, where it remained until 31 December to guard the extreme left wing of the Sarikamiche group, taking part in local encounters with the enemy and in reconnaissance missions.

To characterise the conduct of the legions before the enemy during this period, it is interesting to cite, as an example, the official certificate issued by the commander of the 2nd Brigade of Plastouns, General Gouligà, to the 3rd Legion which was under his orders:

This certificate is issued to the Commander of the 3rd Armenian Legion, Amazasp Servantian. Under his command, this legion took part, from 5 to 28 December 1914, in all the engagements fought by the troops entrusted to me, and it particularly distinguished itself during the reconnaissance missions carried out on 15 December at Sangmane, Mirkhasané and Kapanak. On the night of 19 December the Armenian troops offered stubborn resistance to the Turkish attack on the village of Alagheuze, inflicting 30 killed and 40 wounded. On 23 December, during our march on Kapanak, Amazasp’s legion rendered very particular services. I certify that in general the soldiers of the Armenian legion fought with bravery in all the combats, even the wounded who were still able to fight taking part in the attacks.

In witness whereof we affix the official seal and sign:

19 February 1915.

(Signed) GOULIGA,

Brigadier General, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the Kuban.

BOUKRITOFF,
Colonel, Chief of Staff.

CHILNIKOFF,
Lieutenant, Aide-de-Camp.

Thus, in the principal direction of Erzeroum (Sarikamiche group), the 3rd and 4th legions took part in all the operations of this group on both

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flanks and took part in the Battle of Sarikamiche from 22 December 1914 to 16 January 1915, which ended with the rout of the Turkish army and the capture of the Turkish 9th Corps.

The 2nd Legion, advance guard of the Bayazid detachment (General Nikolaïeff), marching on Van, fought a hard two-day battle (12–13 November) on the Tapariz Pass, losing its commander Dro, who was seriously wounded.

Subsequently attached to the detachment of General Abatsieff, operating in the valley of Alachkert, it took part in seven battles fought during the period of 1914 and served as cover for the exodus of the Armenian population toward the Russian frontier.

Finally, the 1st Legion, assigned to the Azerbaijan group of General Tchernozouboff, took part in the occupation of the region of Kotour (18–30 November). On 1 and 9 December it participated in the capture of Saraï and Assourli, having thereafter to sustain until 15 December fighting against the Kurds who were defending the direction of Van.

On 15 December the legion was recalled in order to be opposed to considerable enemy forces, which had succeeded in penetrating behind its positions in the region of Kotour.

The legion then took part, on 18 December, in the battle fought near the village of Béladjik by the 4th Caucasus Cossack Division against the Kurds and the Turkish gendarmerie, who were threatening the line of communication of that Division with Khoï.

As a consequence of the course of the Sarikamiche operations and the appearance of considerable Turkish forces in the direction of Tabriz, the legion, together with other units, received the order to withdraw via Khoï toward Djoulfa, where it arrived on 15 January, covering the exodus of the Armenian population of the Dilman region.

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On 24 January the legion advanced toward Safian to reinforce the troops retreating from Tabriz, pressed by a Turkish division. It arrived there on 28 January, at the very moment when the battle of Safian was ending in a complete defeat of the Turks, who withdrew in haste toward the southern shore of Lake Ourmia.

The calm that had been established on the Caucasus front toward the end of December 1914 and the beginning of 1915 made it possible to withdraw the legions from the front and grant them a well-deserved rest in the Government of Erivan and the District of Kars, where they could moreover complete their training.

The 1st Legion was stationed at Marand, in Persian Azerbaijan.

What was the work of the legionaries in this first period of the war?

Here is the assessment of the Commander of the 1st Caucasus Corps:

To the Commander of the 3rd Armenian Legion, Amazasp Servantian.

By order of the Army Commander, the 3rd Armenian Legion ceases to form part of the forces entrusted to me and receives a new destination. From the beginning of hostilities with Turkey, the 3rd Legion was incorporated into the Sarikamiche detachment, then placed in the detachment of Colonel Koulébalkine. The legion particularly distinguished itself in the combats of 22 November, 23 December and 5 January. On 19 December it sustained, at Alagheuze, the first shock of the Turks, the prelude to the operations of Sarikamiche, which were to end in a brilliant victory; during the fierce combat at Alagheuze the Armenians lost 30 men killed and 40 wounded, but they offered stubborn resistance to the enemy until the arrival of reinforcements, in whose company they inflicted a cruel defeat upon the enemy. I regret that I must part from the valiant commander of the legion and his brave soldiers. However, it gives me pleasure, in the name of the army, to thank them for their devotion, the

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excellent and useful services rendered in the troops of Sarikamiche. I wish them, in the new task assigned to them, happiness, brilliant successes and new feats of arms.

During three months the 3rd Armenian Legion fulfilled with honour the heavy and responsible task of covering the left flank of the Sarikamiche detachment, of carrying out reconnaissance service in the gorges and the harsh mountains of Palantéken, fighting bravely, side by side with the brigades of Generals Gouligà and Prjevalsky, and finally in the troops of General Baratof.

With God, sustained by confidence in ourselves and in our sacred cause, forward to victory!

KALTINE, Brigadier General,

Commander of the 1st Caucasus Army Corps.

Telegram

To His Holiness the Catholicos of All the Armenians

Djoulfa, 22 November

In the combat of 22 November the legion of Armenian volunteers of Andranik showed much bravery and self-sacrifice. I am happy to inform His Holiness, whose benevolence and prayers I invoke for our future successes.

TCHERNOZOUBOFF

If this first period of the war on the Caucasus front revealed certain shortcomings concerning the organisation of the legions, it nevertheless made it possible at the same time to appreciate their fighting qualities, their capacity for resistance, and their will to win despite all the losses suffered.

During this period the Armenian legions lost 156 legionaries killed and 743 wounded, out of a strength of 2,482 men, or 36 per cent, without their morale being shaken, proof of the excellent warrior spirit that animated them.

The High Command of the Front appreciated at its true value the fine conduct of the Armenian legions and

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authorised the formation of two new legions: the 5th, under Vartan, and the 6th, under Avcharian.

Each legion numbering 1,000 men, the total strength of the Armenian legions represented a force of 6,000 combatants. Completed and reinforced during their short rest, they were again sent to the army front, four of them (the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th) entering the Van detachment.

Such a grouping of four legions in the same detachment is explained first of all by the task imposed upon it. It was at Van that the Armenian population had risen against the Turks and was defending itself heroically; but, surrounded on all sides by enemies better organised and armed, it urgently requested to be rescued. Furthermore, by the composition of these legions, which were drawn from this region, they knew perfectly the terrain on which military operations were to unfold. The 1st Legion remained, as before, attached to the Azerbaijan detachment of General Tchernozouboff, while the 6th, newly formed, was incorporated into the detachment of General Baratof (Sarikamiche group).

At the end of the winter of 1915, the Turks deployed ever-increasing activity on the front of the Persian Azerbaijan detachment.

The 1st Legion was at that moment resting at Marand. Having received on 2 March the urgent order to march on Khoï, it formed part of General Nazarbekoff’s group1 at the battle fought on 4 March near the mountain of Douz-Dagh. It remained until 28 April in the region of Khoï and took part in no further combat, calm having been established along the whole front.

Toward the middle of April, the offensive launched on the side of Ourmia by a division of Khalil Bey in the

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direction of Dilman threatened the left wing of the Caucasus front, which, if successful, would have opened to the Turks direct access to the road to Djoulfa and would ultimately have led to the loss of the Tiflis–Baku railway and of all the lines of communication of the Caucasus front.

On 28 April the legion, urgently summoned to Dilman, arrived on the 30th and took part in the battle of 1 May, holding the key positions together with a battalion of the 8th Rifle Regiment.

In this battle the legion lost 3 officers and 16 legionaries killed and wounded.

Having encountered energetic and unexpected resistance, driven back in disorder and having suffered heavy losses, Khalil Bey withdrew in haste in the direction of Djoulamerk to save the remnants of his division, vigorously pursued by the troops of General Nazarbekoff, with the 1st Armenian Legion at their head as advance guard.

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CHAPTER III: THE OPERATIONS OF VAN, MAY–JULY 1915

As we have said above, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th legions had been directed toward Van in the spring of 1915, and we have indicated the reasons for such a concentration of these four legions in a single group and for the choice of a determined direction of advance.

The legions formed an independent detachment, called the Ararat detachment, commanded by Vartan. Shortly before its return to the field, the 5th Legion was dissolved, its cadres serving to complete and reinforce the 2nd, 3rd and 4th legions.

Departing from Erivan on 28 April, the Ararat detachment crossed on 4 May the Tchinghil Pass (on the former Russo-Turkish frontier) and on the same day reached the approaches to Kizil-Diza, situated at the foot of Mount Tapariz, on the road from the Bayazid valley to Van.

On 11 May this detachment, forming the advance guard of General Nikolaïeff’s detachment, captured Beghri-Kala.

On 14 May the detachment again went over to the offensive; the following day it took the village of Djanik and on 18 May entered the village of Alour, where the population of Van, freed from a long siege, gave a reception

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an enthusiastic reception to the detachment. The Turkish troops withdrew in haste along the southern shore of Lake Van, in the direction of Vostan.

On the occasion of the capture of Van, the Commander of the 4th Army Corps sent a telegram of congratulations to the Catholicos of All the Armenians, conceived in these terms:

Etchmiadzin, to His Holiness the Catholicos of All the Armenians. — 25 May 1915.

I thank you with all my heart for the fervent prayers that you addressed to the Most High in the cathedral of Etchmiadzin on this memorable day when Van was delivered from the historical enemy of Christianity and of the Armenian people of the secular yoke, thanks to the valiant and victorious troops and the courageous Armenian legions of the IV Army Corps entrusted to me. 5302.

GENERAL OGANOVSKI.

After the occupation of Van it was indispensable to clear the region south of Lake Van of Turks and Kurdish bands in order to be able to establish ourselves there firmly. With this aim the 2nd Legion received on 21 May the order to occupy Chatakh, and then Mokouse.

On 23 May, after a short combat, the legion seized Chatakh, freeing from the yoke of their oppressors the Armenian population of that region, which had risen against the Turks.

After leaving there a small garrison as a precautionary measure, the legion continued its advance toward Mokouse, which it occupied on 31 May. During the night of 4–5 June the Turks attempted a counter-attack with the aim of retaking the abandoned lines that covered the direction of Sghert, but were repulsed with the aid of the local Armenian population.

On 29 May the 4th Legion received the order to occupy Vostan. After an engagement which lasted six hours, it

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seized the town, driving the Turks beyond the Vostan Pass and capturing from them three guns. It was then reinforced by the 3rd Legion, which arrived from Van, and together they broke all resistance on the part of the Turks. On 7 June, after a fierce combat, Sévan was occupied, and on the 12th the two legions entered Sorp.

However, the Turks, having received new reinforcements, passed to the offensive the following day, which obliged the legions at Sorp to withdraw first to Sévan and then to the line Norkev–Mokouse.

Thus, on 13 June, the line of the Russian front south of Lake Van passed through Norkev, Mokouse, and Chatakh. It is to be noted that this entire line was occupied exclusively by the Armenian legions and by Armenian volunteer formations from the region.

During the lull that followed these events and lasted until 27 June on this front, the 2nd Legion, as well as the 1st, which had come from Persian Azerbaijan, were united with the 3rd and 4th in the region of Norkev, the former leaving small garrisons at Mokouse and at Chatakh.

Taking advantage of this period of temporary respite, a company of the 2nd Legion, under the command of Mesrope, carried out a bold raid in the region of Sparkeret, west of Mokouse, and liberated 4,000 Armenians captured by the Kurds.

On 28 June all the legions were incorporated into the group of General Troukhine (1 battalion of frontier guards, 4 Armenian legions, 1 squadron of frontier guards, 12 sotnias of Cossacks, 6 field guns, 6 mountain guns).

These troops were to advance along the southern shore of the lake, in order to cover from the direction of Bitlis the left wing of the IV Corps of the Caucasus Army.

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This corps was operating on the front of Meliazghert–Akhlat, with the objective of occupying the line Khnis-Kala-Mouche.

The army command considered this operation very important: the occupation of the Khnis–Mouche line was to serve as a base for future operations, which would result in the capture of Erzeroum.

After the concentration of all General Troukhine’s forces in the region of Norkev, they captured Sévan after a two-day battle (29–30 June).

During their advance they encountered stubborn resistance from the Turks, reinforced near Sorp by an infantry brigade.

Khalil Bey had decided in turn to launch a counter-attack against the Russian 4th Corps, but, in order to protect his right flank threatened by the advance of General Troukhine, he left at Sorp the 44th, 106th, and 107th Turkish regiments.

But in the battle fought on 12 July, all the Turkish positions were taken, and two-thirds of their artillery fell into the hands of the victors. On 14 July the troops of General Troukhine reached the Meliazghert–Bitlis road, at the south-western extremity of the lake.

Congratulating the troops on their brilliant success, General Troukhine, in his order of the day of 15 July, noted their bravery and endurance, crowned by victory:

The legions of Andranik and of Dro attacked the enemy positions on the left flank with impetuosity, while the legion of Amazasp, under exceptionally difficult conditions and without being able to be supported by artillery, climbed mountains covered with snow. The legions, despite their fatigue, vigorously pursued the enemy whom they had dislodged.

Simultaneously with these combats on the southern shore of Lake Van, the operations of the 4th Corps began on

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on the Kope-Karmoundj line, crowned with success. General Troukhine’s group received the order to stand ready to continue its advance.

But already by 17 July the situation had changed.

On 15 July, on the front of the 4th Corps, the Turks, having received significant reinforcements, launched a counter-attack.

The Russian corps was forced to assume the defensive, while General Troukhine’s group received the order on 17 July to withdraw to positions south-west of Sorp.

These positions were attacked by the Turks on 19 July with the intention of breaking the resistance of General Troukhine’s Van group in order to secure the region of Bitlis and close it to an invasion by Russian troops.

These attacks were victoriously repulsed by the troops on 19 and 20 July and resulted in a complete defeat of the Turks.

On 21 July General Troukhine’s group reoccupied the south-western region of the lake and established contact with the left flank of the 4th Army Corps.

At the battle of 19 July, charging with his cavalry, the valiant Khétcho, of the Ararat detachment, was killed.

On the occasion of this victory, in his order of the day of 21 July, General Troukhine expressed himself in the following terms:

After a two-day battle, on 19 and 20 July, the troops of the group entrusted to me have driven the enemy from the positions which he occupied.

The victory is due principally to the accurate fire of our infantry, composed for three-quarters of Armenian legions.

The enemy has been definitively repulsed thanks to the precision of the artillery fire. History will appreciate your victory, valour

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brave troops. For my part, I congratulate the officers as well as the simple soldiers on the victory won over the enemy, and I thank you for your efforts.

GENERAL OF DIVISION TROUKHINE

But the turning movement of the Turks against the 4th Army Corps near Meliazghert and the breakthrough of the Russian front at Prkhousse completely changed the situation. The Turkish offensive along the entire front of the 4th Corps forced it—and at the same time General Troukhine’s group—into a general retreat.

The occupation of Meliazghert by the Turks opened to them the shortest route toward the valley of Alachkert, separating the units of the 4th Corps and threatening Transcaucasia. The Army Command was compelled to give the order to evacuate the region of Van and to concentrate the elements of the 4th Corps, which withdrew along the northern shore of the lake, into the valley of Alachkert, via Beghri-Kala and the Tapariz Pass.

The 1st and 2nd Legions, after effecting their junction with the left-flank column of the 4th Corps, withdrew along the northern shore of the lake, while the 3rd and 4th, remaining incorporated in General Troukhine’s group, retreated along the southern shore of the lake, serving as cover for the Armenian population, which was obliged to evacuate the vast region of Van.

The retreat of General Troukhine’s detachment began on 24 July at 2 p.m., without being disturbed by the Turks; only the Kurds showed activity on the Mokouse–Chatakh front and attacked Mokouse, held by a company of the 2nd Legion, during the night of 23–24 July. But this attack failed, the legionaries having lost 1 killed and 26 wounded.

On the morning of 26 July General Troukhine’s detachment arrived at Sévan and continued its retreat toward Van, having received the order to defend that city and its entire region.

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The 1st and 2nd Legions marched in the rear guard of the left-flank column of the 4th Army Corps; to them fell the heavy task of defending the defile of Beghri, through which the numerous Armenian population of Mokhouse-Chatakh and of the entire region of Van had to pass.

General Troukhine’s group, finding itself isolated from the rest of the Caucasus Army, evacuated Van on 4 August with the intention of withdrawing northward, but had to change direction toward the south-east and Persia, the route of Beghri-Kala having been cut off.

The retreat of the Russian army along the entire front in July 1915 left the 1st and 2nd Armenian legions at Igdir, and the 3rd and 4th at Dilman.

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CHAPTER IV: THE REORGANISATION OF THE LEGIONS

The news of the retreat of the Russian troops from the vilayet of Van fell like a thunderbolt upon the unfortunate Armenian population and indirectly affected the morale of the legions.

Legionaries were leaving the ranks to go in search of relatives in the immense tide of Armenians who were flowing back toward the Russian frontier and toward the unknown.

The Armenian National Bureau took measures to put an end to the desertion and decided, whatever the cost, to complete the legions and to continue the struggle against Turkey.

This decision was facilitated by the presence of two new legions (the 6th and 7th), formed at Erivan during the summer and ready to proceed to the front.

Following discussions with the General Staff of the Caucasus Army, it was decided that: first, the 3rd and 4th legions would remain at Dilman and would be immediately completed by 750 legionaries drawn from the 6th and 7th legions, and, second, the 1st and 2nd legions would be completed as soon as possible and sent again from Igdir to the front.

To characterise this heroic resolution to continue the unequal struggle against the Turks, we quote here the appeal of Andranik, commander of the 1st legion, to the Armenian population:

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I summon you to come immediately to Erivan to enlist in the legion, whose reorganisation must be completed by 13 September at the latest.

My friends, for ten consecutive months we have suffered in the mountains and the defiles, enduring all privations, crossing enormous distances, often suffering from hunger and lacking footwear. But we must not despair. The moment has arrived to give proof of courage and strength. The aim which we cherish and pursue must lead us toward our homeland, which demands to be liberated and avenged.

The reorganisation of the legions lasted more than three months—August, September, and October. By an order of the day of the 4th Caucasus Army Corps, all the Armenian legions “formed and in the process of formation” were placed under the orders of the Commander of the 1st Territorial Brigade (Order of the Day of the Commander of the 6th Army Corps, 16 August 1915, No. 61), the latter being invested with the powers of a Divisional Commander.

This order of the day was in complete accord with the intentions of the Armenian National Bureau, which wished to unite all the legions into a compact unit and give them a single direction.

But contrary to the aforementioned order, at the moment of the resumption of hostilities, these legions were once again dispersed, partly on the front of the 4th Corps, partly on that of the Azerbaijan-Van group.

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CHAPTER V: THE REOCCUPATION OF THE REGION OF VAN

The resistance of the 4th Army Corps, which, after retreating toward the Russian frontier, had faced the enemy on the positions of the southern slopes of the Aghri-Dagh range, then in turn passed to the offensive, while the troops of General Baratof of the Sarikamiche group operated on the left flank of the Turks, resulted first in the complete halting of the Turkish attack and then in their precipitate retreat, which soon turned into a rout.

The 6th Legion formed part of General Baratof’s troops; its commander, Lieutenant Avcharoff, met a hero’s death in these combats.

The spoils of the victors consisted of 5,000 prisoners and a considerable quantity of artillery, munitions, transport, etc.

The plan of the Turkish command, conceived with the aim of breaking through the front of the 4th Corps, which occupied the left wing of the Caucasus Army, in order then to invade the province of Erivan and separate the two theatres of war—the Turco-Caucasian and the Persian—failed, while the Russian troops, pursuing their advantage, re-established at the end of the month of August their front in the vilayet of Van.

On the southern shore of Lake Van, in order to cover the city of Van, a detachment was sent forward with orders to occupy the positions west of the village of Vostan, which defended the approaches in the direction of Bitlis-Van.

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On 20 September, half-companies of the 3rd and 4th Legions were incorporated into this detachment. These legions were at Dilman, where, as we have seen above, they had been placed during the retreat of the Russian troops from the vilayet of Van in the month of July.

The small units of Armenian legionaries took part on 10 October in the defence of the Vostan Pass, on the night of 13 October in the defence of the positions in front of Van against the Turks coming from the southern shore of the lake, and on 14 October they were among the troops that once again seized the positions of Vostan.

Calm was gradually restored in this region and major hostilities ceased until the beginning of January 1916.

During this period of lull, the Van group occupied with a small advance guard the villages of Vostan and Khan, situated south of the Artos massif and blocking the road toward Chatakh.

Khochab, a large Kurdish village west of Van, was kept under surveillance by the cavalry.

The legions arrived at Van in the following order:

• On 22 October, the 7th Legion of Prince Arghoutian;

• on the 25th, the 3rd Legion of Amazasp from Dilman;

• and on the 27th, the 1st Legion, temporarily commanded by Sembat.

A half-company of the 4th Legion was sent on 23 October to Dilman to rejoin its legion.

On 20 November, the 1st Legion was sent from Van to Ardjich, and to it fell the difficult task of occupying almost the entire northern and western shoreline of Lake Van.

The 3rd Legion remained at Van until mid-March 1916; the 7th received, toward the beginning of December, the order to proceed in the direction of Ourmia.

As we have just stated, the 1st Legion left Van on 20 November and was incorporated into the Ardjich group.

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The Ardjich group, composed of three sotnias of Cossacks, the Armenian legion, half a battalion of infantry, and two field guns, received the task of dispersing the Kurds in the region of Zélian-Déré, north of Ardjich, inhabited by a warlike Kurdish population.

Threatening the Ardjich group from the north, the Kurds, commanded by Turkish officers, at the same time posed a danger to the troops of the 4th Corps at Patnos, where the 2nd Legion was also located. By pushing in between Patnos and Ardjich, the Kurds were obstructing communications between the Azerbaijan group, Van, and the 4th Army Corps via the Ardjich–Patnos route.

Sent on 25 November from Ardjich on reconnaissance, the legion cleared the Kurds from the sector nearest to Ardjich and observed their concentration in the Zilian-Déré-Sou defile.

The situation thus clarified, the commander of the Van group ordered the Ardjich group to launch an attack against the Kurds, which was carried out on 13 December, the 1st Armenian Legion forming part of the detachment together with two sotnias of Cossacks and two guns.

Supported by the artillery, the legion captured the Kurdish positions commanding the Zilian-Déré-Sou defile, completely cleared the Patnos–Ardjich road of local partisans, and, as punishment in accordance with an order received from the Corps commander, destroyed fifteen Kurdish villages north of Ardjich.

In this action the legion lost four killed and eight wounded; among the latter was the deputy commander of the sotnia, Archak.

Toward the second half of December, communication with Patnos was again threatened by Kurdish incursions, and, by order of the army commander, expeditions composed of units drawn from the 4th Corps were directed toward Patnos as well as toward Ardjich.

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From the Ardjich side advanced a column composed of the 1st Legion, half a battalion of infantry, two sotnias of Cossacks, and four guns; from the Patnos side, the 2nd Armenian Legion, half a battalion of infantry, one sotnia of Cossacks, and two guns.

On 11 January these two columns moved forward, cleared the entire region of Kurds, and, as punishment, destroyed seven of their villages.

They effected their junction on 13 January at noon at the Agha-Giadouk Pass and re-established communications between Patnos and Ardjich after dispersing Kurdish bands sometimes numbering as many as 1,000 men.

The losses of the 1st Legion during this two-month period in the Ardjich sector amounted to five killed and seventeen wounded.

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CHAPTER VI: THE OPERATIONS OF BITLIS, FEBRUARY–APRIL 1916

The beginning of the year 1916 was marked by major events on the Caucasus front, which opened with the capture of Erzeroum, of Bitlis, of Trebizond on the Turkish theatre, and of Kermanchah on the Persian theatre.

The opportunity for a decisive operation, aimed at Erzeroum, Mouche, and Bitlis, became evident after the occupation by Russian troops of Keupri-Keui and Khnis-Kala.

The capture of Erzeroum and the occupation of the valley of Mouche gave the Russians the possibility of continuing their offensive in the directions of Sivas, Kharpout, and Diarbekir, cutting the Turks off from their base of operations against Transcaucasia.

The Commander of the 4th Corps, having received the order from the Army Commander to take Mouche and Bitlis, advanced in that direction the column of General Abatsieff (6½ battalions, 10 guns, and 3 sotnias of Cossacks).

At the end of January 1916, this column occupied the region of Mount Nimroud (western shore of Lake Van), from where it launched its attack on Bitlis.

To support the operations of General Abatsieff’s column, the commander of the Van group, General Koulébiakine, received the order to advance two columns: one along the northern shore of the lake in order to

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clear the terrain behind the forces of General Abatsieff of Kurdish bands. This column was then to join him by advancing through Akhlat and Karmoundj, while the other would arrive by the southern shore of the lake.

The 1st Legion formed part of the column that skirted the lake to the north, having as cavalry three sotnias of Cossacks and two field guns.

On 2 February the column departed from Ardjich and routed the Kurdish bands it encountered 10 kilometres west of that town, pursuing them in a north-easterly direction as far as the Zéraklou Pass and the village of Norchen, which it occupied on the evening of the same day.

The column remained there for eight days, and it was only on 11 February that it received the order to advance in the direction of Adeldjivaz.

The Kurds, for their part, were determined to oppose the Russian offensive and occupied positions between the southern slopes of Mount Sipane and the lake; but by an energetic attack of the legion’s cavalry and a sotnia of Cossacks under Andranik, the left wing of the Kurds was routed and driven back toward Adeldjivaz. At the same time the infantry of the legion captured, on the right flank of the adversary, the village of Kotcherer, which it took after a fierce combat.

This defeat so shook the morale of the Kurds that thereafter they were unable to offer serious resistance to the Russian advance, and on 12 February the legion occupied Adeldjivaz and then Akhlat.

On 19 February the column was incorporated into the Bitlis group of General Abatsieff and received the order to occupy the village of Tadvane, situated on the south-western shore of the lake. This operation was completed on 20 February.

One of the columns, which included the 2nd Legion in its strength, occupied Mouche on 15 February.

Thus, toward the end of February, the group of General Abatsieff occupied the front passing through Mouche-

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Khaskeuï–Tadvane. At that point it was joined by the column advancing along the southern shore of the lake.

In order to secure the position from which the attack on the Turkish entrenchments of Bitlis was to be launched, General Abatsieff ordered the 1st Armenian Legion, supported by a battalion of infantry and two guns, to occupy the Bitlis defile.

Despite the superiority of the Turkish forces, which occupied the positions at the entrance of the defile with eight battalions, on 21 February the legion attempted to force its way toward the Mouche–Bitlis road, but without success.

The general attack began on 28 February, the troops being grouped in three columns, the 1st Legion forming part of the central column and the 2nd of the right-flank column.

The enemy withdrew from its advanced positions to occupy the heights on the southern bank of the Bitlis-Sou river, which barred access to Bitlis.

The central column engaged in combat early in the morning of 29 February, advancing through deep snow on steep slopes, but despite its desperate efforts it did not succeed in seizing the enemy sector assigned to it.

The fighting ceased at nightfall, the legion having lost 15 killed and 55 wounded.

On the night of 2–3 March the decision was taken to seize the enemy positions by a night attack. The legion continued, as before, to form part of the central column.

It approached silently, without firing a shot, toward the sector that had been assigned to it, then rushed upon the enemy, who, taken by surprise, fled in disorder, abandoning two mountain guns.

The line of Turkish fortifications was broken and the central column, closely pursuing the enemy in rout, penetrated on its heels into the town.

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After the occupation of Bitlis, the 1st Legion was charged with guarding the Mouche–Bitlis road against Kurdish incursions.

Having departed from Bitlis on 7 March, the legion successfully carried out this task, repelling numerous Kurdish attacks.

On 25 March it was urgently summoned back to Bitlis, as a Turkish attack was expected from the direction of Sghert.

Arriving at Bitlis on 29 March, it took part in numerous combats in the region of the village of Karpe, situated 10 kilometres west of that town.

At the same time, 20 kilometres west of Bitlis, Kurdish bands assembled, interrupting by their periodic incursions all communications along the Mouche–Bitlis road.

According to information supplied by our agents, the Turkish 5th Corps was concentrating at Diarbekir, and a division was preparing to march on Bitlis and Mouche via Sghert. To defend the approaches to Bitlis in that direction, a special detachment established its advance guard (one battalion) on positions near the village of Elnef, about 6 kilometres south of Bitlis.

A battalion was sent into the mountainous region west of Bitlis, which the Kurds had invaded, to cover the town from the west; it took up position near the village of Khachta, 20 kilometres from the town.

The 1st Legion received the order to leave Bitlis on 6 April with the mission of clearing the Kurds from the region north and south of the Karpe–Khachta road.

At the moment of the legion’s arrival on the spot, the Turkish offensive to the south from the direction of Keghi (15 kilometres south of Bitlis on the Sghert–Bitlis road) appeared imminent.

On the morning of 7 April the Turks launched their offensive, a column advancing from the direction of Keghi, with

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the intention of turning both flanks of the legion at its position at Karpe.

In view of the danger of being cut off from the rest of the troops, the battalion stationed near Khachta received the order to withdraw to Bitlis.

Throughout the day of 8 April one of the legion’s companies heroically defended the pass south of Karpe; but finally, threatened with being enveloped on both flanks, it rejoined the legion at its positions at Karpe.

By a stubborn defence and by skilfully withdrawing from position to position along the main defensive lines, the legion halted for two days the advance of the Turks, who were attempting to outflank Bitlis from the west.

Having failed in their attacks and seeing their rear threatened by a column sent from Mouche to the assistance of the Bitlis group, the enemy withdrew toward Keghi during the night of 9–10 April, and the legion reoccupied the positions near the village of Karpe and restored its connection with the Mouche group.

At the beginning of April the Bitlis group consisted of 14 battalions, including within this force two Armenian legions2 (the 1st and 3rd), three sotnias of Cossacks, and ten guns.

This group had received the order to defend at all costs the outlet of the valley of Mouche from the south on the Karpe–Vervan front and, after driving the enemy from its positions, to seize the heights that defended the entrance to the Bitlis defile from the direction of Khan.

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But the 1st Legion, which was exhausted and had suffered cruel losses, almost all its officers having been put out of action, had to be kept in the general reserve.

The 3rd Legion formed part of the left-flank column, composed of four battalions (including the legion) and four guns, the whole commanded by Colonel Obraszoff.

This column was tasked with occupying positions in the sector between the Bitlis–Vervan and Bitlis–Khan lines, which it was to organise for a prolonged defence.

The Turks, for their part, opposed this column with three battalions occupying the snow-covered ridge south of Elnef.

Colonel Obraszoff’s column received the order to attack these positions at dawn on 25 April and to carry them.

The legion, positioned on the left wing, was to begin the attack against the enemy’s right flank at 4 a.m., outflanking it from the direction of the Gheusel defile.

But this operation failed, and despite repeated attacks launched by the column against the Turkish trenches during the days of 25 and 26 April, the enemy held all its positions.

Nevertheless, the legion achieved a partial success in its sector, which earned it an honourable mention in the order of the day of the column commander, Colonel Obraszoff, dated 28 April 1916, from which we quote the following passage:

During the attack on the snow-covered ridge near the village of Elnef on 25 and 26 April, the 3rd Armenian Legion attacked with remarkable dash. The officers in particular behaved heroically, but unfortunately almost all were put out of action. On 25 April the legion seized, one after the other, all the trench lines, from which the Turks were driven by fire or by the bayonet.

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The impetuosity of the attack was such that the Turks did not have time to evacuate their bivouacs, which fell into the hands of the Armenian legionaries.

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CHAPTER VII: THE KHISAN EXPEDITION

The expedition to Khisan, undertaken by the 3rd Legion of Amazasp, which lasted from 12 March to 12 April 1916, constitutes a separate episode in the struggle for possession of Bitlis.

The objective of this expedition had been defined by a telegram which the Commander of the Van group, General Koulébiakine, received on 11 March from the Commander of the Caucasus Army, General Yudenitch, conceived in the following terms:

Send immediately the 3rd Legion, which is to occupy Khisan and carry out reconnaissances in the direction of Sghert.

According to the information received, a Turkish offensive from the direction of Sghert was to be expected, with the aim of retaking Bitlis.

A sotnia of Cossacks also formed part of this detachment, but being entirely absorbed in guarding the lines of communication, the T.S.F. station, and the transport escort, it was unable to take any active part in the operations that followed.

On 11 March the detachment marched from Van to Vostan, reached Norkev the following day, and on 13 March the villages of Motchour and Palou, from where it proceeded toward Khisan.

The first encounter with the Kurds took place on 15 March near the village of Ghiavork, the legion losing

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11 wounded, but forcing the Kurds to withdraw. It spent the night in the village of Solentz.

The road was dreadful, indeed, it scarcely existed; nothing but loose stones, steep slopes covered with snow, precipices, and sharp ridges, with scarcely the trace of a path. In climbing the slopes, men and horses sank into heaps of snow.

At dawn on 16 March, the Kurds, having received reinforcements, attacked the village of Solentz, occupied by the legion, in order to prevent it from reaching the entrance to the Khisan defile; but after a ten-hour combat they were forced not only to withdraw but also to evacuate the village of Haut-Téké.

Reconnaissances carried out between 17 and 19 March revealed a concentration of Kurdish forces, estimated at 2,000 fighters, throughout the region of Khisan.

On 21 March the legion, continuing its advance, occupied, after a four-hour combat, the village of Khoros (west of the village of Haut-Téké) and established, by means of a patrol at the village of Kétének, contact with the left flank of the Bitlis group.

On 23 March the legion seized the village of Kara-Sou and continued its advance toward Khisan.

At 6.30 in the evening the legion vigorously attacked the Kurds who occupied the village of Bas-Téké, which it carried despite the stubborn resistance of the enemy, and at nightfall it occupied Khisan, where it freed 500 Armenian civilian prisoners and captured considerable booty in munitions, equipment, and provisions.

The legion had operated in a very unfavourable season and under exceptionally arduous conditions, owing to the rugged nature of the theatre of war—a mountainous country without roads and inhabited by a hostile population. But, by the occupation of Khisan, it had accomplished the first part of the task entrusted to it

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had been assigned to it by the Commander of the Caucasus Army, after having covered, almost without transport and while fighting continuously, 120 kilometres in 11 days.

On 25 and 26 March mounted patrols were sent in the direction of Sghert, but the Kurds offered such vigorous resistance that they were unable to penetrate the area; they were consequently reinforced by units of the legion.

The reconnaissance yielded appreciable results, making it possible to establish that the Turks were covering themselves in the direction of Khisan with considerable Kurdish forces, in order to secure their advance on Bitlis and the left flank of the Bitlis group.

This latest manoeuvre resulted, on 28 March, in the withdrawal of the left flank of the Bitlis group from Vervan toward Bitlis, following which the legion, being in too advanced a position, received the order at nightfall to withdraw to Kara-Sou and then toward the junction of the Khoros–Vervan–Kara-Sou roads.

On 29 March this latter point was occupied by the legion, which then pushed reconnaissances toward Khisan and established contact with the left flank of the Bitlis group, which reoccupied Vervan.

The reconnaissances of 31 March, 1 and 2 April made it possible to establish the concentration of significant enemy forces at Khisan, Turkish askers and gendarmes being among the Kurds.

The situation on the front of the Bitlis group became worrying, the Turks, having received reinforcements, passing once again to the offensive.

In these circumstances the legion received the order to withdraw to Khéketzir, where it assembled on 8 April. It continued to conduct reconnaissances in the direction of Kara-Sou–Khisan and was charged with maintaining liaison with Vervan, and was to oppose to the utmost any Turkish attempt to

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break through the line east of Vervan (left flank of the Bitlis group) in the direction of the shore of Lake Van.

The situation of the Bitlis group, having to withstand the offensive of superior Turkish forces, was becoming increasingly precarious, and on 9 April the legion received the order to march on Vervan to reinforce its left flank.

Such were the reasons why the legion had entered the strength of the Bitlis group and had taken part in its combats during the month of April 1916, described in the preceding chapter.

In sum, taking into account the insufficiency of its forces, the legion had resolved the problem set before it in the Khisan expedition with the maximum results that could be expected under conditions of exceptional difficulty.

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CHAPTER VIII: THE ORGANISATION OF THE ARMENIAN LEGIONS DURING THE PERIOD OCTOBER 1914–APRIL 1916

We have just retraced the course of the operations of the legions during the period from October 1914 to April 1916, having only lightly touched upon their internal organisation. But, in order to form a proper idea of the work of the legions and of the manner in which they fulfilled their duty, voluntarily assumed, it is indispensable to take account of their organisation, for upon the latter depended to a great extent their degree of combat effectiveness.

In authorising the formation of Armenian volunteer legions, the High Command of the Caucasus Front had not strictly determined their strength, organisation, or system of supply.

They were rather imagined as groups of partisans, isolated and supplied in the manner of guerrillas, without organic ties to the regular troops, roaming along the entire front, passing from one group to another, thus making it impossible for the higher command to enter into direct contact with them—something which would have enabled it to assign to them only those tasks that they were capable of accomplishing or for which they were particularly suited.

The armament of the legionaries was very varied; some of them had none at all. Above all, there were difficulties in the supply of cartridges, which

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made itself felt in a troubling manner during many engagements. The absence or shortage of technical means of communication, engineering tools, supply parks, field kitchens, mess tins, tents, etc., complicated the situation. Footwear and winter equipment were constantly lacking.

The commanders of the legions and their lieutenants did not hold officers’ rank. The consequence was that when the legions entered Russian units, they found themselves in a position of inferiority, which often gave rise to painful misunderstandings.

The lack of doctors and of medical and administrative personnel was often keenly felt during operations.

Instead of being supplied and equipped by the intendance and other competent military institutions, the legions often had to turn, in order to meet their needs, to the Armenian National Council at Tiflis.

Despite all these difficulties that had to be overcome from the very beginning of the formation of the legions—despite all kinds of obstacles, the inexperience of the commanders, the open or secret ill will of certain governing circles—they were formed and took part in the operations of the regular Russian army, often with important and independent tasks, such as, for example, the operation of the three Armenian legions on the southern shore of Lake Van from 21 May 1915 to 27 June 1915, of which we have spoken.

Did these legions give all that could be asked of them as combat units? Were they useful on the Caucasus front?

The answer is to be found in this historical survey and in the orders of the day of the High Command of the Caucasus Army.

The Armenian National Council at Tiflis repeatedly drew the attention of the Russian authorities to the

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deficiencies in the organisation of the legions, fully aware that this state of affairs was bound to have a harmful effect on the morale of the legionaries, on their discipline, and on their military effectiveness.

For these reasons, the Armenian National Council had repeatedly approached the High Command of the front, requesting the reorganisation of the legions into regular battalions, notwithstanding the likelihood that such a measure would provoke the disbanding of part of the legionaries and the withdrawal of several of their commanders.

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CHAPTER IX: THE ARMENIAN LEGIONS REORGANISED INTO ARMENIAN RIFLE BATTALIONS

The organisational shortcomings of the legions and the abnormal conditions in which the legionaries lived made it necessary to reorganise them into regular units, incorporating elements of regular troops and providing them with experienced commanders and officers, while at the same time supplying them with everything required by Russian regulations.

Toward the end of 1915, the Armenian National Council made a new approach in this direction to the High Command of the Caucasus Front.

This time the proposal was received favourably, and already at the beginning of March 1916 the “Stavka” (Headquarters of the Tsar, Commander-in-Chief) ordered the reorganisation of the Armenian volunteer legions into six Armenian rifle battalions, assimilating their strength to that of the Cossack foot units (Plastuns) composed of four companies.

At the time of the publication of this order, the legions were scattered along the entire front: the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 6th in Turkey; the 4th, 5th, and 7th in Persian Azerbaijan.

As the situation at the front permitted, the legions were withdrawn and brought to the rear of the battle line.

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The 1st Legion, in view of its small strength, was dissolved and served to complete the others, which were formed as follows:

• The 2nd Legion into the 1st Armenian Rifle Battalion

• The 3rd Legion into the 2nd Armenian Rifle Battalion

• The 4th Legion into the 5th Armenian Rifle Battalion

• The 5th Legion into the 4th Armenian Rifle Battalion

• The 6th Legion into the 3rd Armenian Rifle Battalion

• The 7th Legion into the 6th Armenian Rifle Battalion

In order to bring these Armenian battalions up to normal strength, all Armenian officers and soldiers from the units of the Caucasus front who wished to serve in this national formation were transferred into them, with the addition of elements drawn from march battalions.

The question of supply had not been resolved satisfactorily along the entire Caucasus front, and this circumstance naturally also affected the morale of the Armenian battalions.

Likewise, equipment was entirely insufficient and did not allow all the combatants to be properly clothed, while footwear was completely lacking. They were obliged to make do by repairing as best they could what was available and making use of it.

Harness was also incomplete and defective, while armament consisted of rifles of the most varied systems, especially Turkish Mausers captured from the enemy, but generally in poor condition and without bayonets.

There was not a single machine gun and no transport; the promised horses and wagons had not been supplied. It was necessary to adapt heavy wagons taken from the Turks to the terrain and to requisition or purchase horses locally.

Engineering equipment was entirely lacking, as was communications equipment.

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While appreciating the services rendered by the legions, the High Command of the Caucasus, for reasons of internal policy, feared to group these battalions into larger national units that might have encouraged separatist tendencies; and, as before, the new battalions were dispersed across the vast Caucasus front, passing from one group to another and continually changing higher command.

In the account that follows, we shall confine ourselves to describing the operations of the Armenian battalions for which we possess indisputable documentation.

After the collapse of the Russian front in the Caucasus, the archives of the staffs were partly lost or fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks or the new Soviet republics of the Caucasus. The possibility of making use of these historical documents was thus lost for a long time, if not forever.

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CHAPTER X: OPERATIONS OF THE FIRST ARMENIAN RIFLE BATTALION ON THE TURKISH FRONT

The reorganisation of this battalion had not yet been completed when, at the beginning of June 1916, it was attached to the 39th Infantry Division, which at that time occupied positions near the village of Yeni-Keui, 40 kilometres east of the town of Mamakhatoon.

By mid-June the situation on the Caucasus front was as follows:

Having completed their concentration in the region of Gümüşhane–Ardos (80–100 kilometres south-west of the town of Trebizond), the Turks launched an offensive against the 5th Army Corps, which was operating in the direction of the coast, and forced it to withdraw 25–30 kilometres to the east. The enemy’s intention was to outflank from the south the fortified region of Trebizond and reach the sea, thereby cutting off the town of Trebizond and the Russian troops defending it from their lines of communication.

By this manoeuvre the Turkish command hoped to draw Russian reserves to the threatened sector and then easily deliver a decisive blow on the main axis of

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Ognut-Khnis-Kala-Keupri-Keui, thereby reaching the rear of Erzerum.

The Turkish advance units intended for this purpose were detected at the end of June in the region of Keghi-Cholik-Ognut.

If successfully carried out, this plan to break through the centre of the Russian Caucasus Army would have resulted in the retreat of both flanks of the army to their initial positions at the beginning of the war and the evacuation of the captured Turkish territory, transferring the struggle to the borders of Transcaucasia.

To counter this plan, the command of the Caucasus Army decided to forestall the enemy by launching a general offensive of its own, aimed at delivering a decisive blow in the directions of Bayburt and Erzerum. This offensive was scheduled for the night of 8 July 1916.

The 1st Armenian Rifle Battalion, which formed part of the 39th Infantry Division, relieved the 4th Don Plastun Battalion on 5 July in positions near the village of Kyukyurtli and was incorporated into the detachment of the division’s right sector (4 battalions, 14 guns).

This sector extended from the Karasuchai River to the village of Kyukyurtli; the 1st Armenian Battalion occupied positions from the Kyukyurtli Pass to the village of the same name. To the south of the battalion were the positions of other units of the division.

Thus, on the very eve of the offensive, the Armenian battalion replaced a Don Plastun battalion that had had sufficient time to familiarise itself with its position and study the approaches to the Turkish trenches, whereas the Armenian riflemen and their commanders were not only unfamiliar with the terrain on which they were to operate but were not even informed of the overall situation.

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We shall see later how these circumstances partly became the cause of the increased losses suffered by the battalion in the fighting of 8, 9, and 10 July, in which it received its baptism of fire.

On 7 July the divisional commander issued an order to the troops of the sector, including the Armenian battalion, to attack at dawn the following day, with the task of seizing the Turkish position that stretched along the mountain ridge from the village of Balin-Tepe—height 2350 metres—to its southern spur. The Armenian battalion was ordered to capture this spur. It was decided to approach the enemy’s position by 2 a.m., making use of the darkness during the two hours that remained before dawn at that time of year, and to launch the assault when it became sufficiently light.

Advancing in the dark across highly broken terrain presented great difficulties, and not all units reached in time the line from which the attack was to begin. When at dawn the 1st Armenian Battalion, in accordance with the general plan, rushed to storm the Turkish positions, it was met not only by deadly infantry and machine-gun fire from the front but also by flanking fire from the left, because the troops advancing to the south of the battalion, who were to cover it on that side, had not yet reached their assigned positions. After a fierce battle and heavy losses, the battalion was forced to withdraw to its initial positions, which in turn led to the retreat of the entire sector to its original lines.

At dawn on 9 July the attack was renewed, and this time the battalion successfully seized the southern spur of height 2350 but was not supported by the other units advancing farther south. As the enemy outflanked its left wing and attacked from the front with superior forces, the battalion was again

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forced to abandon the captured positions, which, as on the previous day, entailed the withdrawal of the entire sector’s troops.

On the night of 9 and 10 July the attack was ordered to be resumed. This time it was successful. The battalion quickly captured the spur and, advancing along the crest, joined the troops that had taken height 2350, and then, by combined effort, heights 2300 and 2660.

The Turkish losses were considerable; nevertheless, they retreated in fairly good order under cover of their cavalry. On our side the Armenian battalion suffered heavily, losing 55 per cent of its personnel killed and wounded during these attacks. But in this, its first battle, it displayed great bravery, excellent discipline, and steadfastness characteristic of troops with high morale. It was precisely thanks to these qualities that the battalion was able to accomplish the difficult task assigned to it, despite the terrible losses it sustained—losses that even seasoned veteran troops could hardly have endured with greater heroism.

The Turks were vigorously pursued. The battalion formed part of the advance guard of the 39th Infantry Division, and on 24 July it entered the town of Erzincan. At the same time, in operations on this axis, Russian troops, after fierce fighting, captured Bayburt on 15 July and Kelkit on 27 July.

Finally, on 5 August the Turks were driven from the Chardakhli Pass, through which runs the Erzincan–Sivas road (60 kilometres west of Erzincan).

But here the offensive of the Caucasus Army came to a halt because of troop exhaustion and the impossibility of organising transport.

The battalion remained in positions near the village of Chardakhli throughout the autumn and until the end of the winter of 1917, continuing to form part of the 39th Infantry Division.

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By the beginning of March 1917 the battalion was stationed on the left flank of the Erzincan position, where it remained until early August 1917, when it was withdrawn from the front for reorganisation into a two-battalion regiment.

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CHAPTER XI: OPERATIONS OF THE ARMENIAN RIFLE BATTALIONS ON THE PERSIAN THEATRE OF WAR

With the onset of the summer of 1916, the region of Persian Azerbaijan began to assume ever-increasing importance.

A concentration of Turkish troops was noted at Revanduz and Sulaymaniyah (Mosul vilayet); their advance guard had already crossed the Persian frontier and occupied Serdesht, Bana, and Sakkez.

If the Turkish operations in the direction of Revanduz and in the direction of Sulaymaniyah–Bana–Sakkez were successful, they would become masters of the whole of Persian Kurdistan. Reinforced by the local population, always ready to fight against the Russians, the Turks could then develop their operations toward Tabriz, once again threatening the left flank of the Caucasus front and its rear.

To prevent such a possibility, units of the 7th Caucasus Corps, which were already occupying Persian Azerbaijan and consisted mainly of Cossack cavalry reinforced by two Armenian rifle battalions, one border-guard regiment, and one territorial battalion, were placed on the first line. These forces were organised into three columns:

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• The right column, in the direction of the Kalishan Pass, 20 kilometres south-west of the town of Ushnu—12 Cossack sotnias;

• The central column, in the direction of the Sheikhan–Gerus–Revanduz Pass—12 Cossack sotnias;

• The left column, in the direction of Sakkez–Bana—24 Cossack sotnias and 2 battalions.

The 4th Armenian Rifle Battalion, which was being formed at Marand, received on 14 June the order to proceed immediately to Soukh-Boulagh, where it arrived on 24 June.

On 3 July the battalion occupied a position 20 kilometres south-east of Soukh-Boulagh in order to cover that point from the direction of the village of Burkhan, toward which the Turks were advancing from Sakkez.

The battalion remained in this position until 6 August, performing security duties.

We said above that one column had been detached from the 7th Caucasus Corps with orders to advance toward Sakkez–Bana, but it did not reach its destination and was forced to retreat to Bokan under the pressure of superior Turkish forces.

The corps commander then decided to reinforce this column with a detachment of three battalions (two of which were Armenian: the 4th and 6th), 10 Cossack sotnias, and 6 guns, and to throw it into a counterattack against the advancing enemy, who had already occupied Bokan.

This detachment was to outflank the Turkish left and strike the enemy in the rear. On the night of 8 August it occupied the line Tazakale–Sharikend, but the Turks, having been warned in time of this turning movement, withdrew on the evening of 8 August in the direction of Sakkez and then took up positions 10 kilometres north of that town, at the same time covering the road to Bana.

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According to reconnaissance data, the Turkish forces consisted of 6 infantry battalions with artillery.

Having decided to attack the enemy, the detachment commander on the evening of 11 August divided his troops into two parts: one consisted of the forces that had arrived from Soukh-Boulagh and were positioned near the village of Markhus; the other was the column operating in the direction of Sakkez–Bana near the village of Serav.

The enemy positions were to be attacked at dawn on 12 August.

The 4th and 6th Armenian battalions were in the centre of the battle formation and were to advance along the Serav–Sakkez road.

The formidable Turkish positions, fortified with trenches solidly constructed in several lines, stretched in a long convex arc along high mountain ridges, blocking the approaches to Sakkez.

At 6 a.m. on 12 August the Armenian riflemen launched a bayonet attack under murderous infantry and machine-gun fire and captured the first line of enemy trenches. After a short pause, despite heavy losses, they attacked again and by 3 p.m. had taken the entire mountain ridge.

By evening the Turks had been driven from all their positions and, finding both their flanks threatened with envelopment by Russian cavalry, hastily retreated toward Sakkez, covering their withdrawal with separate detachments capable of stubborn resistance in the mountainous terrain.

Properly appreciating this feat, the group commander, General Koulebiakine, sent the following telegram to the commander of the 4th Armenian

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Rifle Battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel Osepian:

I congratulate the battalion on its first baptism of fire and its first victory. Thank you for your valiant conduct.

I personally visited today the impregnable position that you stormed and was able on the spot to appreciate the bravery of the Armenian riflemen who captured it. 553.

KOULEBIAKINE.

The following telegram was received from the corps commander, Divisional General Tchernozoubov:

To Lieutenant-Colonel Osepian. — I am happy that your brave men conducted themselves brilliantly under your command. May God protect you. 1065.

TCHERNOZOUBOV

The Turkish retreat toward Sakkez freed the left flank of the corps and enabled its commander to assist the central column, which was being pressed by the enemy, by detaching from the left column 3 battalions and 22 Cossack sotnias. The left column was reduced to 2 battalions, one of them Armenian, and 2 cavalry regiments.

With forces of precisely this strength, the column on 18 August occupied the line Sakkez–Markhus with the task of holding back the Turks from the direction of Bana and observing the roads leading south-east.

On 21 August the Turks went over to the offensive from the direction of Bana and by evening of the same day occupied the heights near the village of Mintu.

The enemy concentrated his forces near the village of Tubud, and the situation remained unchanged until 29 August.

On 30 August the commander of the left column decided to resume the offensive.

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In this mountainous terrain the infantry—2 battalions, one of them Armenian—alone were able to manoeuvre without particular difficulty. The column gallantly fulfilled its task and forced the enemy to abandon his positions and retreat. Armenian losses amounted to 37 riflemen killed and wounded.

After this battle the commander of the Armenian battalion received the following telegram from the column commander:

I congratulate the brave riflemen and their commander on the success. I especially thank the 4th company. 123.

GENERAL NAZAROV.

Taking part in the general pursuit of the enemy, who was retreating in complete disorder, the column occupied the village of Mintu on the evening of 2 September, but there the detachment was halted by order of the corps commander.

Having decided to capture the town of Bana, the corps commander, in order to ensure the success of the attack by the left column, sent from Soukh-Boulagh a group of troops into the rear of the Turkish positions near Bana.

The general offensive began on 5 September; the 4th Armenian Rifle Battalion was in the first line.

The skilful manoeuvre of the battalion, together with the diversion in the enemy’s rear, compelled the Turks to abandon their positions and leave the town of Bana.

After the Russian troops occupied the town, the Armenian riflemen received orders to move south of it in support of a Cossack brigade sent on a raid toward Penjwen.

After this brigade returned from its raid, the battalion was first stationed in the town of Bana, but subsequently, owing to the impossibility of subsisting in a completely

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devastated area and the total absence of resources, the entire left column was withdrawn to the region of Bokan, while its advance guard, the 4th Armenian Battalion, was sent to Sakkez, where it arrived on 12 September.

As we see, from 1 June to 1 September 1916 the 4th Armenian Rifle Battalion was constantly on the march, engaged in endless battles and skirmishes. The riflemen were in a pitiable condition, almost barefoot, in rags, and moreover insufficiently fed.

The battalion’s losses were very considerable, though not so much from killed and wounded—5 officers and 87 riflemen—as from epidemic diseases, chiefly cholera, which claimed many victims.

Thus, for two and a half months the battalion remained continuously in the advance guard. In this mountainous region the cold was setting in, and men without winter clothing somehow sheltered in tents to avoid falling ill from the autumn weather.

Only on 29 November was the battalion relieved and able to rest in the region of Bokan, where it remained until 7 March 1917.

On that day it took part in a demonstrative movement toward Bana in order to disrupt the Turkish offensive against the 1st Cavalry Corps near the town of Senneh.

On 17 March the battalion entered the town of Bana, where it remained until 22 June 1917.

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CHAPTER XII: THE PENJWEN OPERATION

On 22 June 1917 an order was received from the commander of the 7th Caucasus Corps to attack the Turkish positions at Bistan, which barred the road to Penjwen. The operation was to culminate in the capture of that town.

Its capture would secure the direction Sulaymaniyah–Senneh, establish contact with the right flank of the 1st Caucasus Cavalry Corps operating in the region of Kermanshah, and paralyse Turkish manoeuvres between the two Russian corps operating on the Persian front.

In view of the importance of this operation, the left column was reinforced by a large group of cavalry held in reserve, so that its final strength amounted to 2 infantry battalions (the 4th and 6th Armenian) and 36 Cossack sotnias.

The enemy occupied positions along a mountain ridge near the village of Bistan, between the Abishirvan River and its tributary, the Kizil-Su.

To attack him it was necessary to advance across the completely open valley of the Abishirvan River and ford it.

It was therefore decided to begin the attack at 1 a.m. on the night of 23–24 June. As soon as they approached the Abishirvan River, the battalions deployed into battle formation for a night assault and began to ford the river.

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Despite the intense fire that the Turks promptly opened, the Armenian riflemen crossed the river and stormed the mountain ridge, from which the enemy was forced to retreat in disorder.

But the 6th Armenian Battalion, advancing against the Turkish right flank, did not have time to consolidate its captured positions and was compelled to withdraw before a strong enemy counterattack. Its retreat entailed that of the 4th Battalion; in the end everything returned to the original positions.

After this setback, the corps commander decided to renew the attack, but only after the column had been reinforced with field artillery.

The troops were ordered to remain in readiness in close proximity to the enemy, who occupied commanding ground.

At dawn on 28 June the artillery began the preparation for the assault on the enemy trenches, and at 7 a.m. the order to attack was given. The 4th and 6th Armenian battalions, deployed in battle formation, descended into the valley of the Abishirvan River and advanced without firing a shot under Turkish artillery and infantry fire.

Before them lay an open zone which had to be crossed at any cost and as rapidly as possible. The riflemen crossed it and reached the mountain, at the foot of which, in a dead ground area, they were able to take a short rest. But scarcely had they recovered their breath when they rushed the Turkish trenches, which they captured, driving the Turks out with the bayonet as they retreated in great disorder.

In this attack the 4th Battalion lost 2 officers and 36 riflemen killed and wounded but captured one gun from the enemy.

On 28 and 29 June the troops were able to enjoy a rest well earned.

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Unfortunately, however, the detachment commander failed to appreciate fully the importance of the heights on the left flank of the Bistan position on the left bank of the Kizil-Su River.

On the evening of 29 June they were reoccupied by the Turks, and in order to advance toward Penjwen it was again necessary to seize these heights.

The execution of this difficult task was entrusted to the 4th Armenian Battalion, and on 30 June at 5 a.m. it began the attack. Despite stubborn enemy resistance, by 10 a.m. the battalion had captured these heights, losing 57 killed and wounded in the attack. The detachment left several units on these positions as a precaution and then proceeded to occupy Penjwen.

But once again the importance of the heights on the southern bank of the Kizil-Su, which dominated Penjwen, was underestimated, and the Turks, who had already retreated toward Sulaymaniyah, regained the advantage by seizing these heights on 3 July.

This enemy success forced the detachment to abandon Penjwen and withdraw to the Bistan positions, from which it later moved to the region of the town of Bana.

There the Armenian battalion succeeded on 16 August in halting the Turkish pursuit, losing 9 officers and 80 riflemen killed and wounded in this rearguard action.

By the end of August the Armenian battalions were withdrawn to be reorganised into rifle regiments, with two battalions in each.

The losses suffered by the 4th and 6th Armenian Battalions between 22 June and 6 August were very considerable.

The 4th Battalion lost 12 officers and 183 riflemen. As for the 6th Battalion, the corresponding data have been lost. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the Armenian riflemen bore

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the heaviest burden during these operations and battles conducted by the left column, since the activity of the cavalry, which formed part of this column, was substantially restricted by the mountainous nature of the theatre of war in this region. The fact that the Armenian battalions always proved equal to the tasks assigned to them is evidence of their discipline, their deep sense of duty, and their high fighting spirit.

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CHAPTER XIII: REORGANISATION OF THE ARMENIAN RIFLE BATTALIONS INTO COMPOSITE ARMENIAN RIFLE REGIMENTS

The Russian Revolution, in its initial and very brief phase, aroused in both the people and the army a desire and energy to continue the struggle.

However, as events unfolded, the army, subjected to propaganda, became increasingly demoralised and soon refused to carry out the orders of its command. It became evident, even to the least informed, that the Russian army was losing its combat effectiveness and that in the near future it would leave the front and turn its weapons inward. Already after the July Bolshevik demonstrations in Petrograd, rumours spread that the army would remain at the front only until October.

The victories of the Russian troops on the Caucasus front had made it possible to occupy the greater part of Turkish Armenia; but with the army’s withdrawal from the front, the fate not only of that territory but of the whole of Transcaucasia was placed in jeopardy.

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The results of all the conquests, sanctified by the heroism and courage of the troops and by the blood of countless victims, might be nullified.

In anticipation of the front being stripped of Russian troops, it was necessary to prepare to defend the Armenian regions by their own forces and to undertake a more effective organisation of those forces.

The grave question of Armenians fighting the Turks one on one was imposed by the logical course of events. The task now was to mobilise all the forces at their disposal by creating new Armenian units from Armenian soldiers serving in the Russian army and by consolidating the previously separate Armenian battalions into regiments.

Armenian political circles in Petrograd and the Armenian National Council in Tiflis undertook the necessary démarches before the Russian authorities, which were still functioning in some measure, for the reorganisation of the Armenian armed forces.

The Armenian National Council requested the reorganisation of the independent Armenian battalions into two-battalion regiments, which in turn were to be grouped into brigades. At the same time, it insisted on the necessity of forming new units of all branches of service, while refraining from raising the question of forming a separate Armenian army corps.

The démarches of the Armenian political circles in Petrograd and of the Armenian National Council were favourably received both by the Ministry of War and by the High Command of the Caucasus front.

The Minister of War placed the following resolution on the petition of the Armenian National Council:

I consider it necessary to proceed immediately with the reorganisation of the Armenian rifle battalions into regiments and their unification into divisions.

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This reorganisation of the battalions into regiments was carried out in accordance with the orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasus front of 2 July 1917, No. 480, and of 11 July of the same year, No. 540.

These two orders formed the basis of the organisation of the future Armenian Corps. But events developed so rapidly that already in October 1917 it became clear that, in order to save the Caucasus front, it was necessary without delay to begin replacing the Russian troops with national troops. And although as late as September the High Command of the Caucasus front had considered the formation of an Armenian Corps premature, the course of events soon placed this question on the agenda.

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CHAPTER XIV: THE RUSSIAN TROOPS LEAVE THE CAUCASUS FRONT. FORMATION OF THE ARMENIAN CORPS

As the front disintegrated, the number of Russian units still retaining some degree of combat effectiveness diminished—a circumstance which finally convinced the High Command of the Caucasus Front of the urgent necessity of creating national troops.

Against the background of general collapse, the Armenian regiments already in the ranks preserved their military value—a fact which could not but influence the decision to form an Armenian Corps.

After the reorganisation of the Armenian battalions into regiments, this authorisation was again sought in October 1917. According to the adopted plan, the six regiments already in service (two battalions each) were to be expanded into eight regiments (three battalions each), organised into two divisions of four regiments apiece, with cavalry (one brigade), fifteen artillery batteries, engineer troops, and technical units.

All Armenian soldiers from all Russian fronts and from march battalions were to be called up to reinforce the existing units and complete the new formations envisaged by the general plan.

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These démarches before the Russian authorities coincided with the withdrawal of Russian troops from the front, and this time they were received favourably.

On 13 December 1917 the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasus Front issued Order No. 136, on the basis of which the Armenian Army Corps was finally to be formed.3

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To understand more clearly the events that we shall describe next, it is necessary to take into account the conditions and circumstances under which the formation of these armed forces was to be carried out.

The repercussions of the Bolshevik coup d’état initially affected the fighting spirit of the Caucasus troops less than on other fronts, owing to the distance of this theatre of war from the two capitals.

Undoubtedly, on the Caucasus front all the symptoms of the impending collapse were also manifest, partial abandonment of positions, failure to execute orders, sabotage, and plundering of property, but on a less catastrophic scale than in Russia.

On the other hand, this very remoteness of Transcaucasia from the centres of disintegration, and its particular situation, were soon to lead to the abandonment of the entire front by the troops.

Transcaucasia did not regard the Bolshevik authority as the legitimate all-Russian government.

To administer the region, and despite the Bolsheviks’ accession to power, Transcaucasia formed in early November 1917 a local authority called the “Transcaucasian Commissariat,” composed of representatives of all parties and nationalities of Transcaucasia.

The formation of this new government was interpreted by the front, infected with Bolshevik propaganda, as an act of separation from Russia.

The demoralisation of the Russian troops was further aggravated by the news that the enemy had proposed the conclusion of an armistice.

The Transcaucasian Commissariat, taking into account the condition of the army and in full agreement with the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasus Front, immediately accepted this proposal and concluded an armistice with the Turks on 18 December 1917.

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This was enough to provide the mass of disorganised and exhausted Russian soldiers—who had in mind only one idea, to return home as soon as possible—with a pretext to abandon the front.

In order to defend the front and continue the struggle, only one means remained: to form and send to the front without delay national troops interested in defending their own country—Turkish Armenia and Transcaucasia.

Simultaneously with the expansion and formation of the Armenian troops mentioned above, measures were taken to create at the front itself units composed of Armenian soldiers of the Russian Caucasus Army, which at that moment was in the full course of withdrawal. These units were to be reinforced by recruiting from the local Armenian population and subsequently formed into a third division of the Armenian Corps.

The following official documents give us a general idea of the situation on the Caucasus front at the moment of the signing of the armistice and show, on the other hand, the sharp change that occurred in the thinking of the Russian Caucasus command, which now hoped to continue the struggle with the help of Armenian troops alone—troops whose formation it had regarded for years with such hostility.

We reproduce the following telegram from the Commander of the Caucasus Army to the Commander-in-Chief of the Front, dated 25 December 1917, No. 2320:

Despite the precisely fixed dates for the withdrawal of the units of the 1st Corps, the latter is leaving its positions on its own initiative, and this departure soon threatens to strip the front.

Under these conditions, any delay in sending the Armenian regiments to the front and, as a possible

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consequence, the occupation of Erzincan, if not by the Turks, then at least by the Kurds, will probably compel me to abandon the entire region. We shall irretrievably lose Turkish Armenia.

The Quartermaster General of the Headquarters of the Caucasus Army reported on 6 January (No. 56170)4:

The 6th Corps has abandoned its positions and has entirely retreated in the direction of Sarikamish. At present the last regiment is in the process of withdrawal, and by 13 January there will be no soldiers south of Shaitan-Dagh, and from that side the front will be completely open.

The 1st Corps has likewise for the most part begun to withdraw, and I fear that the last units of the corps will leave Erzincan before the appointed date.

Meanwhile, the withdrawal of our troops from this point and its occupation by the Kurds will inevitably entail a violation of the armistice by the Turks and their offensive along the entire front. There is no doubt that the occupation of the Erzincan region by the Turks will be followed by our complete abandonment of the Western Front.

The 2nd Turkestan and 5th Caucasus Corps have also raised the question of leaving the front. The withdrawal of our troops from the Western Front will inevitably entail, given the present state of the Caucasus Army, the complete abandonment of the Turkish territory occupied by us.

In other words, the abandonment of the Erzincan region is equivalent to the abandonment of all Turkish Armenia—that is, the loss of everything we have gained during three years of victorious war against the Turks.

This allows me once again to request that you urgently dispatch the Armenian regiments, even if only two, which would enable us to stabilise our situation.

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The Commander of the 4th Corps telegraphed on 13 January (No. 3461):

Transports, supply services, soldiers, and corps institutions are departing in disorder. Disorderly flight increases every day. The Armenian regiments are exhausted by guarding institutions and supply routes. Without the dispatch of fresh troops from the rear, I cannot answer for the consequences.

The Chief of Staff of the Caucasus Army telegraphed (No. 33265) to the Chief of Staff of the Front:

Russian soldiers are terrorising the local inhabitants (Armenians) and forcing them to retreat with them.

The picture of disorderly flight was the same in all corps. This noisy crowd pouring back had to be replaced by Armenian units still in the process of formation, upon whom fell the heavy task of defending solely by their own forces not only the immense front stretching from Bayburt to Persian Azerbaijan, but also such fortresses as Erzerum, Kars, and others.5

On 16 January 1918 the Quartermaster General of the Caucasus Front wrote to General Nazarbekov, commander of the Armenian Corps (No. 23):

The situation at the front is difficult, and the abandonment of fortified regions creates an especially critical situation, compelling me to issue the following order to fortress commanders:

“The Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasus Army orders you, in view of the departure of Russian soldiers and officers from the front, to entrust the defence of the fortified regions to the national troops.”

Meanwhile, the task of the Armenian Corps was not limited to occupying the front and fortresses: for

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the most part it came down to guarding all communications and, especially, the railways.

On 21 January the Directorate of the Kars–Merdinek Railway telegraphed:

Russian soldiers of the railway brigade servicing the Kars–Merdinek line are abandoning property worth millions of roubles and halting traffic. We request the formation of an Armenian railway battalion and the transfer to it of the property of this brigade and of the Kars–Merdinek line.

In his telegram of 25 January (No. 88), the commander of the Erzerum Group indicated that urgent measures were necessary for the transfer of the Erzerum railway into Armenian hands, beginning on 13 February:

If this question of vital importance is not satisfactorily resolved by 13 February, the Armenian troops occupying Armenia will be compelled to abandon it, and it will become impossible to continue the struggle.

In such a brief outline it is impossible to cite all the official documents describing the situation at the front.

The Armenian Corps, still in the process of formation, was entrusted not only with the heavy task of holding the front, maintaining communications, supply stages, and fortresses, but also of taking over and safeguarding the enormous quantities of property abandoned by the Russian troops.

The situation in the rear of the active army was no better. We have no intention in this account of discussing the orientation adopted by each of the numerous peoples of the Caucasus toward

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the Turks and the Entente,6 but we cannot pass over in silence certain events behind the fighting Armenian Corps that made its unequal struggle against the Turks even more difficult.

Organised bands, led by Turkish agents and emissaries, began by destroying all the main lines in the rear of the army.

First the Baku–Tiflis railway was closed to traffic; then the turn came for the Baku–Grozny line.

Closer to the front, the line Erivan–Julfa, of vital importance, was paralysed, and raids were carried out against the Tiflis–Alexandropol line.

At the same time, pogroms of Armenian villages by Kurds began, initially in the Erivan province; but soon the movement expanded, assuming a systematic character in the districts with mixed Armenian–Tatar populations in the Tiflis, Elisavetpol, and Baku provinces.

Numerous Armenian communities sought exemption from military service for their male population so as not to leave their villages without protection.

These pogroms of the peaceful Armenian population became increasingly frequent and were evidently methodically organised.

The organisers of these raids pursued the aim of compelling the male population capable of bearing arms to remain at home, thereby paralysing

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the active Armenian Corps and demoralising its soldiers, who could not but be troubled at the thought that while they were fighting at the front their homes were left without protection and doomed to pillage and destruction.

The authorities in the rear did not possess sufficient means to combat anarchy, as a result of which Turkish emissaries were able to act with complete freedom. On the other hand, it was impossible to demand that the Armenian Corps detach units from the front to restore order in the rear.

This situation compelled the Armenian National Council to demand from the High Command of the Front7 the creation of special units to maintain order in the rear, guard communications, and protect the Armenian population. These units began to be formed, in accordance with the orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasus Front of 23 and 26 January and 5 February 1918, in Shulaver (Borchalin district, Tiflis province), in Shushi (Nagorno-Karabakh, Elisavetpol province), in Akhalkalak (Tiflis province), in Nakhichevan (Erivan province), in Elisavetpol, in Baku, in Akhaltsikh (Tiflis province), in Tiflis, and in Varushan (Nukha district, Elisavetpol province).

Such were the conditions under which the Armenian Corps was formed, and such was the situation in which it found itself at the moment when it alone had to sustain an unequal struggle against Turkish forces far superior in number, better armed, and much better organised.

We now turn to an examination of the situation on the Caucasus front after the Russian troops had left it.

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CHAPTER XV: THE SITUATION OF THE ARMY ON THE FRONT AFTER THE WITHDRAWAL OF THE RUSSIAN TROOPS

At the beginning of 1918 the Russian army completely abandoned its positions on the Caucasus front. Its last echelons were already passing through Erzerum, Erivan, and Julfa, or concentrating at Trebizond in order to return to Russia either overland by rail or by sea.

The Russian Caucasus front no longer existed, and from that moment until the end of May 1918—that is, for six months—the small Armenian army alone had to withstand a desperate struggle against the Turkish army, defending an extensive front 400 kilometres in length, from Kelkit to Erzincan and from Khnis to Van.

Of course, this new front, given the weakness of the forces at its disposal, could not form a continuous line; circumstances compelled the Armenian army to divide into independent detachments without possible communication between them, in order to defend the principal probable directions of Turkish advance.

The disposition of these detachments was as follows:

Kelkit: units composed of Armenian volunteers from the Bayburt region.

Erzincan: the Erzincan Infantry Regiment of three battalions, formed from Armenian soldiers who had refused to follow the withdrawing Russian troops.

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Erzerum: the Erzerum Infantry Regiment, formed from local inhabitants; the 1st Armenian Rifle Regiment; and one battalion of the 4th Rifle Regiment, which had arrived from Erivan.

Khnis-Kala: the 2nd Armenian Rifle Regiment, the Khnis Regiment, and the Karaklis Regiment; the latter two organised from the local Armenian population.

This group was to cover the sector between Khnis and Lake Van.

Van: the 5th Armenian Rifle Regiment and two Van regiments, recruited from Armenians of that region.

Erivan: the 3rd and 6th Armenian Rifle Regiments (whose transformation into three-battalion regiments was nearing completion) and one battalion of the 4th Rifle Regiment.

Kars: the regiment of this fortress (still in the process of formation).

Alexandropol: the 7th and 8th Armenian Rifle Regiments and units of the fortress defence zone—in the process of formation.

At the same time, in the rear of the front, cavalry, artillery, technical, auxiliary units, and staffs were being formed.

In accordance with the decisions of the commander of the Russian army, who was still in Erzerum and directing operations, the troops of the Georgian Corps were to occupy the line Gumushkhane-Trebizond, north of the front of the Armenian Corps.

For their part, the Turks, well aware of the disintegration of the Russian

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army, temporarily suspended all hostile actions that might have slowed its progressive agony.

Meanwhile, it was more than probable that the Turks, informed of the withdrawal of the Russian army and of its replacement by national troops, would seize the first pretext to break the armistice and resume hostilities.

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CHAPTER XVI: THE DEFENCE OF THE ERZINCAN REGION

On 30 December 1917 the Erzincan region was defended solely by Armenian regular and irregular units, which had no choice but to rely on their own forces.

At that moment the Erzincan Group consisted of only one infantry regiment (the Erzincan Regiment), one cavalry squadron of volunteers, one field artillery battery, and one mountain artillery platoon. In total, there were no more than 1,800 bayonets, 120 sabres, 4 field guns, 2 mountain guns, and 6 machine guns. Command was entrusted to Colonel Morel, former Chief of Staff of the 7th Caucasus Rifle Division, which had joined in the general withdrawal of the Russian troops.

This group, reinforced by local Armenian partisan detachments, was tasked with defending the Erzincan region along the former front of the 1st Corps of the Caucasus Army, which had abandoned its positions to return to Russia after the signing of the armistice.

This front extended 70 kilometres in a straight line from Erzincan to Fam. Army Headquarters assumed that the group would face only Kurdish forces, since, owing to climatic conditions and the nature of the terrain, an attack

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by the Turkish army was considered unlikely, as the passes were blocked by deep snow. It was necessary at all costs to gain time in order to allow the Armenians to complete the formation of the units of the national corps. In the event of an offensive by superior Ottoman forces, it was decided to retreat to Erzerum.

The main forces of the group were concentrated at Erzerum, with a line of supply stages established as far as Mamahatun.

Small volunteer detachments occupied Kardjil, Mamahatun, and Sur-Piran. The latter blocked the exit from the Chelik gorge toward the Erzincan valley.

Fam was occupied by a battalion which covered Mamahatun from the south.

Communication between this group and Army Headquarters (in Erzerum) left much to be desired. The telegraph no longer functioned, Russian personnel had departed, and the Kurds had cut the telephone lines.

Mounted courier communication along the supply line to Mamahatun was maintained only until 23 January because of constant Kurdish raids on the route, and the small Erzincan Group, burdened with the defence of the forward front line, had absolutely no possibility of sending expeditions to the rear to secure its communications.

Thus, by the end of January 1918, the Erzincan Group found itself in complete isolation, 150 kilometres from the fortress of Erzerum.

The Armenian forces scrupulously observed all the terms of the armistice, but troubling signs gave reason to fear that the Turks would violate it.

Already in letters addressed on 22 January 1918 to the Commander of the Caucasus Army, General Odishelidze, and to the Commander of the Front,

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General Przhevalsky, the Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish army, Vehib Pasha, complained of so-called atrocities committed by Armenians against the Muslim population of the Erzincan region and expressed doubts that the Armenian units, which had “replaced the Russian troops who had left the front,” were capable of restoring order in the region.

Vehib Pasha’s letters of 1 and 11 February to General Odishelidze left no doubt as to the Turkish desire to find a pretext for invading the Erzincan region.

It would have sufficed to send some expedition against the Kurdish bands that were harassing the communications of the Erzincan Group for the Turks to interpret this as an act of violence against the Muslim population and a violation of the armistice.

Reports from agents left no further doubt regarding the Turkish intention to invade the territory of Turkish Armenia abandoned by the Russian troops.

Alongside the increasingly evident aggressive intentions of the Turks, Kurdish partisan warfare intensified throughout the rear of the group.

For example, on 27 and 28 January two successive attacks were organised against Sur-Piran, which was held by a detachment of 60 Armenian fighters.

With the help of urgently dispatched reinforcements—an infantry company, a cavalry squadron, and two guns from the Erzincan Group—these attacks were repelled, and the Kurds left 65 of their men dead on the field.

But this was only the beginning of attacks against this important

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strategic point, and soon (2 February) the commander of the group was compelled to detach from his reserve two more infantry companies and a cavalry squadron to protect his lines of communication.

These troops engaged Kurdish bands near the village of Khan, 25 kilometres east of Erzincan, and, given the numerical superiority of the attackers, the group commander sent two additional companies as reinforcements.

However, on 3 February all these units were suddenly recalled to Erzincan, without being given time to disarm the Kurds or restore communications with the city, because reliable information indicated that a general Turkish offensive was imminent, one that would rely upon an uprising of the population against the weak local garrison.

The position of this group, separated from Erzerum by a distance of 150 kilometres, weakened by the dispatch of numerous detachments, threatened in its rear, unable to ensure supplies, and lacking communication with the commander-in-chief, was becoming increasingly critical.

One thing was beyond doubt: the necessity of prolonged resistance against the advancing Turkish forces; the question was merely to gain the time needed to complete the formation of the various units and the mobilisation of the Armenian Corps.

On 10 February, around midday, a Turkish company suddenly appeared at the Chardakhli post on the road leading to Sivas.

The commander of the post stopped it and asked for an explanation as to how it had appeared during the armistice in the neutral zone.

The Turkish officer apologised, stating that his company had lost its way in the fog during manoeuvres.

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The Chardakhli post was immediately reinforced. But on 12 February it was attacked and forced to withdraw to the village of Yarkhani.

On the same day, General Przhevalsky, Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasus Front, and General Odishelidze, Commander of the Caucasus Army, received a telegram (No. 1020) from Vehib Pasha, in which he again insisted on alleged atrocities committed by Armenians, which obliged him to move his troops in order to protect the Muslim population. “I can assure you that the Erzincan agreement (temporary) remains fully in force; the only provision of the treaty that has lost its validity as a result of the departure of the Russian troops is the demarcation line.”

This declaration was followed by the advance of Turkish units of the 36th Division, developing their offensive from the direction of Kemah.

The group commander could oppose them with only 1,000 bayonets, 120 sabres, and 6 guns; the rest had been assigned to guard the lines of communication.

This disparity of forces dictated the necessity of withdrawing in good time to Erzerum, avoiding serious engagements if possible.

On 13 February, at dawn, the advanced detachments of the Turkish troops advanced simultaneously along the Sivas and Kemah roads.

After reaching a line 10 kilometres west of Erzincan, the Turkish units attempted to encircle the city at once in order to reach the rear of the group.

Enemy cavalry moved along the Kemah road, bypassing the city from the south, while infantry columns advanced to the north.

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The group commander had no means of resisting this manoeuvre. To avoid encirclement, at 10 a.m. he ordered the supply trains and Armenian refugees to leave the city.

The first day’s march to the Khan stage was organised in two columns along two parallel roads: the refugees, under the protection of two infantry companies, a cavalry squadron, and two guns, took the northern road; the main forces of the garrison (six infantry companies with four guns and the supply train) took the southern road.

By 14:00 the group had left Erzincan, leaving two companies as a rearguard on the western outskirts of the city; these in turn withdrew at 15:00.

Enemy cavalry, particularly the Kurds, rushed in pursuit of the retreating columns but were repulsed everywhere.

Around 19:00 the main forces of the group concentrated at Khan. After allowing the refugees to move ahead, they resumed their march following a two-hour rest and reached the Chelik stage at 04:00 on 14 February, having covered more than 40 kilometres in a single day.

This night march, along a road covered with deep snow, was extremely arduous and made even more painful by the need to repel attacks by Kurdish cavalry. Wagons overturned on steep slopes into the Euphrates or became stuck in the snow. Men froze. The retreat cost the lives of more than 100 refugees who perished along the way.

After several hours of rest, the march resumed, but this time under the threat of Turkish cavalry advancing with alarming speed.

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On 14 February at 13:00 the group, now forming a single column, moved toward Chors. The marching order reflected the situation. In the vanguard was an infantry company. Then came the artillery with a covering company; half a kilometre behind followed the supply train and refugees, protected by three companies and a squadron, with half a company on each side guarding the flanks. The rearguard consisted of four companies.

After about sixteen hours of continuous marching, complicated by Kurdish attacks, the vanguard was eight kilometres from Chors. Here the terrain formed a small deep valley about one kilometre long, whose two exits were nothing more than narrow passes between steep cliffs descending sheer into the Euphrates.

This valley had often been the scene of bloody massacres, and when in February 1916 the Turks were forced to abandon the fortress of Erzerum, they were treacherously robbed and killed there in the hundreds by the same Dersim Kurds who were now their allies.

As soon as the vanguard company entered the defile, it came under fire from an unseen enemy entrenched on the surrounding heights. The vanguard, reinforced by an infantry company and two guns, was ordered to clear the way for the main body of the column, halted at the entrance to the defile. It was necessary to hurry to dislodge the enemy blocking the path, since Turkish cavalry from the direction of Khan had already begun harassing the rearguard. The group commander, once again reinforcing the vanguard with an infantry company and Murad’s volunteer cavalry (the well-known Armenian partisan), placed himself at the head

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of these forces and launched them in an assault on the heights blocking the exit from the defile.

This sudden attack threw the Kurds into confusion, and by about 17:00 half the passage was cleared, and by 20:00 the troops entered Chors. Their losses amounted to about 25 killed and 80 wounded; among the refugees, 40 wounded were counted.

The halt of one day at Chors gave some rest to the troops and the refugees, who had suffered so greatly, and the Chors company, which had been guarding the line of communications, rejoined the group.

The road between Chors and Bidjan runs through a narrow defile 15 kilometres long, very favourable for ambushes. In order to pass through it before dawn, the group left Chors at midnight on 16 February. To secure themselves against Kurdish attacks, two companies were to occupy two ravines in the defile near the villages of San and Chikolar, while one and a half companies were ordered to guard the first bridge over the Euphrates, five kilometres from Chors, and a half-company the second bridge over the same river, seven kilometres from Bidjan.

Thus, the group left Chors at midnight on 16 February. At the beginning of the retreat the enemy did not harass it, but at 2:30 a.m. news was received that the second bridge over the Euphrates, probably set on fire by the Kurds at sunset, was burning and that part of it had already collapsed.

At 3 a.m. the main body of the group, together with the refugees, reached the bridge, which had ceased burning.

At that point the river flows between high and steep banks. At night, under enemy pressure, it was impossible to cross it with the wagons. It was therefore necessary to abandon them and to carry the wounded and sick by hand.

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Finally, between 8 and 10 a.m., the troops reached Bidjan, having crossed the Euphrates by ford and repelled several Kurdish attacks.

The losses of that day (16 February) amounted to 28 killed and 61 wounded. But the number of frostbite cases was considerably higher, reaching 40% among the troops and 50% among the refugees.

After first attending to the sick and wounded, the retreat was continued, leaving in Bidjan a rearguard of three infantry companies with five guns. By 3 p.m. the group entered Kardjil. Continuing the march on 17 February, the group and the refugees arrived at Mamahatun by 1 p.m. and posted guards at the Euphrates crossings.

At Kardjil and Mamahatun 2,000 new refugees joined the troops. It was necessary first to arrange for their evacuation to the rear, since they impeded troop movements, slowed operations, and reduced the already small force to the role of escort for thousands of elderly people, women, and children.

On 18 February the refugees were evacuated, and on 19 February the group moved from Mamahatun to Yeni-köy, leaving a rearguard at Mamahatun.

It was no longer possible to count on serious resistance from this small group, exhausted by privations and fatigue. On the other hand, it was impossible to draw reinforcements from the Erzerum garrison, which could scarcely manage with its own strength, and the units in the rear were far from fully formed.

Under these conditions the group received orders to withdraw to Erzerum and, relying on the fortress, to hold back the Turkish advance.

On 24 February it entered Erzerum. To defend the fortress from the direction of Mamahatun

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and Bayburt, an understrength battalion (400 bayonets), reinforced by Sepuh’s Armenian partisans who had retreated from Kelkit and Bayburt at the same time as the Erzincan Group, occupied the village of Korchma. Another battalion of the same strength occupied the village of Taki-deresi, 12 kilometres south-west of Erzerum.

There the Erzincan Group was dissolved and reorganised into the Erzincan Regiment. It was later incorporated into the 1st Brigade of Andranik’s division, at the same time as the Erzerum Regiment, composed of local Armenians. We have spoken of this division in the chapter “Formation of the Armenian Army Corps.”

***

Such was the odyssey of the Erzincan Group, which fulfilled the task assigned to it to the extent permitted by its own strength and the general situation.

Not strong enough to guard the entire front left open after the withdrawal of the 1st Russian Caucasus Corps, it nevertheless held Erzincan and all the stages on the roads to Mamahatun, Fam, and Kardjil until the last.

Abandoned 150 kilometres from Erzerum, cut off from its base, with small forces scattered over a vast area, in the harsh conditions of a severe winter campaign and relentlessly pursued by the enemy, it succeeded in barring the road to Erzerum, giving the rear time to organise and form new units, to evacuate the region, and to cover the retreat of thousands of refugees.

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CHAPTER XVII: THE DEFENCE OF THE ERZERUM REGION

The group of Erzerum units, formed by the merger of the Erzincan Group with the Erzerum garrison, constituted the 1st Armenian Infantry Brigade:

This small force was tasked with halting the advance of superior enemy forces into Transcaucasia and defending the Erzerum region.

At first, the Turks operated from the direction of Erzincan with only two infantry regiments, two cavalry squadrons, and two mountain batteries, all belonging to the 36th Division. However, depending on circumstances, they could easily be

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reinforced by other units of the Turkish army operating on the Caucasus Front, which now had complete freedom of manoeuvre after the withdrawal of the Russian forces.

On 23 February mounted patrols of the 36th Turkish Division appeared near Yeni-köy and Ashkala, while forward detachments of the same division were observed at Mamahatun and in the Kup-dag defile. As it advanced, the division was reinforced by the Kurdish population, which supplied up to 3,500 armed horsemen.

***

Before proceeding to a description of the actual military operations, it is necessary to consider the situation as a whole, as it appeared at that time on the theatre of war in general and in this region in particular.

The regular Turkish troops were effectively supported not only by the Kurds but by the entire Muslim population. In the region of the Erzerum fortress alone there were up to 20,000 Muslims, of whom about 7,000 were armed. In Erzerum itself there openly existed a “National Muslim Society,” created immediately after the Russian Revolution and the collapse of the front.

This society was the central body of all the Muslims of the region and maintained close secret contact with the Turkish staff, which directed the preparation of an uprising.

The Armenian commandant was well aware of the dangerous activities of this organisation, but, lacking sufficient forces, considered it impossible to resort to energetic measures and feared further aggravating the critical situation created by the withdrawal of the Russian army.

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The fortified region of Erzerum, equipped by Russian engineers with a view to prolonged resistance, no longer in any way corresponded to the forces that were to defend it. The necessity of guarding at least the important tactical points led to the dispersal and weakening of the troops, not to mention that the group had to assign up to 300 men daily to guard various administrative institutions of the fortress.

The artillery of Erzerum numbered approximately 400 field and fortress guns of calibres from 7.7 to 15 cm, but there were only 40 officers and 400 soldiers available to serve them. Moreover, during the period of the revolution the entire arsenal had suffered greatly and had become almost unusable.

Of these 400 guns, only 16 field pieces were serviceable and capable of opening fire; the rest, together with heaps of shells, were buried under deep snow, as no one had taken care to clear them.

All the engineering works of the fortress were in the same condition.

As for food supplies, the region had already been exhausted by the Russian army. It was necessary to draw upon the stores of the fortress itself, but the depots had been partially looted by Russian soldiers who had passed through Erzerum over the course of two months, and it was also necessary to feed the many refugees who had entered Erzerum following the army.

For the horses there remained only hay, and that in limited quantities, with no hope of obtaining more from the rear; these poor animals could no longer be used for work.

The morale of the troops was put to the test by rumours of peace negotiations with Turkey, for while the Turks resumed

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their offensive in order to seize Erzerum and reconquer all of Turkish Armenia, they were at the same time taking the initiative in opening peace negotiations.

On 23 February, the very day of the opening of the Seim, the Transcaucasian Commissariat received a radiogram from General Ferik Vehib Pasha, commander of the Turkish army on the Caucasus Front, informing, on behalf of the Turkish Government, that its plenipotentiary representatives were ready to depart from Constantinople for Tiflis in order to determine preliminary conditions that might serve as a basis for concluding peace and recognising the Transcaucasian Government.

To understand this proposal of the Turkish Government, one must recall that as early as 14 January General Odishelidze, commander of the Caucasus Army, had received a letter signed by Vehib Pasha, dated 9 January No. 430, in which the Turkish general wrote:

General Enver Pasha would like to know what possibilities exist for the resumption of relations with the Independent Caucasian Government and on what basis the Independent Caucasian Government might renew peaceful relations between the two countries.

For this purpose His Excellency, with benevolent intent, proposes that I send to the capital of the Caucasian Government a commission of representatives, considering this mission useful from the point of view of establishing in the near future a just peace desired by both sides.

The Transcaucasian Commissariat was able to respond to this proposal only two weeks later.

On 17 January the Congress of the Regional Centre of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies decided from the outset that Transcaucasia, as part of the Russian Republic, could begin peace negotiations only after receiving authorisation from

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the Constituent Assembly, which was to convene in Moscow. But since the Constituent Assembly was soon dispersed by the Bolsheviks, the Transcaucasian Commissariat, in agreement with the Presidium of the Regional Centre and representatives of the national councils, decided at a meeting on 28 January to invite to a conference in Tiflis on 13 February representatives of Ukraine and the South-Eastern Union, which had not recognised the Bolshevik government, to discuss the Turkish proposals.

It was in this sense that the Transcaucasian Government sent its reply on 28 January to General Ferik Vehib Mehmed, indicating that:

The Transcaucasian Government must coordinate its steps directed toward ending the war with the opinions and views of other independent governments of the Russian Republic, which are equally interested, like the Transcaucasian Government, in concluding peace.

The letter further stated that, in view of these circumstances, a final reply to the proposals of the Turkish Government would be given within three weeks.

Meanwhile, this proposed conference in Tiflis with the independent governments of the neighbouring territories of the Russian Republic did not take place.

The Government of the South-Eastern Union found the proposed date too near because of interrupted communications, and the reply of the Ukrainian Government was never received.

Thus, the Transcaucasian Commissariat decided to conduct independent negotiations and telegraphed on 19 February 1918 to General Ferik Vehib Pasha that it was ready to begin negotiations, but that the basic directives

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and conditions of peace had to be worked out by the Transcaucasian Seim—the sole representative body of all Transcaucasia—which was to convene in Tiflis on 23 February.

To this telegram General Ferik Vehib Pasha replied on 23 February, stating that the Turkish delegates were ready to depart from Constantinople for Tiflis to begin peace negotiations.

As we see, Transcaucasia had not separated from Russia, but, unwilling to recognise Bolshevik authority, had merely formed a provisional government and wished to act in accordance with the interests and viewpoints of the South-Eastern Union and Ukraine. The Turks, for their part, and with them the Central Powers, sought to take advantage of this situation to push Transcaucasia toward proclaiming its independence.

The letter of General Vehib Pasha of 16 January, addressed to General Odishelidze, commander of the Caucasus Army, and received by the Government in Tiflis on 14 February 1918, is very characteristic in this respect.

In that letter Vehib Pasha, vested with the necessary authority, proposed that the Transcaucasian Government send plenipotentiary representatives to Brest-Litovsk, where the delegates of the Central Powers would do everything possible to have the Transcaucasian Government recognised as independent.

As is known, this policy, imposed by the Central Powers, prevailed. Transcaucasia, which did not recognise Soviet authority—ready to cede to Turkey a large part of its territory and disregarding the interests of that country and its peoples—vainly hoped to continue the struggle with the support of

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Southern Russia. These circumstances compelled Transcaucasia to accept the Turkish proposal and begin independent preliminary peace negotiations in the hope of preserving the integrity of its territory by that means.

At its session of 1 March 1918 the Seim unanimously adopted the principles of the peace negotiations:

In essence they were as follows:

1. The Transcaucasian Seim, under the present conditions, fully assumes the authority to conclude peace with Turkey.

2. The Transcaucasian Seim enters into negotiations with the aim of concluding a final peace with Turkey.

3. The restoration of the state frontier between Russia and Turkey as it existed at the time of the declaration of war in 1914 should serve as the basis of the peace treaty.

4. The delegation must defend the right of self-determination for Eastern Anatolia, in particular ensuring recognition of the autonomy of Turkish Armenia under Turkish sovereignty.

The composition of the delegation was determined the following day. It included five Muslims, four Georgians, and two Armenians.

Considering the presence of Turkish delegates in Tiflis undesirable in view of ongoing military operations at the front, the Transcaucasian Commissariat expressed in a telegram of 25 February, addressed to the commander of the Turkish army on the Caucasus Front, the wish to convene the meeting in Trebizond or in any other place of his choosing.

However, the departure of the delegation to Trebizond was postponed after news was received of the signing on 3 March of the peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk, under which Batumi, Kars, and Ardahan were transferred to Turkey.

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Deprived of any information regarding the subsequent policy of the Ottoman Government, the delegation was compelled to wait in Tiflis for a reply to its telegrams sent simultaneously to Trebizond and to the Turkish General Staff to clarify this point.

Only on 7 March was the delegation informed that the Turkish delegates were expected that same day in Trebizond, and it immediately departed for that city, arriving the following day.

But the Turkish delegates deliberately delayed their arrival; they came only on 12 March, and the conference began on 14 March.

***

Above we have already indicated that, in order to cover Erzerum from the direction of Bayburt and Mamahatun, an advance guard composed of an understrength battalion with two mountain guns and 200 cavalrymen was stationed near the village of Korchma at the junction of the Erzerum–Bayburt and Erzerum–Mamahatun roads.

This advance guard placed patrols in Ashkala and in the gorge of Yeni-Köy, which, under enemy pressure, withdrew on 25 February back to Korchma.

On the morning of 27 February, an enemy advance guard consisting of 400 bayonets, two mountain guns, and 300 men of Kurdish cavalry attacked the Armenian advance guard, but after a three-hour battle was driven back.

On 28 February, the Armenian advance guard, under pressure from superior enemy forces and facing the threat of being encircled from the direction of Yeni-Köy, was compelled to withdraw to Aladja. On 2 March it continued its retreat toward Ilidja, into the fortress area.

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In order to reinforce the Ilidja detachment, the fortress commandant, General Andranik,8 sent forward part of the 1st Armenian Rifle Regiment (500 bayonets), while the regiment itself, in order to cover its right flank, occupied the village of Araz and then the line Archik–Isavank.

Bands of armed Muslims, who had been concentrated to the north-west of Erzerum with the intention of joining the Turks, were driven back and dispersed; but before they had been completely eliminated in the south-western sector of the fortified area, the Turks began concentrating their forces opposite the front of the detachments at Ilidja and Taki-deresi and then attacked them.

The small Erzerum garrison faced the Turkish 36th Infantry Division, soon reinforced by Turkish troops arriving from the direction of Bayburt and Erzincan.

On 8 March, around noon, the enemy began an offensive from the direction of Arinkara against the right flank of the Ilidja detachment near the village of Archik, but was repulsed and withdrew to its former positions.

The concentration of Turkish troops at Aladja

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continued on 9 and 10 March, and on 11 March at dawn they again went over to the offensive against the positions of the Ilidja detachment.

By 9 a.m., the enemy’s numerical superiority had already become evident. Observing Turkish manoeuvres with the clear intention of enveloping his flanks, the detachment commander decided around midday to withdraw to the village of Gez, in immediate proximity to the belt of fortress fortifications, and occupied the village of Khan.

Reinforced by a battalion sent to assist by the fortress commandant, the detachment launched a counter-attack in order to retake the heights of the village of Gez, but it failed.

On that day, the Ilidja detachment lost 130 men killed and wounded.

At the same time, fighting began in Taki-deresi. An enemy column numbering 2,000 men (including Kurdish cavalry) advanced from the direction of Kegi toward Taki-deresi–Erzerum.

By 25 February the enemy had concentrated at Dashakhli and appeared to be adhering to a passive tactic; however, it sent a hundred Kurds through the Shaitan-dag gorge toward the village of Yagmujuk to observe the Taki-deresi detachment.

This detachment numbered only 250 bayonets, 4 machine guns, and 50 cavalrymen. Communication with the Ilidja detachment was maintained by patrols in the village of Sangarich, but from 6 March this communication was cut off. The patrols were attacked by enemy forces numbering about 300 men and, after a two-hour battle, withdrew to Taki-deresi for fear of being encircled.

While these events were taking place on 9, 10, and 11 March on the front of the Ilidja detachment, the enemy group

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concentrated in the area of the villages of Dashakhli and Yagmujuk began its offensive on 9 March from the direction of Yagmujuk against Taki-deresi.

This attack, initially repulsed, was renewed at dawn on 11 March. The commander of the detachment at Taki-deresi held firmly to his position, but, learning of the withdrawal of the Ilidja detachment, also decided to withdraw to the belt of Erzerum’s fortress fortifications. This was timely, because during his stubborn resistance he had weakened his flanks, and it became necessary to cut a path with bayonets through the Turkish ranks.

This brilliant success was achieved thanks to the courage of the personnel and the energy of the commander, Colonel Torgom,9 who was concussed and under whom two horses were killed. Only by evening did the detachment reach the fortress fortifications, having lost during these three days of fighting 93 men killed and wounded out of a total strength of 350 combatants, and 40 horses.

On 11 March, towards evening, scouts reported the concentration of enemy forces numbering approximately one division on the western front of Erzerum and the occupation of the area of the villages of Ilidja–Gez. The Kurds, numbering 1,500 men, were positioned on the flanks of the regular Turkish troops near the villages of Chiftlik–Tuchi. In the fortress of Erzerum itself there were about 4,000 armed Muslims, who were acting in concert with the Turks.

Against all these forces, the defenders of Erzerum numbered in their ranks only 3,000 men.

Under these circumstances it was impossible to count on serious resistance; the extent of the fortress fortifications was in absolute disproportion to the available strength of the garrison, while at the same time

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the artillery and engineer units were deprived of ammunition. The troops were left without communications, and the city was flooded with refugees pouring in from all sides.

At about 8 p.m. on 11 March, General Andranik, the fortress commandant, convened an extraordinary council of war, which decided to evacuate Erzerum and retreat.

At about 5 a.m. on 12 March, the baggage train and refugees were sent toward Hasan-kala. At 7 o’clock the troops set out, covered by a rearguard which took up positions near the Kharberd and Trebizond gates on the western side of the fortress fortifications.

At about 9 a.m., the Turks attacked almost simultaneously the Kharberd and Trebizond gates. After a short but violent struggle, the weak rearguards, seeing the threat of encirclement and having behind them the armed and hostile population of the city, were forced to withdraw, cutting their way with bayonets through the enemy lines.

Murad’s brave cavalrymen were the last to leave the city in accordance with the order received, after repelling several attacks by the urban population, which attempted to seize the fortress gates.

Before abandoning Erzerum, the troops, as far as possible, destroyed artillery installations and engineer matériel that could still be of use, as well as commissariat depots.

The pursuit by regular Turkish troops did not go beyond the fortress fortifications; the enemy contented itself with their capture and the restoration of order, for the city was already in the hands of looters.

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Thus, the Erzerum group was able, without particular difficulty, to proceed via Hasan-kala to the 1914 frontier.

In the Battle of Erzerum on 12 March, the group lost 130 officers and soldiers killed, 95 wounded, and 60 taken prisoner.

120 Armenian peasants who were unable to leave the city in time were torn to pieces by the mob.

After the loss of Erzerum, the struggle for Turkish Armenia ended, and the war crossed the frontiers of Transcaucasia.

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CHAPTER XVIII: SARIKAMISH

15 March: General Nazarbekov, commander of the Armenian National Corps, was appointed commander of the entire front line stretching from Olti to Khanat and Maku. The Olti–Batumi line to the north of the Armenian Corps was to be defended by the Georgians. Command of these two corps was united in the person of the commander-in-chief of the front, General Lebedinsky, with headquarters in Tiflis, who in turn was subordinate to the Transcaucasian Commissariat, formed, as we have said above, on 18 November 1917.

On 14 March 1918, the Erzerum group, covering the departure of refugees from that district, withdrew to the old Russo-Turkish frontier, supported by detachments left in Karaurgan and Medjingert, by scouts in Bardus and Karakurt, and joined the main forces at Sarikamish.

After the evacuation of Erzerum, the position of the detachment left at Hnys-kala, consisting of the 2nd Armenian Rifle Regiment and the 2nd Brigade (the Hnys and Karaklisa regiments, formed from Armenians of that district), became critical.

This detachment was to form a barrier against the Turkish advance between Hnys and Lake Van, but in view of the above-mentioned events its commander was ordered on 12 March to abandon the position and withdraw.

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The 2nd Armenian Rifle Regiment withdrew accordingly as far as Kepri-köy, where it effected its junction with the retreating Erzerum group, while the 2nd Brigade was directed via Kop–Melazgert to Karaklisa of Alashkert.

The Armenian Corps, which alone was to replace the entire former Russian Caucasian Army, occupied the following positions:

DISTRICT OF SARIKAMISH – KARAURGAN – MEDJINGERT

A Special Officers’ Detachment (composed entirely of Russian officers);

1st Armenian Brigade (Erzincan and Erzerum Infantry Regiments);

1st and 2nd Armenian Rifle Regiments, 1st Battalion of the 4th Regiment;

3rd and 7th Regiments transferred to Sarikamish from Kars and Alexandropol, 1st Cavalry Regiment from Tiflis;

This group, composed for the most part of units of the 1st Armenian Rifle Division and the 1st Brigade with its artillery, and commanded by General Areshev,10 numbered 13 (understrength) battalions, 30 field and mountain guns, and 4 cavalry squadrons.

DISTRICT OF THE ALASHKERT VALLEY

2nd Brigade (Hnys and Karaklisa Regiments) with its artillery.

In total: 4 battalions and 8 guns, arrived from Hnys.

DISTRICT OF VAN

5th Armenian Rifle Regiment and 3rd Brigade (1st and 2nd Van Regiments) with its artillery.

In total: 6 battalions and 8 guns.

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Behind these troops, which were in immediate contact with the enemy, the corps commander placed on a second line the following mobile and manoeuvrable forces:

The Erivan group, commanded by the commander of the 2nd Armenian Rifle Division, composed of one battalion of the 4th Armenian Rifle Regiment, the 6th Armenian Rifle Regiment, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, and the Artillery Brigade of the 2nd Division. In total: 3 battalions, 4 cavalry squadrons, and 20 guns.

At Alexandropol: the 8th Armenian Rifle Regiment, fortress units, one mountain horse battery, and one howitzer battery.

In Tiflis the formation of the following units was nearing completion: the Makin Regiment, which was to guard the Erivan–Julfa road line, and the Zeitun Cavalry Regiment.

The Kars garrison consisted mainly of technical units servicing the fortress, its own garrison regiment (3 battalions), and the Kars Cavalry Regiment.

When the war crossed the frontiers of Transcaucasia, the command could still count on the possibility of using the Lori, Kazakh, and Akhalkalaki regiments, which were stationed in the Lori steppe, in Kazakh and Akhalkalaki, but it could not touch the formations stationed in Shushi, Nakhichevan, Elisavetpol, Akhaltsikhe, and in the Nukha district, which were intended to guard the rear of the troops and to protect the local Armenian population.

Armenian troops consisting of soldiers and officers transferred from the European front and concentrated in Baku found themselves cut off from Armenia as a result of the cessation of all railway communication. Subsequently they would play an important role in the operation to defend Baku.

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The groups and detachments included technical units and troops specially assigned to guard lines of communication.

In total, to resist the Turks, the maximum at the disposal of the Armenian command was 36 understrength battalions, amounting to 15,000 bayonets, on a front 250 kilometres in length.

Intelligence reported the presence on the Turkish side of at least five divisions: three divisions—namely the 5th, 11th, and 36th—in the first line on the main Erzerum–Sarikamish–Kars axis, one division in the Alashkert valley, and one division in the Lake Van district.

Approximately in mid-March, on the front of the advance guards of the Sarikamish group, at Bardus, Karaurgan, Medjingert, and Karakurt, it was established that Turkish reconnaissance detachments were becoming increasingly active. At the same time, in the rear of the group, especially in the Selim district, bands of armed Tatars and Kurds raided the Kars–Sarikamish railway line and harassed the Armenian population.

On 23 March, the advance guard of the Karaurgan detachment, composed of volunteers, was attacked by two Turkish battalions with two guns and a cavalry squadron.

Facing these superior forces, the detachment withdrew to Khan-dere, where it was reinforced by an officers’ unit sent in haste from Sarikamish.

After occupying the Sirbasan heights, the Turks halted, and for an entire week quiet prevailed on the front, broken from time to time by clashes between reconnaissance units.

But on 30 March the Turks renewed their offensive against the units covering Karakurt, and on 2 April against Bardus, capturing the villages of Chermek

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[PAGE 119]

and Kizil-kilisa. On 3 and 4 April they continued their advance toward Khan-dere from the direction of Karaurgan and Medjingert.

The total strength of all these Turkish advance guards was not less than six battalions.

At the same time, Tatars and Kurds continued their raids in the Novo-Selim district.

On 4 April the defensive line of the Sarikamish group ran along the ridge of heights east of the villages of Chermek and Kizil-kilisa, along the Sirbasan heights, across the Esnos pass and Mount Vank, ending at the village of Mechetli. The main forces of these troops were located at Sarikamish. Turkish success in the direction of Varishan from Bardus threatened the rear of the Sarikamish group.

On 4 April the Turkish offensive begun in that direction was repulsed, but despite this success the position of the group, threatened with attack from the rear and flank, was becoming critical; all the more so because bands of armed Kurds and Muslims had seized the village of Bash-köy in the Novo-Selim district.

The Sarikamish group, despite its insufficient strength, was thus tasked with halting the Turkish advance along a 50-kilometre front and, in addition, securing the line of communication, which was incessantly harassed by Muslim bands.

Despite the precarious position in which the Sarikamish group found itself, the corps commander, General Nazarbekov, decided to hold out to the last in order to give time for the local population of the district and, in particular, the Kars fortress, whose imminent encirclement could easily be foreseen, to withdraw.

On 5 April the Turks attacked the centre of the Sarikamish group, threatening chiefly its right flank in the direction of Varishan.

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After a fierce battle, this village, defended by the 1st Brigade under Colonel Morel, fell into Turkish hands. The loss of this important point hastened General Areshev’s order for the group to retreat, which was carried out on the night of 5–6 April in the direction of Novo-Selim, after the destruction of all depots and the railway station.

The Sarikamish group risked being cut off from Kars if, after taking Varishan, the Turks advanced along the line of the Kars–Sarikamish railway.

To prevent this danger, Colonel Morel, with the remnants of his brigade (the Erzincan and Erzerum regiments), launched a counter-attack against the Turks, which was crowned with success: the village of Varishan was retaken and the enemy put to flight to the west.

During this time the main forces of the Sarikamish group were retreating with fighting in the direction of Novo-Selim.

On 7 April the commander of the Sarikamish group decided to choose a more advantageous defensive position, abandoning Novo-Selim, which lay on the plain.

The whole group entrenched itself on the line of the villages of Yengidzhak–Bazargan–Kikach–Olukhli; the 2nd Brigade, arriving from the Alashkert valley, was to cover the left flank from the direction of Kagyzvan.

We indicated above that on 12 March the army commander had given the Hnys detachment the order to begin its retreat. Accordingly, the 2nd Armenian Rifle Regiment was withdrawn to Kepri-köy, and the 2nd Brigade (the Hnys and Karaklisa regiments) moved via Melazgert to Karakilisa of Alashkert.

The course of operations on the main Erzerum-Sarikamish-Kars axis compelled

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the recall of the 2nd Brigade from the Alashkert valley to Kars, while the 5th Armenian Regiment and the 3rd Brigade (the 1st and 2nd Van regiments) were sent to the Lake Van district and thus found themselves in complete isolation at Bayazet.

These latter troops were maintained in this position until the middle of April, as cover for the southern frontier of the Government of Erivan, and were subsequently concentrated at Igdir, without, however, leaving those frontier passes unguarded.

Thus, at the beginning of April the Armenian Corps, forced to defend the entire front, held the following positions:

The Sarikamish group: 17 battalions on the Yengidzhak-Kikach-Olukhli-Berna front;

The Erivan group: 9 battalions, to defend the line marked by the Araks river;

The garrisons of the fortresses of Kars and Alexandropol, as well as other local units; the latter were intended for auxiliary services and the maintenance of order;

Reserve: 4 battalions at Alexandropol (the 8th Rifle Regiment and the Makin battalion, which arrived on 10 April from Tiflis).

[122]

CHAPTER XIX: THE STRUGGLE FOR KARS

On 14 April the enemy forces, consisting of three divisions, occupied with their advance detachments, in the direction of Kars, the line of the following villages: Kara-kala–Kamyshli–Kara-khamza–Yalagu-secham. Kurdish bands operated in the area of Merdenek, Jelaus, Grenaderskoe, and even seized Ardahan. Thus, in the end, the enemy held not only the approaches to the city, but also the roads leading to the Akhalkalaki and Alexandropol highways—that is, in the rear of the Armenian troops operating at Kars.

The forward units, 15 battalions (the former Sarikamish group), occupied the line Yengidzhak–Bazargan–Kechik–Novo-Selim–Akpungar–Tekhnis.

The 2nd Brigade occupied the village of Pasli in the direction of Kagyzvan.

To protect the Kars–Alexandropol railway line, the village of Prokhladnaya and the Mazra station were reliably fortified.

Owing to the shortage of forces, defensive measures were limited to reconnaissance in the direction of Jelaus and Merdenek.

In the same period the garrison of the Kars fortress was reinforced by the 3rd Armenian Rifle Regiment with its 7 infantry battalions, 8 fortress artillery companies, and 1 engineer

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company. The strength of the seven battalions did not exceed 3,000 bayonets. With these weak forces it was necessary to occupy a circular defence along a 25-kilometre line of forts.

The eight artillery companies had in their ranks only 60 officers and 1,700 soldiers, 60% of whom were infantrymen trained hastily under a very abbreviated programme. That was all that was available to service 100 field guns and 12 guns of 15-centimetre calibre, placed without cover in the forts and fortifications. The fortress also had a further 700 bronze field guns of an old model and about 100 fortress guns of the 1877 pattern, but the idea of using them had to be abandoned for lack of specialists.

To maintain order in the city, four mounted squadrons were hastily formed from the local population.

The situation was better with the engineer units, and in this respect the defence of the fortress was in a satisfactory condition. The medical services, food supply, and commissariat functioned without particular difficulty.

Such, in broad outline, was the situation on the front of the Armenian Corps troops defending the approaches to Kars, and the condition of the fortress at the moment of the Turkish invasion of this district.

Nothing important occurred on the front of the troops defending the approaches to Kars until the night of 18–19 April. Only the reconnaissance detachments of both sides showed some activity, and thanks to their vigilance it soon became possible to establish that the Turks operating in the direction of Kars had no fewer than three divisions.

At dawn on 19 April the Turkish offensive intensified against the Corps units defending, as we have

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noted above, the line Yengidzhak–Bazargan–Kechik–Novo-Selim–Akpungar–Tekhnis–Agadeve.

To hold all these positions, with a total length of 30 kilometres, the detachment commander had only 15 understrength battalions.

The enemy offensive developed in two directions: against the left flank of the group near the village of Agadeve, in order to seize the Akdevelar heights, and against its centre in the direction Novo-Selim–Dolband.

During these operations the Turks succeeded in capturing the Kazik-kaya heights in the direction of Agadeve and in reaching the centre of the Novo-Selim–Dolband line. Thus the left flank was threatened, and if the Turkish advance in that direction had not been stopped, the detachment risked being cut off from Kars and at the same time losing its communications with Alexandropol.

To meet this threat the group commander decided to reinforce it and sent one infantry battalion to it, while the Special Officers’ Detachment was attached to the Agadeve garrison, and the cavalry regiment was to operate against the enemy’s right flank to the east of Mount Akdevelar.

Thus reinforced, the left flank drove the enemy from Mount Kazik-kaya with a brilliant attack and restored the situation. In the centre of the position the enemy was likewise first halted and then thrown back to the Olukhli-Yalguzcham line by a bold counter-attack.

But the Turks, by manoeuvres threatening the encirclement of the left flank and the centre of the group, forced the defenders to exhaust their reserves, while at the same time concentrating more than one infantry regiment against the position of the Erzerum Regiment of the 1st Brigade at Bazargan-Kechik.

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The resistance of the Erzerum Regiment was finally broken; the line Yengidzhan–Bazargan–Kechik–Kikach was abandoned, and the troops withdrew to the line Jarmali–Besh-kaya.

Although the Turkish advance had been halted by 18:00, the group commander (the sick General Areshev was replaced by General Ter-Akopov11), after abandoning the right sector, which exposed the right flank of the centre at Novo-Selim, and having no reserves to restore the situation on the right, was compelled to order the entire centre to withdraw to the line Begli–Ahmed–Supanazad.

In this battle the detachment lost 3 officers and 99 soldiers killed, 11 officers and 153 soldiers wounded, and 70 soldiers missing.

This loss of 325 men (apparently an author’s error; adding the figures gives 336 men. — Translator’s note) and, especially, 14 officers, was very keenly felt by the detachment, which had in its ranks only 15 battalions and 6,000 bayonets and could not count on the arrival of trained reinforcements.

The enemy’s numerical superiority, advancing on a very wide front, forced the Armenian group to defend a line out of proportion to its strength. The lack of reserves and the hasty, insufficient training of new local formations did not allow manoeuvre and in effect condemned the group to a passive tactic and a successive withdrawal in the direction of Kars.

But even if the overall situation remained critical, the latest battles showed that the troops, despite their small numbers, rear-area disorganisation, and the anxiety caused by the country’s political situation, were still capable of fighting. Consequently,

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we were entitled to hope to prolong the struggle until the Allies’ final victory.

Such was the impression carried away by the commander-in-chief of the front, General Lebedinsky, during the battle of 19 April in the Novo-Selim sector, in the presence of the commander of the Armenian Corps, General Nazarbekov, accompanied by the chief quartermaster General Kvinitadze, General Korganov,12 deputy chief of staff of the front, and Colonel Chardigny, head of the French military mission in the Caucasus.

Returning from the front on the evening of the same day (19 April), General Lebedinsky visited in Alexandropol the Armenian National Council under the chairmanship of Mr Aharonyan and set out his views on continuing the struggle. His opinion strengthened the resolve of the overwhelming majority of Council members not to lay down their arms.

At dawn on 22 April the enemy offensive resumed along the entire front line. The most stubborn fighting was on the left sector between the village of Supanazad and Mount Akdevelar, while other Turkish forces at about 6 a.m. advanced from the direction of Eski-kazi and Bayburt toward Mount Besh-kaya.

At about 8 a.m. on the left sector the Turks seized the Akdevelar height and at about 10 o’clock Mount Besh-kaya.

The loss of these two tactical keys compelled the group commander to order a retreat and a successive withdrawal of the troops under enemy pressure in order to occupy a new defensive line running from the village of Garam-Vartan along the heights of Beюк-tepe, Kunsi, Ak-baba to the village of Khani-köy.

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To the north of Kars the Kurds seized the Russian villages of Malaya Vorontsovka, Prokhladnaya, and Romanovo, and their bands were seen beyond Bashkардиклар.

Toward evening reconnaissance reported that Turkish columns were moving on Blagodarnoye in order to outflank Kars from the north.

The group commander ordered a battalion of the 7th Regiment with two guns and one cavalry squadron, which were covering the withdrawal of the troops in the centre of the position, to occupy the village of Samavat immediately. But this detachment was able to set out for its destination only at 22:00 on 22 April and occupied the indicated sector on 23 April at about 10:00.

Before proceeding to a description of the operations that led to the evacuation of the Kars fortress on 25 April, it is necessary to set out in broad outline the political situation that had developed by this period.

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CHAPTER XX: THE TREBIZOND CONFERENCE AND THE DECLARATION OF TRANSCAUCASIAN INDEPENDENCE

As noted above, the Transcaucasian delegates appointed to conduct peace negotiations with Turkey arrived in Trebizond on 8 March, where, according to information received, the Turkish delegates were already expected to have arrived the previous day. In fact, they did not arrive until 12 March, and this delay—conceived in Constantinople and desired—had its reason. These few days gained allowed the Government of the Sublime Porte to rely on an accomplished fact: in accordance with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the districts of Batum, Ardahan, and Kars were no longer part of Transcaucasia, and the planned conference at Trebizond could not discuss this point.

On 10 March, General Ferik Vehib Pasha, commander of the Turkish forces, telegraphed General Lebedinsky, commander-in-chief of the Caucasian Front, obliging him to evacuate Batum, Kars, and Ardahan as soon as possible.

On the same day he telegraphed General Odishilidze, army commander, stating that he was compelled to continue his advance to liberate districts inhabited by Muslims, whom, he said,

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the Armenians had begun to massacre after his (General Odishilidze’s) withdrawal from Erzerum.

On 12 March a meeting took place between the heads of the delegations, and a note was delivered by the Transcaucasian delegation requesting explanations regarding Vehib Pasha’s demand for the evacuation of Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, which could easily be interpreted as a refusal to continue negotiations.

The head of the Turkish delegation replied orally that the arrival in Trebizond of the Ottoman delegation itself demonstrated the desire of the Sublime Porte to begin peace negotiations with Transcaucasia. As for General Vehib Pasha’s demand for the evacuation of the said districts, he knew nothing about it and could say nothing.

The conference opened on 14 March.

At this first official session, the Ottoman delegation asked the Transcaucasian delegation to provide brief information on the nature, form, and political and administrative organisation of the Transcaucasian republic.

The Transcaucasian delegation replied that after the Bolshevik coup a new independent government had just been established, now responsible to the Sejm; that Transcaucasia in fact formed a state already engaged in international relations and which had protested against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty concluded without its knowledge. It had not yet been able to notify the great powers of its independence.

Evidently not satisfied with this explanation, the Ottoman delegation sent a new note in which, recognising that treaties concluded between two states are not binding upon a third, it emphasised that in order to benefit from this axiom of

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international law, Transcaucasia must constitute itself in accordance with international law and seek recognition from all other states. Moreover, the Ottoman delegation declared that recognition cannot have retroactive effect, and that the Transcaucasian government, which in its telegram of 28 January had stated “that it must coordinate its actions with those of the other autonomous governments of Russia” and had refrained from sending representatives to the Brest-Litovsk Conference, was thereby to be regarded not as an independent state but as a member of the Russian Federative Republic. The Ottoman delegation accordingly considered that it could not accept the Transcaucasian delegation’s statement regarding the illegality of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty insofar as it concerned the Caucasus.

The Transcaucasian delegation replied that the very presence of two delegations at the Trebizond Conference was in itself proof that both sides were disregarding the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.

The Turkish delegation objected that the negotiations undertaken had as their sole purpose the preparation of a basis for future economic and commercial relations and the clarification of practical and technical details not determined by the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, so as not to prejudice the significance of that treaty.

The Transcaucasian delegation maintained its position and on 22 March asked the Turkish delegation to accept the principles adopted by the Sejm on 1 March, repeating its statement that even before the date of ratification of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty the independent Transcaucasian state had already fulfilled all the formalities required by international law.

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The Ottoman delegation protested against the clause concerning “recognition for the peoples of Anatolia of the right to determine their own fate,” regarding this as interference in its internal affairs, and declared that final and official recognition of the Transcaucasian republic could take place only through the inclusion of a special article in the treaty to be concluded, stating that negotiations could begin only after Transcaucasia renounced all claims to Batum, Kars, and Ardahan.

On the same day, 22 March, part of the delegation departed for Tiflis to report to the Sejm, which granted very broad powers to the head of the delegation.

At the last session of the conference, on 5 April, the Transcaucasian delegation, vested with special powers, agreed to the transfer to Turkey of the entire Olti district, the south-western part of the Kars district, the southern part of the Ardahan district, and the western part of the Kagyzvan district.

On 6 April at 7 o’clock an ultimatum arrived from the Ottoman government demanding a response within 48 hours with final proposals.

The ultimatum was due to expire on 10 April at 21:00, but the delegation had received no reply from its government; a new 48-hour deadline was granted, but no answer followed. The head of the delegation, on the basis of full unanimity among its members, replied that the Transcaucasian delegation accepted the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.

The Transcaucasian delegation regarded this consent as a necessity dictated by circumstances, although it was in contradiction with the declared decision of the Sejm.

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Let us see what was taking place during this time in Tiflis.

As we have seen, on 6 April the Turkish government demanded a final answer within 48 hours concerning recognition of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.

The head of the Transcaucasian delegation telegraphed this ultimatum to Tiflis only the following day, adding that in his view the maximum acceptable concessions could concern only the transfer of the Kars district with clarification of its northern and eastern borders, and in the Batum district the entire Artvin region without Artvin itself, but that even under these conditions it would be almost impossible to retain Batum. He added that if by 8 April he remained without directives from the Government and the Sejm, he would consider these proposals accepted.

Although the Government shared the patriotic sentiments of the Presidium of the Sejm and the political parties, it accepted the proposal of the head of the delegation, and the latter on 8 April telegraphed requesting the necessary powers to sign recognition of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in its entirety if the last proposed concessions were not accepted by the Turks.

This telegram was received by the Government only at 15:00 on 10 April; as a result, the reply could not arrive in time, and the head of the delegation considered himself obliged to declare, on his own initiative, his recognition of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.

These diplomatic negotiations in Trebizond in no way interrupted military operations.

On 12 April the Turkish commander, relying on the statement of the Transcaucasian delegation of 10 April accepting the Brest-Litovsk Treaty

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in full, presented the commandant of the Batum fortress with an ultimatum to hand over the forts by 16:00 on 13 April.

After careful examination of the situation at a session of the Sejm on 13 April, the Government, considering that recognition of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty betrayed the interests of the peoples of Transcaucasia and that its acceptance by the Bolsheviks condemned Russia to the role of a German colony, declared that so long as it retained the confidence of the Sejm it would unite all its forces to resist the demands of the Ottoman government.

All parties of the Transcaucasian Sejm, with the exception of the “Musavat” party, supported the Government and rejected the very idea of possible recognition of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.

The “Musavat” party, through its representative, declared that the Muslim population of Transcaucasia could not agree to play an active role against Turkey, being bound to it by religious ties; moreover, the representative strongly doubted the possibility of achieving unity among all the peoples of Transcaucasia in the event of renewed hostilities.

Such a declaration by one of the representatives of the Muslims of Transcaucasia (with a population of more than three million) unmistakably revealed the orientation of the Muslim masses, which in advance doomed any attempt to continue the struggle against Turkey to failure.

Despite this, the Sejm adhered to the Government’s decision, and on 14 April the Chairman of the Government sent a telegram to Trebizond ordering the Transcaucasian delegation to return immediately to Tiflis.

Thus the peace negotiations with Turkey were broken off, and the war was continued.

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The country was placed under martial law, and a three-man commission vested with extraordinary powers to continue the struggle was established under the Government, but this resolve did not last long.

On 14 April the Turks captured Batum, defended by the Georgians.

The Trebizond delegation returned to Tiflis and entered into direct relations with the Government and the Sejm.

As we have already seen, the formation of the Transcaucasian Commissariat had been prompted by refusal to recognise Bolshevik authority. This separation from Russia, in the minds of its initiators, was to be only temporary, pending a future change in the political regime in Russia. But the hope that Bolshevik power would prove short-lived was not realised. Gradually the idea of Transcaucasian independence began to attract the masses, political parties, organisations, clubs, and others, and was especially strengthened after the shameful Brest-Litovsk Treaty concluded by Bolshevik Russia.

The insistence of the Turkish government and the Central Powers in pressing Transcaucasia to declare its independence created illusions and strengthened the opinion of the supporters of independence that this was the only way out of a hopeless situation.

On 22 April the Transcaucasian Sejm convened in extraordinary session.

The majority of speakers representing the main parties of the Sejm declared their commitment to independence. Only the party of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries and the representative of the Russian population in Transcaucasia resolutely opposed this act.

In the end, the decision was taken to proclaim the Transcaucasian Federative Democratic Republic.

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On the same day the Government headed by Gegechkori resigned, and the Chairman of the Sejm, after consultations with the parties, proposed to Chkhenkeli, head of the Trebizond delegation, to form a cabinet.

At the same time, the Sejm, having heard the report of the peace delegation, instructed the Government (which at that moment had not yet been formed) to continue peace negotiations and to do everything possible to conclude them as soon as possible.

Thus the Sejm, which on 13 April had supported the Government in its determination to continue the struggle to the death, suddenly changed its position nine days later.

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CHAPTER XXI: THE FALL OF KARS

By the morning of 23 April, the units of the Armenian Corps operating in the Kars direction had completed their concentration on the front running from the village of Samavat, the village of Garam-Vartan, the height of Beyuk-tepe, the height of Kunsi, the height of Ak-baba, to the village of Khani-köy, in immediate proximity to the line of the Kars fortress fortifications.

The troops came into contact with the enemy, and soon battle was raging along the entire front when, at 13:30, the commander of the Armenian Corps, General Nazarbekov, received three telegrams of the following content:

No. 1

To the Commander of the Armenian Corps, General Nazarbekov,

To the Commander of the Georgian Corps, General Gabaev

I order you to transmit by all wireless telegraph stations at your disposal to the nearest Turkish stations the following radiogram concerning the independence of Transcaucasia:

“Petrograd, Berlin, London, Constantinople, Paris, Vienna, Rome, Washington, Tokyo, Sofia, Madrid, Kiev, Stockholm, Tehran, Christiania (Oslo – Translator’s note), Copenhagen.”

To the Minister of Foreign Affairs:

“The Transcaucasian Sejm at its session of 22 April resolved to proclaim the independence of the Transcaucasian Federative Democratic Republic. Within the framework of this decision I have the honour to request Your Excellency to inform your Government.”

Chkhenkeli, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

23 April 1918. No. 1503.

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No. 2

I inform you that the Transcaucasian Sejm at its session of 22 April declared the complete independence of Transcaucasia. A new government has been formed under the leadership of Chkhenkeli, to which has been entrusted the continuation of peace negotiations with the Turks. The Government orders you to come immediately to an agreement with the Turkish military authorities opposing you on the cessation of hostilities along the entire front by 17:00 today. Telegraph directly to me regarding execution of this order to cease hostilities and send a copy to the commander-in-chief. Immediately after this telegram I am sending you a telegram addressed to Vehib Pasha, which General Nazarbekov is to transmit by radio, and General Gabaev directly by wire from Batum to Trebizond.

23 April 1918. No. 9

Acting Minister of War, General Odishilidze

No. 3

To the Commander of the Armenian Corps, General Nazarbekov,

To the Commander of the Georgian Corps, General Gabaev.

Transmit immediately to Vehib Pasha the following telegram from me:

To the Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish Army on the Caucasian Front, Ferik Vehib Mehmed Pasha.

I have the honour to inform Your Excellency that, in accordance with the telegram of Prime Minister Chkhenkeli of 23 April 1918, sent from Poti and Batum and which you have probably already received, I have had the pleasure of transmitting to the troops operating in Transcaucasia the order of the new Transcaucasian Government to cease hostilities, beginning at 17:00 on 23 April along the entire Caucasian Front, in agreement with the Turkish military command. I hope that Your Excellency, in the interest of the inevitable peace negotiations and in the name of the future friendship of our peoples, will on your side likewise order the cessation of hostilities.

23 April. Tiflis.

Accept the assurances of my highest and sincere respect.

Acting Minister of War, General Odishilidze.

At the same time, General Odishilidze

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sent the following telephone message to the commander-in-chief of the entire front, General Lebedinsky:

I am immediately sending to the troops occupying the front the order of the Transcaucasian Government to cease hostilities against the Turks along the entire Transcaucasian Front in agreement with the Turkish military command. I request you urgently to telegraph the troops under your command so that this order be executed immediately.

23 April 1918. 11:05. No. 8.

Acting Minister of War, GENERAL ODISHILIDZE

Apart from their considerable historical interest from a military point of view, these telegrams reflect, as in a mirror, the chaotic condition in which the country found itself at that moment.

We have already seen that at the session of 22 April Mr A. Chkhenkeli was entrusted with forming a government tasked with pursuing peace negotiations. In fact, the Government was formed only on 26 April, when it was presented to the Sejm and received a vote of confidence.

It follows that the above-mentioned telegrams of 23 April, although written in the name of the Government, were in reality merely acts of private individuals, for the simple reason that on that date the Government headed by Mr A. Chkhenkeli did not yet exist.13

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Instead of entrusting peace negotiations to the commander-in-chief, who was not even consulted, the order to cease hostilities by 17:00 on 23 April was sent down the chain of command to the corps commanders, without even obtaining assurances from the enemy that it agreed to cease hostilities at that hour.

In his telegram to Vehib Pasha, General Odishilidze merely expressed the hope that, in the interest of successful peace negotiations and in the name of the future friendship of the peoples, the latter would likewise order a cessation of hostilities.

Unfortunately, any hope of such a decision was soon to dissipate on the Armenian front. While the order to cease hostilities reached all levels of the army—thereby damaging troop morale—the Turks continued their advance.

We have already seen that in his telegram of 23 April to Vehib Pasha, General Odishilidze assumed that the Turkish commander must already have received the telegram

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from Chkhenkeli sent from Poti and Batum.

What was the meaning of the telegram sent by Chkhenkeli to the Turkish commander-in-chief on 23 April, which the latter was to receive before his own troops received the order to cease hostilities, a matter of which neither the commander-in-chief [of the Caucasian Front] nor the commander of the Armenian Corps knew anything?

In this telegram Chkhenkeli, after stating that the Transcaucasian Government had recognised the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and was ready to send its delegates to resume the interrupted negotiations, wrote:

I shall today issue instructions regarding the dispatch of parlementaires to the Kars line concerning the evacuation of this fortress, and no later than tomorrow they will be before the positions of the Ottoman forces. At the same time, I request you to appoint sufficient time limits for the evacuation. In view of the above, I ask Your Excellency to give immediate orders to cease hostilities along the entire front, which on my side will be given at 5 o’clock on 23 April.

Military annals have probably never recorded so unusual, not to say more, an affair.

What are we to think of the head of a government that did not yet exist, issuing an order to the commander of the troops to cease full-scale hostilities and conclude an armistice without specifying the meaning or objectives of this armistice, and at the same time informing the enemy commander that he agreed to evacuate the most important fortress of the front without any conditions?

It is true that the Transcaucasian Sejm had recognised the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and instructed the forming government to begin peace negotiations, and that

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the position of the Armenian Corps and the Kars fortress was precarious; but in any case the war continued, and if, in view of circumstances, a decision had been taken to surrender Kars, compensation should have been demanded from the Turkish side, which otherwise would have had no alternative but to take it by force, with all the risks such an operation entailed.

Of course, given the inequality of forces and the fighting spirit of its defenders, it is evident that the Kars fortress could not have been held for long, but it could not have been taken without serious losses, and this circumstance might undoubtedly have prompted the Turks to concessions in order to obtain the evacuation of Kars and the withdrawal of the army without battle to the frontiers stipulated by the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.14

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Having received the order from his government at 13:30, General Nazarbekov notified General Silikov,15 commander of the 2nd Armenian Division and commandant of the Kars fortress, instructing them to cease hostilities (on 23 April at 17:00) and to determine a demarcation line in the direction of Kars, to be established jointly with the commander of the 1st Armenian Rifle Division, who, as we have seen above, was directing the withdrawal to the line of the forts.

The commandant of the fortress received this order at 14:00. After ordering the garrison to cease all active operations after 17:00 and dispatching parlementaires—one to the Chalgour mountain chain, another to the village of Prokhladnaya—he returned to the village of Petrovka, where the headquarters of the 1st Armenian Rifle Division was located, in order to determine the demarcation line.

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It was decided to propose to the Turks the condition that they not cross the line running from the north-west of the fortress along the Chalgour mountain chain, to the west along Garam-Vartan, and to the south along the heights of Ak-baba.

At about 17:00 the commander of the 1st Separate Armenian Brigade, Colonel Morel (former military attaché of the Russian embassy in Tokyo), was sent along the Sarikamish road as parlementaire. Carrying a letter from the commander of the 1st Armenian Division addressed to the commander of the Turkish forces in the Kars direction, he was to inform him of the order of the Transcaucasian Government to its troops to cease hostilities by 17:00 on 23 April, on condition that the Turkish commander do likewise on his side. Attached to the letter were copies of General Odishilidze’s telegrams of 23 April to General Nazarbekov and to Vehib Pasha concerning the cessation of hostilities.

The chief of staff of the Turkish division declared that he had received no instructions regarding an agreement to cease hostilities, and in the absence of the divisional commander he would immediately telegraph to Sarikamish the contents of the letter brought by Colonel Morel.

At about 22:00 the chief of staff of the Turkish division conveyed the reply of the commander of the Turkish troops operating in the Kars direction, addressed to the commander of the 1st Armenian Rifle Division. It stated that no instructions had been received from the commander-in-chief of the Turkish army regarding the cessation of hostilities, but that he had sent an inquiry to the commander of the Turkish forces on the Caucasian Front, Vehib Pasha, and until a reply was received, the order previously given by Vehib Pasha remained in force, according to which the Turkish troops were to continue

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their advance on 24 April. It would be desirable, before the beginning of this advance, for the Armenian troops to withdraw to the forts, in order to avoid a clash with Turkish troops—entirely useless in view of the forthcoming cessation of hostilities.

At about 8 a.m. on 24 April, the headquarters of the Armenian Rifle Division in the village of Petrovka received a new letter from the commander of the Turkish forces in the Kars area:

The proposal of the Caucasian Government has been accepted by the Turkish Government. On our side an authorised representative has already been appointed and will come to you. You (the letter was addressed to the commander of the Armenian division) must withdraw to Kars and stop at a distance of two versts in front of the forts. Your troops must not fire as our troops approach; otherwise we shall resort to force. Today our troops will occupy the positions indicated above. During your withdrawal and our movement, any opening of fire is forbidden. We await your authorised representative in order to begin negotiations.

Begli-Ahmed station, 24 April. 1334–1918.

The letter was written in Turkish and was not signed.

It is possible that the translation of this letter, wholly unclear from a military point of view, was incorrect; otherwise it would have been impossible to explain the Turkish commander’s demand that the Armenian troops occupy a line two versts in front of the forts, which in turn were to be occupied by the Turkish troops.

In any case, there was no time for explanations, because the Turks went over to the offensive, delivering their main blow against the right flank of the troops operating in the Kars area and positioned 8 kilometres west and south-west of the village of Mazra.

If successful, offensive action in this direction would have allowed the Turks to reach

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the Kars–Alexandropol railway line behind the troops fighting at Kars and thus cut them off from Alexandropol.

For this reason, at 8 a.m. on 24 April the commander of the 1st Armenian Division ordered the left flank to withdraw to a position by the village of Vezin-köy. By noon on 24 April the position occupied by the Armenian troops formed an arc, bulging towards the enemy, stretching from Mazra to Kars and further in the direction of Vezin-köy.

As soon as the Turks came within range of the fortress artillery, all batteries, except those on the north-eastern front, opened fire, which halted the Turkish advance.

At the same time, the chief of staff of the Armenian Corps, General Vyshinsky, sent to Tiflis to the acting Minister of War, General Odishilidze, the text of the above document from the Turkish command, handed at 8 a.m. to the commander of the 1st Armenian Rifle Division, as well as the substance of Colonel Morel’s negotiations with the Turks.

In reply, the chief of staff received the following order:

The Chairman of the Transcaucasian Government and I, having acquainted ourselves with the telegraphic negotiations of Generals Odishilidze and Vyshinsky at 11:00 on 25 April, decided to accept the Turks’ conditions and cease hostilities in accordance with those conditions. Thus the Government instructs you to give immediately the corresponding instructions to General Nazarbekov.

Minister of War Georgadze, 24 April 1918.

By this decision the Turks were given the opportunity to encircle the fortress without any prior conditions, thereby dooming the garrison to final defeat.

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At 11 a.m. Colonel Morel was again sent out from the fortress to continue negotiations with the Turks, interrupted on the evening of the previous day, as we already know, owing to the absence of instructions from Vehib Pasha.

Between Petrovka and Vladikars, Colonel Morel met the commander of the Turkish troops operating in the direction of Kars, Colonel Kyazim Bey. The latter stated that, according to instructions received from higher command, the Turkish troops operating against Kars had been ordered to halt at a distance of 2 kilometres from the fortress forts. As for the question of a demarcation line, it could be resolved only after the time limits and other conditions for the evacuation of Kars and the Kars district by the troops of the Transcaucasian Government had been established; that government, recognising the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, must by that very fact take measures for the immediate evacuation of the entire Kars territory, which by the treaty belonged to Turkey. Developing this thesis further, Kyazim Bey declared that the establishment of a special demarcation line directly in the fortress area was unnecessary, since, according to the agreement between the Turkish and Transcaucasian governments, this line had been fixed for the Armenian troops along the line of the fortress forts and for the Turkish troops at a distance of 2 kilometres from those forts.

During these negotiations the fighting continued and took on a stubborn character, especially near the village of Mazra. The Turks tried to reach the railway and thus complete the encirclement of the fortress. But the Turkish attack was everywhere checked, chiefly by the intense fire of the fortress artillery.

Colonel Morel returned from his second visit to the Turks by 18:00, without any protocol

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of his negotiations, being able to provide only an oral report.

Having by this time received the government’s order to allow the Turks to approach the line of the forts to within a distance of two versts, the commandant of the fortress again dispatched Colonel Morel with the mission of obtaining the Turks’ consent to leave open the north-eastern front of the fortress, the highway, and the railway to Alexandropol.

Colonel Morel set out for negotiations with the Turks for the third time at 20:00 on 24 April, at the very same time as Minister-President Chkhenkeli was sending Vehib Pasha telegram No. 12255 on 24 April at 2:55 with the following content:

All your conditions have been accepted by the Transcaucasian Government. All orders to cease hostilities have been given and parlementaires have been sent out. In the Kars area, the commander of the Turkish troops did not formulate the conditions of the armistice clearly enough, indicating that the Transcaucasian troops must withdraw to a line two versts in front of the forts. For this reason, when the Turkish troops began to move toward this line, the commandant of the fortress understood this manoeuvre as a violation of the agreement, after which fire was opened. Measures have now been taken to put an end to any incidents. Moreover, the command of the Turkish troops at Kars has stated that it is blockading Kars from the north-east, which, beyond any doubt, creates difficulties for the agreed evacuation of Kars, which has already begun.

Taking all this into account, I urgently request you to order your subordinates not to create difficulties and unnecessary complications which, in the present circumstances, may lead to needless bloodshed. In my view, a month is necessary for the evacuation of Kars, and I ask you to convey your agreement without delay.

TCHENKELI

In these circumstances the negotiations of the Armenian command with the Turks had little

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chance of success. Tiflis at once agreed to the Turks’ demands without consulting the commander-in-chief, who was thus deprived of any freedom of action.

A new meeting of Colonel Morel with Turkish parlementaires took place at Begli-Ahmed.

The Turkish parlementaire, on behalf of Vehib Pasha, set out the following principal demands:

First, surrender of the forts on the left bank of the Kars-chay by noon Constantinople time on 25 April, and the others by the evening of the same day; second, evacuation of the Kars fortress by the troops of the Transcaucasian Government during 25 April; and third, withdrawal of these troops beyond the Arpachay river within three days after leaving the fortress.

Colonel Morel insisted on an extension of these deadlines: given the dispersal of the troops, it would be extremely difficult to organise the withdrawal in time; moreover, it was necessary to organise the evacuation of 20,000 refugees who were leaving Kars.

The Turkish parlementaire, not possessing sufficient authority to decide these questions, agreed to request instructions from Vehib Pasha, adding that if there was no reply by the morning of 25 April, and if the fortress command did not fulfil all the conditions presented to it, the Turkish troops would continue their advance, according to the instructions they had received.

By 2 a.m., at the moment when Colonel Morel returned from his mission, the commandant of Kars received the following telegram from the commander of the Armenian Corps:

I am sending you a telegram just received from the commander-in-chief: “In view of the possibility of the complete encirclement of

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Kars and the absolute impossibility of clarifying the conditions to be accepted regarding the evacuation, which the Government has categorically decided upon, I order you to give full freedom to the commandant of the fortress to withdraw the troops toward Alexandropol: they will halt on an intermediate position and entrench there. 12.256, 25 April, 23:55. LEBEDINSKY.”

Thus, I leave to your discretion the decision on the question of the necessity and timing of the evacuation of Kars by its garrison.

25 April, 1:30, No. 829.

NAZARBEKOV

Taking this telegram into account, as well as the general situation, the commander decided to agree to Kyazim Bey’s conditions, but once again sent Colonel Morel to the Turks in an attempt to obtain a postponement for the surrender of the forts on the left bank of the Kars-chay until the evening of 25 April and for the others until the evening of 26 April.

At 5 a.m. Colonel Morel set out for the Turks for the fourth time.

The commander of the Armenian Corps approved the fortress commandant’s decision to surrender the forts; at the same time he ordered that all active units of the Kars garrison, after the evacuation of the fortress, be placed under the commander of the 1st Armenian Rifle Division, who in turn was to hold at all costs the Mazra–Vezin-köy position. The fortress commandant also received orders to remain in Kars to supervise the removal of matériel.

The Transcaucasian Government was so convinced that the Turks would agree to the removal of matériel that the corps commander was made to believe it and to issue the corresponding orders, although it was more than naïve to suppose that the victors would allow the dispatch of the fortress matériel and thus facilitate the continuation of the war by the Transcaucasian Government. Moreover,

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even assuming the Turks were so reckless as to agree to this, the removal of fortress matériel was practically impossible owing to the complete absence of labour and transport after the Turkish occupation of Kars.

At 9 a.m. the fortress commandant received the reply that the Turks did not agree to extend the deadline for surrendering the forts. However, all dispositions had already been made, and the evacuation of the forts was completed by 16:00 on 25 April.

The troops left Kars, but the fortress commandant, together with his staff and the fortress administration, remained there.

At 21:00 on 25 April, the first Turkish military unit, a rifle battalion of the 11th Infantry Division, entered Kars.

Kars had fallen. After the fall of Kars, the struggle for possession of the Kars region was in fact concluded.

During the evacuation, the corps commander received the following telegram:

I inform you that the Kars region must be evacuated by our troops up to the frontier along the Arpachay river and that the forts located on the right bank of the Arpachay must be destroyed. The Government has begun negotiations with Turkey in order to obtain for us agreement to grant a postponement of one month for the removal of all matériel from the Kars fortress, and one week for the withdrawal of the troops beyond the limits of the Kars region.

President of the Transcaucasian Government CHKHENKELI.

Acting Minister of War ODISHILIDZE.

Having set no preliminary armistice conditions and having in advance agreed to all the conditions the enemy might propose, the Transcaucasian Government

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continued to cherish illusions and to entertain vain hopes that the victor would agree to release all the military matériel of the fortress it had captured under the merciless law of war.

***

Despite the sincere desire to fulfil all the conditions set by the Turks, the retreating Armenian troops were unable to stop military operations.

We have already seen that on 24 April the position occupied by the Armenian troops formed an arc, with its convex side facing the enemy, from Mazra through Kars to Vezin-köy.

Throughout the day, until nightfall, the fighting continued.

Some units of the Begli-Ahmed detachment could not be assembled for coordinated action until 3 a.m. on 25 April, while others were assembled at dawn.

The morale of the troops deteriorated seriously; the possibility of a Turkish incursion into their home districts occupied everyone’s mind. The weakest began to desert. The withdrawal to the line of the villages of Mazra–Kala-köy proceeded slowly.

Despite constant enemy pressure, it was necessary to hold on to this line in order to make possible the retreat of the wagon trains with refugees who left Kars at 4 a.m. on 25 April.

The 1st Cavalry Regiment and part of the 4th Infantry Regiment were to protect the wagon trains from possible Kurdish attacks, as the Kurds were operating in the rear of the detachment.

Indeed, the column was attacked by Turks who managed to break through to the highway near the village of Prokhladnoye, but the situation was restored by a counter-attack by units of the 4th Infantry Regiment.

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By the evening of 25 April the Turks had captured the village of Mazra and the heights to the north-east of it, while the Kurds had entered the village of Romanovo. As a result, the right flank of the Begli-Ahmed detachment was forced to fall back toward Mazra station, so that the detachment’s defensive line ran from that point to the village of Kala-köy. This line was occupied, starting from the right flank, by: the Special Battalion of Russian officers, the 7th and 8th regiments of the Armenian infantry division, the remnants of the Erzerum and Erzincan regiments, and then units of the 1st Armenian infantry division and the 2nd Armenian cavalry regiment near the village of Kala-köy.

According to the orders of the corps commander, units of the Kars garrison were to join the Begli-Ahmed detachment as the fortress was evacuated; but this order was carried out with delays caused by the disorganisation of the communications service.

On the morning of 26 April the Turks began an attack near the village of Mazra, turning the detachment’s right flank and seriously threatening its communications with Alexandropol. This danger compelled General Ter-Akopov to retreat, despite the fact that the Turkish attack was repulsed, and to concentrate his troops in Bashkadiklar on the evening of the 26th.

During 27 April the detachment continued its retreat toward Alexandropol and occupied the area of the villages of Kizil-chakchakh, Uzun-kilisa, and Tekhnis, covering its flanks with cavalry.

On 28 April, guided by the armistice conditions, the detachment crossed the Arpachay river, having first destroyed the old fort on the right bank.

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The Begli-Ahmed detachment was disbanded, and the troops took up the following positions: the 1st infantry division with its artillery, under the command of General Areshev, at the villages of Toparli, Konak-kran, Duz-kend, Tepe-Dolak, Karakilisa, east of Alexandropol; the 7th and 8th infantry regiments, together with the remnants of the Erzerum and Erzincan regiments and the cavalry brigade, remained in Alexandropol.

The Arpachay river to the south of Alexandropol was guarded by the 2nd Separate Brigade (the Hnys and Karaklisa regiments).

***

We saw above that General Deev, the fortress commandant, and several officers of his staff remained in Kars in order to hand over the fortress to the Turks and ensure the protection of the population. They were also to carry out, if the enemy agreed, the removal of matériel.

On 26 April at 13:00 the commander-in-chief of the Turkish troops operating against the fortress, Colonel Kyazim Bey, arrived in Kars; on the same day he met with General Deev.

It was agreed that all officers and soldiers still in Kars, regardless of nationality, would be free either to remain there or to depart for Alexandropol. But on the evening of 27 April Kyazim Bey suddenly violated this agreement, informing General Deev that military personnel of all ranks were to concentrate in places designated by the Turkish authorities, Armenians separately from the others. He explained this order as a measure of reprisal against the Armenians, whose troops were accused of atrocities against the peaceful Muslim population during their retreat.

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However, following the energetic protest of General Deeff against such a violation of one of the stipulations of the act of surrender, a column composed of 190 officers, 500 soldiers (including 150 armed), and 450 inhabitants of Kars (Armenians and Greeks) was able to leave the city for Alexandropol on 30 April under the escort of a company of the 11th Division. It arrived at Odintzovo on 1 May, on the 2nd, under the escort of a battalion of the 5th Division, at Tiflis, and reached Alexandropol on 3 May.

By order of General Nazarbekoff, all the personnel of the artillery, engineers, and telegraph service of the fortress of Kars were retained at Alexandropol to reinforce the garrison of the place. General Deeff, with his staff, departed for Tiflis.

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CHAPTER XXII: ALEXANDROPOL

On 3 May 1918 the delegates of the Transcaucasian Republic and the Turkish delegates met in Batum to discuss the terms of peace. The Transcaucasian delegation consisted of M. N. Kachaznuni from Armenia and M. Rasul-zade from Azerbaijan as members, under the chairmanship of M. A. Chkhenkeli, representing Georgia.

The Turkish delegation was at first represented by Djemal Pasha, Minister of the Navy, but he was soon replaced by the Minister of Justice, Halil Bey. The German headquarters had also sent its delegate, the Bavarian General von Lossow.

The negotiations dragged on. The subject and scope of this book do not allow for a detailed discussion of the conference. It is nevertheless necessary to note that from the very outset the Turks insisted on the right to use the Alexandropol-Julfa railway line for transporting troops to Tabriz, later extending these claims to all Caucasian railways for the entire duration of the war. This right was of the utmost importance to the Turkish General Staff, which at that time was planning an offensive against Mosul against the British. This was also stated in the most categorical terms by Ferik Vehib Pasha, commander-in-chief of the Turkish forces operating on the Transcaucasian front.

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The military experts, Divisional General Odishilidze and Brigadier General Korganov, who did not consider themselves authorised to agree to such conditions, referred the matter to their delegation, which in turn requested precise instructions from its government.

During the night of 14–15 May the Turkish delegation, without warning, presented an ultimatum demanding the immediate evacuation of Alexandropol and the withdrawal of Armenian troops 25 kilometres east of the city.

This ultimatum was presented at 4 a.m. on 15 May, three hours before its expiry. In fact, the Turkish offensive had already begun before that time, so that the delegation had no opportunity to acquaint itself with the document.

M. A. Chkhenkeli vigorously protested against such conduct during the conference debates, to which Halil Bey replied that the ultimatum had been properly sent in good time, on the evening of 14 May, but that unfortunately his secretary did not know the address of the head of the Transcaucasian delegation, which caused the regrettable delay in delivery.

The commandant of the Alexandropol fortress, for his part, received at 2 a.m. on 15 May from the commander of the Turkish forces a warning written in Turkish, the translation of which was completed only around 6:30 a.m.

The Turks demanded the evacuation of Alexandropol by 6 a.m. and the withdrawal of Armenian troops 20 kilometres east of the city, but without awaiting a reply they suddenly attacked the Armenian troops, at the same time encircling them from the direction of the village of Kaps, north of Alexandropol.

General Nazarbekov, whose headquarters had been moved on 13 May to the station of Karakilisa, was still in Alexandropol. After brief resistance,

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the fortress was taken, and the Armenian troops, taken by surprise, continued their retreat to the line of the villages of Orta-kilisa, Duz-kend, and Tepe-Dolak. But the Turks, developing their advantage, captured the villages of Duz-kend, Tepe-Dolak, and Ilkhiali, forcing the Armenian troops to retreat still further to the line of the villages of Toparli–Diraklar–Kapanak.

The loss of Alexandropol gave the Turks the opportunity to act against the Erivan group. Therefore General Nazarbekov issued the following orders: the 1st Armenian Rifle Division with the 7th and 8th regiments of the 2nd Armenian Division was to retreat to the line of the villages of Gök–Leguch–Bekand–Avdibek–Pamb. The cavalry brigade was to remain in the rearguard near the village of Chirakhli. The 1st and 2nd Separate Brigades were ordered to link up with the Erivan group via Sardarapat. Later the 2nd regiment of the cavalry brigade was sent in the same direction. General Andranik, who with his volunteers had occupied Guli-bulakh since 1 May, was to act against the Turkish left flank while at the same time covering Akhalkalaki and Vorontsovka. Simultaneously, General Nazarbekov ordered the Akhalkalaki, Lori, and Kazakh territorial regiments to be brought to readiness. The first two were placed at the disposal of General Andranik, while the third was incorporated into the 1st Division.

With this disposition, the Armenian Corps was condemned to passive defence along the entire front. The task now was to defend what remained of Armenia, into which refugees were pouring from all sides in the face of the Turkish invasion.

General Andranik, occupying the Vorontsovka area, covered the right flank of the Armenian Corps. By its deployment the main forces of the Corps protected the

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junction of the roads to Erivan, Karakilisa, and Dilijan. Finally, the Erivan group, defending the capital and the southern districts of Armenia, was reinforced, as we have seen, by the 1st and 2nd Separate Brigades.

The decision taken by General Nazarbekov, calculated to restrain a numerically superior enemy and based on the fighting spirit of his troops, corresponded to the general situation.

General Andranik was compelled to refrain from offensive operations against the enemy’s left flank, which had concentrated its entire 5th Division against him. After fierce fighting at the Karagach pass on the Alexandropol-Tiflis road, Andranik on 19 May was forced to retreat to Djelal-Oglu, and the Turks broke into the Lori steppe.

At the same time the enemy began to concentrate against the 1st Armenian Division. At about 10 a.m. on 21 May the Turks attacked the Gök-Leguch-Avdibek line. The 1st Armenian Division, together with the 7th and 8th regiments, retreated to the Gogoраh-Tapanli-Vartpav line, but on 22 May continued its retreat to Karakilisa, being unable to halt the Turkish advance.

This retreat allowed the enemy to occupy Amamli station, thus opening the road to Erivan.

General Silikov, commander of the 2nd Armenian Division stationed in the Erivan area, sent a detachment under Dro to Bash-Aparan to cover the capital from the north.

General Nazarbekov decided to hold Karakilisa to the last. The objective was, at all costs, to stop the advance of the invaders and save what remained of Armenia with its population and refugees, who were threatened with complete destruction.

In these tragic circumstances the fighting spirit of the troops, severely shaken after the fall of Alexandropol

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and the endless retreats, revived in view of the evident common danger, and from all sides numerous deserters began to gather again to return to the ranks.

Taking advantage of this moral upsurge, General Nazarbekov went over to the offensive on 24 May, and this time the impetus of the Armenian units was so irresistible that after fierce fighting the enemy could not withstand the attack and retreated in haste toward Amamli.

Despite this success, General Nazarbekov’s position remained very dangerous, as his right flank was threatened by the 5th Turkish Division occupying the gorges of the Bezobdal range.

General Andranik, responsible for covering this flank, did not have sufficient forces. After two days of fighting against the 5th Turkish Division he was forced to retreat from Djelal-Oglu to Dsegh (40 kilometres north-east of Karakilisa). General Nazarbekov, meanwhile continuing his offensive, sought to envelop the enemy’s right flank.

The advance developed favourably, and by the evening of 26 May Armenian troops had captured the villages of Bezobdal and Hadji-kaly on both flanks and driven the enemy from Mount Gida-Maimakh.

Unfortunately these successes could not be sustained. Taking advantage of their numerical superiority, the Turks launched a powerful counter-attack on 27 May and after fierce fighting recaptured Mount Gida-Maimakh. At the same time two Turkish columns, one numbering 3,000 men with six guns, advanced from the village of Gyulagarak toward Bezobdal on Nazarbekov’s right flank, while another, about 1,500 bayonets strong, advanced from Amamli.

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By the evening of 27 May the Turks had taken Bezobdal, from which General Nazarbekov was forced to withdraw his right flank to the heights of Mount Akhmet-Aga-Urt and his centre to the village of Kyshlak.

The Armenian troops could not long hold this position. On 28 May the Turks outflanked the Armenian left, captured the village of Vartanli in the rear of the Karakilisa position, and General Nazarbekov’s troops were again compelled to retreat fighting toward Shagali station. There, thanks to the steep mountain slopes, they managed on 28 May to concentrate on the Bozikend–Nikitino line east of Voskresenskaya, once again barring the enemy’s path from Karakilisa to Erivan.

Andranik’s detachment arrived at Dilijan on 30 May, and the corps headquarters was established in the village of Bas-Akhti.

Until the signing of the armistice between Turkey and Armenia the troops remained on these positions. But Andranik, finding the peace terms shameful, left Dilijan with his detachment on 6 June, heading toward Novo-Bayazet and Nakhichevan.

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CHAPTER XXIII: OPERATIONS IN THE ERIVAN AREA

As we have already indicated, certain Armenian units continued to occupy various points in Turkey after the defenders of Erzerum retreated toward the former Russo-Turkish frontier.

In the Alashkert valley there was the 2nd Separate Brigade (the Hnys and Karaklisa regiments) with 8 artillery guns; the 5th Armenian Rifle Regiment (2 battalions) and the 3rd Separate Brigade (the 1st and 2nd Van regiments) with 8 artillery guns were stationed at Van.

The Erivan area, where a battalion of the 4th Armenian Rifle Regiment, the 6th Regiment (3 battalions), and 20 artillery guns were concentrated, served as the base for these two detachments.

By order of General Nazarbekov, the 2nd Separate Brigade left Karakilisa of Alashkert when it became clear that the Turks would deliver their main blow from the direction of Sarikamish–Kars.

From 16 April onward, this brigade took part in all the battles fought near Kars, chiefly opposing the Turkish advance from Kagyzvan.

As for the Van garrison, which had been completely isolated and cut off from communications since the end of March, it received orders to join the Erivan group and arrived on 12 April at Igdir via Bayazet.

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Thus, by mid-April the Erivan group consisted of one battalion of the 4th Regiment, the 5th and 6th Regiments, the 3rd Separate Brigade (the 1st and 2nd Van regiments), and 28 artillery guns.

This group was subordinate to the commander of the 2nd Armenian Rifle Division, General Silikov, with the task of overseeing the gorges of the Agri-dag mountain chain and defending the line of the Araks river in order to cover the southern districts of Armenia. At the same time it was necessary to guard the railway from Alagöz station to Nakhichevan.

In reality, owing to the insufficiency of forces, this latter task could only be partially accomplished, as the railway could be covered only as far as the “Wolf’s Gate” near Arazdayan station.

At the end of March most signs indicated that the Turks would soon resume military operations. Tatar bands devastating the country became bolder; reports of their actions came from all sides. They attacked the villages of Yelenovka, Markara, Igdir, Kulpi, as well as the town of Novo-Bayazet, and destroyed telegraph lines and railway tracks.

Unfortunately, the military command was unable to maintain order and ensure security against these bands in the rear of the troops.

Indeed, on 15 April, by categorical order of the Tiflis government, the commander-in-chief of the Caucasian Front was compelled to forbid General Nazarbekov from resorting to the necessary military measures

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to counter the acts of violence committed by Muslim bands against the peaceful Armenian population. According to this order, only attacks on troops were to be punished by the military authorities.

These directives dealt a serious blow to the morale of the troops, who were recruited precisely from the populations of the districts now left at the mercy of marauding bands. Everyone thought only of returning home as quickly as possible to defend his own hearth, at a moment when a government without prestige and an administration without authority were incapable of guaranteeing their safety.

It was under the pressing insistence of some of its members that the Government had given this order, deluding itself with the hope that this measure would put an end to clashes between Armenian troops and the rebellious Muslim population and thus bring about a quicker pacification.

In reality, this order only facilitated the actions of the Turkish troops, in no way contributing to the pacification of the country. On the contrary, now that it had become possible to terrorise and plunder the Armenian population with impunity, the audacity of the Tatar bands increased day by day, and they soon even dared to attack regular troops. Thus an armoured train sent from Erivan to support forward units was successfully attacked on 18 and 19 April by the local Muslim population near the stations of Shakhtakhty and Nakhichevan.

The government order of 23 April announcing the cessation of hostilities dealt a further blow to the morale of the troops. A rumour spread among the soldiers that the government was systematically betraying them and that under such conditions any struggle against the enemy was futile. The command therefore had to make superhuman efforts to

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prevent the demoralised and distrustful soldiers from abandoning the ranks.

In violation of the concluded armistice, the Turks unexpectedly attacked on 27 April the 3rd Separate Brigade (the 1st and 2nd Van regiments), which occupied the Kudzhakh and Chingil passes on the Agri-dag range.

The 2nd Van Regiment, which defended the Kudzhakh pass, was forced to retreat to the villages of Orgof and Argadji, but the following day it counter-attacked and retook the pass. Meanwhile the Turks continuously received reinforcements, and the Armenian brigade ultimately had to yield and retreat to the Khalfala–Sultanabad line, losing several dozen men killed and 80 wounded. Among the dead was the commander of the 2nd Van Regiment, the brave Colonel Charukchev.16

Nevertheless, after energetic protests by the Transcaucasian government, Ferik Vehib Pasha on 1 May ordered his troops, which had penetrated into the Erivan district, to withdraw to the former Russo-Turkish frontier.

After the Turkish withdrawal, the detachment stationed near Igdir, by order of General Silikov, occupied Orgof with its advance guard.

By mid-May the disposition of Armenian forces in the Erivan district was as follows: the main forces were concentrated at Sardarapat station, with their advance guards at Kulpi and Igdir. One detachment was sent to Araks station to establish contact with the Alexandropol group.

Simultaneously with the capture of Alexandropol, the Turks on 15 May began military operations in the southern part of the Erivan district.

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On the night of 18 to 19 May, the Turks attacked the Arax detachment but were driven back toward the station of Karabouroun.

At the same time, they crossed the Agrı-Dagh range and occupied the villages of Khalfalou and Khochkhbar near the town of Igdir. On the same day, the Koulpi detachment withdrew toward the bridge of Karakala on the Arax.

The situation had become such that General Silikoff was obliged not only to defend the southern regions of Armenia but at the same time to protect the capital from the north. Indeed, after the occupation by the Turks of the station of Amamly and the retreat of the Alexandropol group toward Karakilissa, the road from Amamly to Erivan remained open to the enemy. To avert this danger, General Silikoff directed, under the command of Dro, toward Bash-Abaran a detachment drawn from the main body of the troops.

From all sides Armenia was now encircled by the enemy. From the south, west, and north the Turks were advancing, while the east was threatened by the Tatars of Azerbaijan, who had taken the side of their co-religionists.

Reinforced by the Kurds and the Tatars, the Turks launched an offensive on 20 May in the direction of Igdir. The detachment occupying that town withdrew toward the bridge of Markara on the Arax and took up position north of that river; the cavalry remained south of the village to observe the movements of the enemy.

At the same time as the operation against Igdir, a Turkish brigade advanced along the railway line against the Sardarabad detachment and attacked it on 17 May. Under pressure from the Turks, the Armenian units withdrew to the line of the villages of Karakanlou–Kerpalou–Armenian Zeiva, thus protecting Etchmiadzin (Vagarchapat).

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On 23 May General Silikov, having reinforced the Sardarapat detachment with his last reserves, launched a counter-attack and succeeded on 24 May in breaking the enemy’s resistance, which gave way on all sectors. But although Armenian troops occupied Karaburun and Alagöz stations and the villages of Talin and Mastara on 29 May, General Silikov could not develop his advance toward Alexandropol and threaten the rear of the Turkish forces.

Indeed, already on 23 May the 3rd Turkish Division, arriving from Amamli station, appeared in the Bash-Aparan area. General Silikov now risked being cut off from Erivan if the Bash-Aparan detachment failed to halt the movement of this division. Consequently, he was obliged to stop his advance on Alexandropol and reinforce Dro’s detachment with a part of his own troops.

On 24 May, Dro approached the village of Ali-Kochak and, continuing his advance, attacked on 25 May the advance guards of the 3rd Turkish Division north of the village of Bash-Aparan. During this clash the 2nd Cavalry Regiment near the village of Kondakhsız launched a swift attack on the enemy, who lost 30 soldiers and one officer.

On 26 May Dro, under threat of the enemy outflanking both his wings, withdrew to the line of the villages of Karakilisa–Kazanfar; but, having received the reinforcements mentioned above, he went over to the offensive on 29 May and after a fierce battle threw the enemy back to the village of Duz-kend, west of Bash-Aparan.

Despite these successes, the position of the Erivan group still remained difficult. Moreover, General Silikov was forced to send the 3rd Separate Brigade (the 1st and 2nd Van regiments) to Semyonovka in order to reinforce the Alexandropol group, which was holding Dilijan.

General Nazarbekov, for his part, was determined

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to hold the pass near the village of Semyonovka in case, under enemy pressure, it became necessary to evacuate Dilijan.

On 4 June Armenia signed a peace treaty with Turkey. Pending ratification of the treaty, a temporary armistice was concluded in accordance with a proposal made by the Turkish command.

Under the terms of this armistice, the Sardarapat detachment was to occupy the line of the village of Echnyak–Karaburun station, while Dro held the village of Bash-Aparan, the northern slopes of Mount Chengil, and the Shogakat–Deve-tash heights.

The Turks concentrated opposite Dro’s detachment their forces in the area of the villages of Duz-kend, Gözal-dere, Akhkula, and Mundzhukhli.

But the Turks decided to seize the Sardarapat–Julfa railway in order to transport their troops, and again violated the armistice conditions.

At 9 a.m. on 7 July the Sardarapat detachment was unexpectedly attacked, and its forward units had to fall back. Taking into account the Turks’ great superiority, General Silikov decided to concentrate all available troops in the Echmiadzin area, abandoning the Araks line.

On 8 July at 9 a.m. the enemy attacked the line of the villages of Kerpalu–Zeyva (Tatar), but was repulsed by the 5th Armenian Regiment, joined by numerous partisans.

Leaving three battalions opposite this line, the enemy began moving east, thereby outflanking the left flank of General Silikov’s forces.

On the evening of 8 July the Turks, with two battalions, seized the village of Khatunark, 10 kilometres south of Echmiadzin.

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Continuing their advance, on 9 July they successively occupied with the forces of the 11th Division the villages of Chobankyara, Nedzhilu, Tazakend, and Agamsalu.

By these actions Erivan was cut off from the railway line and separated from eastern Armenia.

These positions were maintained by both sides until the general armistice of 11 November 1918, when the Turks began to withdraw from Armenia.

***

Having reached the end of this objective account, and before proceeding to the narrative of the defence of Baku and its district—which forms a separate chapter in the role of the Armenians in the Great War—it is fair to emphasise the importance of the struggle of the Armenian Corps in the period from 24 to 26 May, when its troops gained the upper hand over the enemy through partial tactical advantages: at Karakilisa under Nazarbekov’s command, at Sardarapat under General Silikov, and at Bash-Aparan under Dro’s leadership.

The result of these tactical advantages was the halting of the Turkish offensive and the enemy’s loss of time.

But the political consequences of these successes, it may be said without exaggeration, were extraordinarily important for the fate of the Armenian people.

In the period described here—that is, in the summer of 1918—the principal objectives of the Turkish army’s operations on the Caucasian Front, in accordance with the plans of the Turkish command and the directives of the German headquarters, were the British right flank at Mosul and the Baku region.

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Since Armenia lay on the routes of operations toward Persian Azerbaijan and the Baku region, it was absolutely necessary to become master of this country and destroy its resisting force—the Armenian Corps. The Turks had already lost five months by the battles at Karakilisa, Bash-Aparan, and Sardarapat, months of great value, counting from the withdrawal of the Russian troops from the front (January 1918).

These battles showed the Turks that the resisting power of the Armenian Corps had not been crushed, and that it would require still more time and effort to compel it to lay down its arms.

The Turkish command faced a dilemma: either to continue prolonged military operations against the Armenian forces, postponing indefinitely the solution of the main task (Persian Azerbaijan and Baku), which contradicted the principle of economy of force in the theatre of operations; or to pursue the main objective while covering itself with a weak screen against the Armenian Corps, which in that case would stand on the flank of the Turkish communication routes to Julfa and Baku, in the position most dangerous for the Turkish army. A way out of this dilemma was found. Only a few days after the battles mentioned, Turkey suddenly and without any prior notice recognised Armenia’s independence and on 4 June signed a peace treaty with it. In this way the Turks freed their hands on this theatre of war, while retaining at the same time the possibility, simply by not ratifying this treaty, of turning their weapons once again against Armenia at a favourable moment. The defeat of the Central Powers upset this plan.

Isolated as it was from the outside world, it was only to its own forces, only to the fighters of

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Karakilissa, of Bash-Abaran, and of Sardarabad that Armenia owes its salvation.

In order to assess fairly the significance of the feat accomplished, it is necessary to compare the forces engaged on both sides.

By the end of May 1918 the Armenian Corps numbered 30 battalions, whereas the Turks at that moment had in the first line alone 5 divisions (the 3rd, 5th, 9th, 11th, and 36th), or 50 battalions, which could, if necessary, be reinforced by troops echeloned between Sarikamish and Alexandropol. Thus, in the first line alone, the Turks had almost a twofold superiority in the number of battalions; but in reality, taking into account the actual strength of the units on both sides, the Turks had a threefold superiority. In fact, Armenian battalions averaged not even 400 bayonets, whereas among the Turks this figure reached at least 700. These 30 Armenian battalions, whose total strength did not exceed 12,000 men, had to fight against fifty Turkish battalions with a total strength of 35,000 men.

An impartial historian of the future will no doubt do justice to the actions of the Armenian Corps and decide whether Armenia had reason to throw itself without hesitation into the struggle with all its military forces, or whether, on the contrary, after the collapse of the Russian front it should have allowed the Turks to occupy the country without resistance.

But what fate would have awaited Armenia and its population if the Turks, with their method of resolving the Armenian question, had established their rule in the country for seven months?

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CHAPTER XXIV: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CITY AND DISTRICT OF BAKU

We have already indicated that Transcaucasia, having refused to recognise Soviet authority, formed at the end of November 1917 an autonomous administrative body called the Transcaucasian Commissariat, which included representatives of all parties and all nationalities of the territory. The authority of this body was exercised very unevenly in different regions of Transcaucasia, and in particular in the city and district of Baku its authority was nil.

Several tens of thousands of workers in the Baku district, employed in oil production and related industries, allowed themselves to be carried away by Bolshevik doctrine. The Executive Committee of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, which before the Bolshevik revolution had recognised the Provisional Government in Petrograd, refused to submit to the Transcaucasian authority in Baku and subsequently prevented the Baku district from entering the Transcaucasian Republic.

At the beginning of January 1918, bands of Azerbaijani Tatars, incited by Turkish emissaries, interrupted the Baku–Tiflis railway line, thus cutting Baku off from the rest of Transcaucasia.

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The struggle for possession of this great centre did not take long to begin.

The Bolsheviks, having consolidated their power in Petrograd and Moscow, set about spreading their influence in the provinces. Baku, with its oil district and developed industry, was of vital importance for Russia, isolated from the outside world and its markets.

On the other hand, the Muslims, who constituted the overwhelming majority of the population of the district, asserted their right to power on national grounds, which had assumed great importance during the revolution.

Turkish emissaries urged the Muslims toward energetic measures. In view of the collapse of the Russian Caucasian Front, the Central Powers were making plans to seize Baku with Turkish assistance. Apart from the possibility of securing oil products, absolutely indispensable for the continuation of the war, possession of this region opened routes across the Caspian Sea to Persia, the Transcaspian region, and Turkestan, from where it would be possible to stir up revolt in Afghanistan and thus threaten British possessions in India.

In order to defend Armenian interests in Baku, an Armenian National Council was organised, relying on the few Armenian military units in the district.

At the moment when the Baku–Tiflis railway connection was cut, the following forces were in Baku: the 2nd Armenian Marching Regiment (700 men), an irregular partisan battalion formed by Amazasp (800 men), a Dashnak detachment (50 men), 2 guns without breech mechanisms, and 5 machine guns. In addition to these organised elements, several thousand Armenian soldiers sent from the Western Front to reinforce the Armenian Corps were present in Baku.

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Besides these units, there was in Baku an “International Regiment,” wholly devoted to the Bolshevik cause.

The city lived in expectation of horror.

The Armenian population had every reason to fear Muslim hostility, which, given the national antagonism, was bound to lead to massacres of the civilian population. To prevent this, Armenian units were posted in the city along the boundaries separating the Armenian quarter from the Tatar quarter, as well as at several points in the suburbs, namely in Armenikend, in Kishli, in the White City, and elsewhere.

The political situation was so complex that the slightest incident could provoke an explosion of barely restrained passions.

This incident, insignificant in itself yet signalling the bloody events that followed, occurred on 17 March 1918.

A small group of cavalrymen of the Caucasian Division, formed from local inhabitants and returned to the Caucasus from the Western Front, arrived in Baku under Lieutenant Asadullaev to bury with honours one of their volunteers, the son of the millionaire Tagiev. After completing the ceremony, they boarded a vessel to depart for Lenkoran across the Caspian Sea, but were attacked by the Bolsheviks, who sought to disarm them. The leaders of the Baku Bolsheviks, Shaumyan (appointed by Lenin as Commissar for Transcaucasia) and Japaridze, appealed to the Armenian National Council for assistance, but the latter refused to participate in an action that could have disastrous consequences for the civilian population. Thus, the cavalrymen were disarmed by the Bolsheviks alone.

On the morning of 18 March, the Musavatists (the Muslim Federalist party) presented the Bolsheviks with an

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ultimatum, expiring at 6 p.m., demanding the return of the weapons to the cavalrymen representing the local Caucasian population, threatening to resort to force in case of refusal.

Informed of this event and fully aware that a clash between Muslims and Bolsheviks would inevitably involve the Armenians, the Armenian National Council decided to bar the Musavatists from entering the Armenian quarter if their threats continued.

At about 6:30 p.m. on 18 March, a crowd of armed Muslims rushed, firing rifles, at the Armenian quarter of the city. The attack was repelled, but disorderly clashes continued throughout the night of 18–19 March, all day on the 19th, and partly on the 20th and 21st. During the street fighting, when national hatred on both sides reached its height, the peaceful urban population also suffered. Meanwhile measures were taken to protect it, and about 14,000 Muslims found refuge in the Mailov Brothers’ Theatre and other public buildings in the Armenian quarter.

Armenian units lost 6 officers and 60 soldiers killed and wounded.

***

To organise a more effective defence of the Armenian population and the Baku district, the Armenian National Council decided to form a competent military body under its authority. Its choice fell upon General A. Bagratuni (an Armenian), former commander of the Petrograd Military District, who had just arrived in Baku. He was entrusted with supreme direction of all military affairs.

For their part, after

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the failure of their attack, the Musavatist leaders returned to Elisabethpol to organise the struggle for the capture of Baku.

At the end of March, Muslims began an offensive against Baku from the directions of Dagestan and Elisabethpol.

From Dagestan a group under the command of former Russian army general Talishinsky advanced. On 27 March this group appeared before the railway station of Khurdalan but was dispersed by a small detachment (700 men) under Colonel Kazarov (an Armenian). This detachment advanced and occupied Gudermes station on the Vladikavkaz railway.

On 1 April military operations began from the direction of Elisabethpol.

A detachment under Prince Magalov, a former colonel of the Russian army, consisting of a regular Tatar cavalry regiment (returned from the Western Front) reinforced by armed bands, approached Adjikabul station on the Transcaucasian railway.

To repel this threat to Baku there were only Amazasp’s volunteers (500 men) with two machine guns and one gun, supported by an armoured train. Disembarking from the latter at Duvan station, the volunteers advanced and captured the enemy position at Adjikabul after an eight-hour battle. The Tatars retreated toward Elisabethpol. A new attack to seize Adjikabul, launched several days later, was likewise repelled, and the Armenian volunteers occupied a defensive position at Adjikabul to cover Baku from that direction.

In these engagements the volunteers lost 7 killed and 22 wounded, but captured several dozen locomotives and about one hundred railway wagons.

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These actions in the directions of Khachmaz and Adjikabul, located 100 and 160 kilometres from Baku respectively, eliminated all immediate dangers to the city. This circumstance significantly enhanced the prestige of the Baku Bolshevik Executive Committee. The Caspian flotilla went over to its side.

The military units were entirely dependent on the Executive Committee in matters of finance, food supply, and equipment. The Bolsheviks also demanded the resignation of the Armenian National Council as a political body and the dissolution of the Armenian military units, in order to incorporate them into the Bolshevik forces that it had been decided to form.

Despite the complete divergence of views between the Armenian leadership and the Bolsheviks regarding internal policy, the former saw in the latter allies for the defence of Baku and its district; all the more so since in Baku the Bolsheviks were very moderate in attempting to apply their doctrines.

On this subject Mr P. G. La Chesnais wrote in his book The Peoples of Transcaucasia During the War and Before the Peace, p. 80:

The Soviet regime was established on the basis of a strange but fateful compromise, because they did not want the domination of the moderate Russians, with whom the Armenians would have entered into alliance, and they could not accept the domination of the Tatars, which would have meant the incorporation of Baku into the Transcaucasian Republic then being formed. Shaumyan, an Armenian Bolshevik, thus became chairman of the Soviet. But it is difficult to imagine an institution more opposed in essence to Bolshevik policy, whose principle was to admit no compromise in the formation of organs of power. The Baku Soviet was Bolshevik only in name, because it in reality represented all the principal political tendencies. The Bolshevik current

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obviously enjoyed greater support, but it could not establish absolute authority.

The Armenians did not pursue territorial acquisitions, but confined themselves to the defence of the Baku district, because after its capture by the Turco-Tatars the peaceful Armenian population would have been doomed to inevitable destruction. At the same time, the defence of Baku, by attracting to this point a portion of the enemy forces, eased the general military position of Armenia, exhausted by unequal struggle with the enemies surrounding it. Only the Bolsheviks, who possessed the Caspian flotilla based at Astrakhan, could supply the Armenians with the arms, equipment, and provisions necessary for the units being formed and for the continuation of the struggle.

For these reasons, on 26 April 1918 the Armenian National Council accepted the ultimatum of the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution, headed by Shaumyan.

The formation of military units began. It was carried out under the red banner, but in reality these formations were Armenian, since 95 per cent of their effective strength were of that nationality. The last Russian echelons had passed through Baku in February, returning to Russia.

At first it was decided to form four separate brigades, each of four battalions, but events soon compelled additional recruitment, and the number of battalions was increased to 29.

The artillery consisted of 54 three-inch guns of various types, including breech-loading, mountain, and howitzers, grouped into 9 batteries: 6 field, 2 howitzer, and 1 mountain. The number of machine guns was insufficient. As for cavalry,

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only 2 squadrons could be formed instead of the planned regiment, and for technical troops the formation of a sapper battalion and an armoured car detachment was begun.

It was decided to combine the brigades into divisions by August, but events did not permit this reorganisation to be completed.

These hastily created units did not possess the qualities of regular troops. Their formation was based, at best, on revolutionary enthusiasm. Armenian soldiers returning from the Western Front had already been influenced by revolutionary propaganda, which made the maintenance of discipline impossible. In the absence of a sufficient number of professional officers, their places had in most cases to be filled by men lacking any technical training.

Weapons, equipment, and uniforms were even more varied.

It was necessary to make do with what could be found locally or what the Bolsheviks brought from Astrakhan.

The effective strength of a battalion averaged no more than 400 bayonets, and the number of active troops never exceeded 10–12 thousand combatants.

Such were the forces hastily engaged in the struggle against three Turkish divisions, later reinforced by other regular and irregular troops.

Colonel Kazarov (an Armenian) was appointed commander of the troops of the Baku district.

We have already noted that to cover the Baku district from the direction of Dagestan, a detachment had occupied Gudermes station.

On 8 May unexpected news arrived that the local Armenian garrison of the town of Kuba had been

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taken by surprise and destroyed. At the same time reports were received of enemy forces concentrating near Khachmaz station.

It was decided immediately to send a detachment to Khachmaz to relieve the Gudermes group, which might be cut off after the loss of Kuba.

The detachment consisted of one and a half infantry battalions, 2 squadrons, and 2 guns.

The first engagement with the enemy took place on 9 May three kilometres west of Khachmaz station. The enemy retreated toward Kuba, and the town was captured after eight hours of fighting. Among the dead two Turkish officers were identified by their uniforms.

On 13 May crowds of Dagestanis again attacked from the direction of the village of Kusary but were repulsed and retreated in disorder, vigorously pursued by the victors, who captured the village of Kusary and seized one gun and two machine guns.

After the dispersal of these bands, the villages of the district submitted, and until the end of events neither the city nor the Baku district was troubled again from the Dagestan side.

Having accomplished its mission, the detachment was recalled to Baku.

***

At the beginning of June the three Transcaucasian republics were compelled to conclude peace with Turkey. Under the terms of the peace treaty the Turks received the right of free passage for their troops throughout the entire territory of Transcaucasia for as long as the war between the Central Powers and the Entente continued.

We have seen that on 1 June the Turks occupied with two divisions the districts of Djelal-Oglu and

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Karakilisa, grouping the remainder of their forces around Alexandropol, Kars, and south of Erivan.

After the signing of the peace treaty, the Turks were able immediately to move their divisions from Karakilisa and Djelal-Oglu along the highway to Dilijan and to Akstafa station, and to transport them by rail to Elisabethpol.

At Elisabethpol was the headquarters of the “Islamic Army,” recently formed under the command of Nuri Pasha, brother of Enver Pasha.

In addition to these divisions, which if necessary could be reinforced by rifle units of the 9th Army stationed at Kars, troops of the Azerbaijan Republic were to be incorporated into this army.

The objective of this army was the occupation of the Baku district, with subsequent advance along the western shore of the Caspian Sea to Petrovsk.

This operation was to be facilitated by the fact that the army was to manoeuvre in a country with an exclusively Muslim population, which saw in the Turks its liberators.

The Revolutionary Committee for the Defence of Baku therefore had to deal not only with irregular bands of Azerbaijani Tatars, but also with disciplined units of the Turkish army.

It was necessary to extend the defensive zone of Baku in order to obtain greater freedom of manoeuvre, with the aim of achieving partial successes in the struggle against the advance detachments of the “Islamic Army,” which was still in the process of concentration.

In accordance with this plan it was decided immediately to go over to the offensive against the leading Turkish columns advancing toward Adjikabul and, after repelling their advance, to occupy the line village of Aksu-Kürdamir

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station-village of Petropavlovsk. The occupation of Aksu and Kürdamir station covered Shemakha, from which the road led to Baku, turning the right flank of this centre’s district, while the forces at Petropavlovsk covered the left flank of the Adjikabul position.

After occupying this line, the defence of the district was pushed back to 160 kilometres from the city of Baku.

On 5 June the transport of troop trains to Adjikabul began. After weak resistance, the Turkish advance guards withdrew to Kürdamir.

The attack on Kürdamir was to be carried out by 9 battalions advancing along the railway line.

Another (right) column, consisting of 4 battalions with 2 guns, was to disembark at the Nefteprovodnaya station and move on Aksu, thus threatening the enemy’s rear and easing the task of the central column.

Finally, a third (left) column, consisting of 4 battalions and supported by a river flotilla, was to clear the banks of the Kura and the terrain between it and the railway.

The enemy did not offer serious resistance and on 12 June retreated west to Karabudzhak.

The columns then received new directives: on 13 June the right column was to advance from Kürdamir toward Aksu and, after taking that village, move west, take Gökchay, and from there strike into the enemy’s rear at Mususli, while the central column at the same time was to attack frontally.

The left column was to seize the villages of Petropavlovsk and Salyany.

To the north of the right column, Amirov’s partisans (an Armenian) were to operate, advancing along

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the spurs of the southern slope of the Caucasus range in order to attack Gökchay from the north.

The whole operation in practice was reduced to the advance of the right column, since the central column had to wait for the right column’s progress toward Gökchay.

For this reason we shall begin our account with a description of the actions of the right column.

Beginning its advance on the Aksu–Karamaryan–Gökchay axis on 13 June, the column met resistance from the enemy’s forward elements, and only on 16 June did its advance guard—consisting of one battalion and a sotnia—manage to seize the village of Karamaryan. The enemy withdrew toward Gökchay, leaving behind 2 machine guns, which fell into the hands of the victors. The latter lost 4 killed and 12 wounded.

It was established that the column was facing the enemy’s advance guards, and that the enemy, superior in numbers, was concentrating in the Gökchay area.

At 7 a.m. on 17 June the enemy went over to the offensive, but after a fierce battle that lasted the entire day, the right column not only managed to hold all its positions, but even advanced about 2 kilometres west of Karamaryan, capturing two 75-mm guns, 3 machine guns, ammunition, and rifles. Enemy losses were very heavy; the column’s losses amounted to 12 killed and 46 wounded.

However, the column could not develop its success, since the enemy was constantly receiving reinforcements. It therefore remained on the positions it had won until 26 June.

We have already said that the central column

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remained at Kürdamir, awaiting the prospects of the right column in the direction of Gökchay.

Thus, on 26 June, the troops defending the Baku district occupied the Karamarian-Kurdamir-Zoubovka line.

The left column encountered superior forces of Azerbaijani Tatars led by Turkish officers, and was unable to advance beyond the village of Zubovka and seize the villages of Petropavlovsk and Salyany as envisaged in the plan of operations.

Subsequent events showed that it would have been better to be satisfied with the results obtained, halt on the line reached, and fortify it for stubborn resistance. But the army commander, having received on 25 June information that one Turkish division was moving from Elisabethpol toward Gökchay and another toward Yevlakh, and that the headquarters of the “Islamic Army” was to be transferred to Ujari station, decided to repeat the manoeuvre that had hitherto succeeded—namely, to attack the enemy forces at Mususli station and at Gökchay before the Turks had time to concentrate them.

An operation of such scale, with troops whose real strength we have characterised above, was very risky, all the more so since the enemy had forced them into inactivity for ten days.

The columns received orders to attack the enemy. The right was to seize Gökchay, while the central column was to take Mususli station.

On 27 June the right column attacked the enemy occupying the heights east of Gökchay. Despite the enemy’s numerical superiority, the attack succeeded, and as a result of the fighting on 27 and 28 June the Turks withdrew 6 kilometres from their original positions. Armenian losses exceeded 260 killed and wounded.

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On 29 June the enemy launched a counter-offensive.

The column held firm on 29 and 30 June and 1 July, repulsing on 30 June eleven successive attacks, but by the evening of 1 July, seeing both flanks threatened with encirclement, it withdrew fighting to Karamaryan, and, unable to hold there, retreated on 2 July to positions near the village of Aksu, where it established itself. Aksu had to be held at any cost in order to cover the evacuation of the local Armenian population.

The column’s fighting capacity fell sharply as a result of losses which, after 10 June, exceeded 7 officers and 265 soldiers killed and 16 officers and 534 soldiers wounded—a total of 822 men—and of cholera, which broke out owing to the lack of potable water, inadequate food, and the heat.

The column had about 1,000 sick in its ranks, and its strength, which at the start of operations exceeded 4,400 men, fell to 2,400.

Under these conditions the column was no longer capable of resisting the Turkish advance, since the Turks had already managed to concentrate an entire division against it.

At Aksu the column was reinforced by Amirov’s partisans, who were waging guerrilla warfare in the mountains.

After holding its positions against repeated Turkish attacks and covering the evacuation of the Armenian population, the column, seeing its left flank enveloped and the enemy threatening to break through the Aksu–Kürdamir line, began on 4 July to withdraw toward Shemakha, where it arrived on 6 July.

During this time the central column also began its offensive on 27 June with an attack against the enemy established at Mususli station, intending to outflank its right wing.

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This attack failed, since it was undertaken by only part of the column instead of committing all forces from the outset, and also because of the marshy and impassable terrain on the enemy’s right flank. A new attack, combined with a movement to envelop the enemy’s left flank, also failed. For their part, the Turks did not exploit their success, and the central column managed to hold Kürdamir station without being disturbed. But the right column’s retreat from Aksu exposed the central column’s right flank, and to meet this danger it sent several units in that direction on 4 July, which seized the village of Karasakal.

Thus, as of 6 July the Baku forces held the following line: the town of Shemakha–the village of Karasakal–Kürdamir station.

On that day, at Aliat station on the Transcaucasian railway, Colonel Bicherakhov arrived from Persia with his detachment, and was immediately appointed by the Baku Revolutionary Committee as commander-in-chief of the entire district.

***

Before continuing our account of subsequent events, it is necessary to say a few words about the origin of Bicherakhov’s detachment and the personality of its leader.

The Russian expeditionary corps in Persia, like other troops of the Caucasian Front, fell under the corrosive influence of the revolution. Entire units began leaving the front to return to Russia.

Colonel Bicherakhov (a Terek Cossack), serving in the 1st Caucasian Cossack Division, made a heroic attempt to unite around himself the sound

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elements still remaining in the corps in order to continue the struggle. A portion of the Cossacks, untouched by propaganda, responded to his call and gathered around him. Soon he had 1,200–1,500 supporters.

Recognising the insufficiency of his forces for independent action, and consciously identifying with Allied interests, Bicherakhov offered his services to the British command in Persia.

By the time the Russian expeditionary corps withdrew from Persia, the British had firmly established themselves in Mesopotamia and replaced the Russian troops that had left Kermanshah.

After the collapse of the Caucasian Front, the British faced the prospect of seeing all northern Persia fall under Turkish control, and for this reason they hastened to accept Bicherakhov’s proposal. With his loyal soldiers he had already occupied the city of Qazvin. The British also undertook the full maintenance of the Cossack partisans.

The British command, fully aware of the importance of keeping northern Persia in its hands, ordered a call throughout its units for “volunteers, officers and non-commissioned officers for an extraordinary and dangerous mission in the East.”

General Dunsterville, who received the task of occupying northern Persia, landed at Basra in January. Establishing contact with Colonel Bicherakhov’s detachment at Qazvin, he decided to move on Enzeli, with the Cossacks in the vanguard, since they knew the terrain and were accustomed to the tricks of the local population, trained by Turkish emissaries.

After forcing the Menjil gorge, the Cossacks easily cleared the remaining stretch of road of the

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enemy, and on 17 February Dunsterville’s brigade, though small in number, reached Enzeli, a port on the Caspian Sea.17

Dunsterville’s detachment, after occupying Enzeli and several points for its line of communications with Qazvin, confined itself to maintaining order in the region and watching events. It remained in this position until August 1918.

After the British occupation of Enzeli, Bicherakhov had nothing more to do in Persia, since everything seemed calm on that side, while the Turks had begun their offensive against Baku. Consequently, Bicherakhov decided to go to the aid of that city.

He managed without much difficulty to obtain a gunboat for his purposes, after which the entire Caspian flotilla—intimidated moreover by the threat that fire would be opened against it in case of refusal—joined him.

At the same time he refused to send his men to Baku on small packet boats and ensured that a sufficient number of small vessels were assembled at Enzeli in order to transport his entire detachment in one trip.

To shield his detachment from the harmful influence of Bolshevik propaganda, he bypassed Baku and landed at Aliat station.

The Baku Soviet was forced to put a good face on a bad situation. But, wary of Bicherakhov’s intentions, it in turn summoned from Astrakhan the regiment of Commissar Petrov.

Thus, in the defence of Baku, alongside the Armenians and the Bolshevik detachment of Commissar Petrov, there took part Bicherakhov’s Cossack detachment, which had fought those same Bolsheviks with such energy in Persia. Circumstances

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proved stronger than doctrines, and yesterday’s enemies joined hands with the single aim of defending Baku against all attempts to seize it by the Turks and the Central Powers.

***

Immediately after being appointed commander of the Baku defence forces, Colonel Bicherakhov returned at once to the front. His first aim was to halt the Turkish advance in order, at the earliest opportunity, to pass to a counter-offensive.

Taking advantage of the fact that Kürdamir station was still in the hands of the central column, on 8 July he ordered it to hold its ground there, while the right column was to defend Shemakha. The Cossacks, meanwhile, were to seize Karasakal and Aksu and strike into the rear of the Turkish column operating in the direction of Shemakha.

However, reinforcements continued to arrive for the Turks, and the Cossack attack against the enemy group in the Karasakal–Aksu area failed. The enemy in turn went over to the offensive from Karasakal toward Kürdamir, outflanking the right wing and threatening the rear of the central column.

Under threat of encirclement, the central column, together with Bicherakhov’s Cossacks, withdrew on 10 July from Kürdamir to Kerrar.

On 13 July the Turks heavily shelled the position at Kerrar, and on 14 July began their attack. Throughout that day and on 15 July they managed to approach the position to no closer than 800–1,000 paces, but the column was severely shaken. All reserves were committed to battle, and the men were exhausted by three days of continuous fighting and the terrible heat.

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On the evening of 16 July, an outflanking movement by the enemy was detected on the right flank of the position. There was nothing to oppose it, since all the troops were pinned down by the enemy’s energetic assault, and not a single man could be withdrawn from the line of battle.

During the night of 16-17 July, the column, together with Bicherakhov’s Cossacks, withdrew from Kerrar to a new position about 10 kilometres east of that village. The enemy did not pursue.

We have seen that the right column had been ordered to hold Shemakha. It did so successfully until 20 July, but on that day the enemy, having received reinforcements, went over to the offensive, enveloping the column’s left flank. The Turks’ superiority in artillery and cavalry, which carried out a deep outflanking manoeuvre, forced the column to abandon its position and withdraw fighting.

On 21 July, covered by a rearguard, it retreated to the village of Marasi, where it received orders from Colonel Bicherakhov to continue its withdrawal to Khurdalan station. The column withdrew slowly, holding back the enemy with continuous rearguard actions, and reached Khurdalan on 30 July, from where on 31 July it moved to Balajari station.

The entire distance from the village of Marasi to Balajari station—85 kilometres—was covered in 10 days, advancing on average no more than 8 kilometres per day, under constant enemy pressure.

We left the central column between the stations of Kerrar and Sagiri. The enemy did not disturb it, and Colonel Bicherakhov, having ordered the right column to withdraw to Balajari, directed on 20 July that the central column be transported by rail to Adjikabul station,

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leaving a rearguard of 2 battalions with cavalry at Mugan station.

After the right column occupied Balajari station, the central column withdrew on 30 July to Aibat station, where it joined the left column, recalled from the village of Zubovka.

Thus, on 31 July the Baku forces held the Balajari–Aibat station line, 5–7 kilometres from Baku.

This marked the beginning of close encirclement.

The troops were regrouped. The units of the right column, in view of their heavy losses—of 4,000 bayonets only 1,800 remained—were withdrawn into Baku for replenishment. Balajari was to be occupied by Bicherakhov’s Cossacks, but they advanced forward to Sumgait in order to operate in the enemy’s rear. As a result, the units of the right column had to return once again to the front.

The position, divided into three sectors, began at Mount Beyuk-dag, following the line of Mount Mud Volcano–Balajari station–the Slaughterhouse–Mount Patamdar, and ending at the Caspian Sea.

The leading circles of the Executive Committee regarded the situation in Baku as hopeless, and at a meeting on 31 July the Committee decided to resign its authority and surrender the city in order to avoid useless bloodshed.

However, representatives of the Armenian national party “Dashnaktsutyun” protested against this decision and succeeded in winning over to their side the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Socialists, and the sailors of the Caspian flotilla. With their support they formed a new government under the name of

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the “Baku Dictatorship,” resolved to continue the struggle at any cost and to call for assistance from the British detachment under General Dunsterville, which, as we have seen, had been concentrated in Enzeli since February.

The driving force of the resistance to the end were the Armenians, who could rely only on their own strength.

British assistance was highly uncertain, and after the dissolution of the Executive Committee headed by Shaumyan, Petrov’s detachment, numbering 3,000 men, abandoned its positions and was disarmed.

General A. Bagratuni was elected Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs. In fact, ever since the time of the Executive Committee, and despite his wounds, he had been directing the defence of the city of Baku.

***

On 2 August the Turks began an attack on the left sector from the direction of the Wolf’s Gate. The attack was halted by frontal resistance and by an outflanking thrust from Balajari, but the Turks nevertheless managed to hold their ground and entrench themselves within 500 paces of the city’s defensive belt.

On the evening of the following day, after a preliminary though not very prolonged bombardment, the Turks renewed their attack against the same sector, but achieved no greater success than on the previous day.

On 4 August the enemy, taking advantage of its superiority in artillery, opened intense fire throughout the day against the entire Baku defensive front, and at 3 a.m. on 5 August launched a general assault. Catastrophe seemed inevitable, and the entire Armenian population capable of bearing arms was sent into the trenches. In the end the Turks were repulsed along

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the whole front, and by 8 a.m. the Armenians themselves counterattacked. The enemy could not hold out and by noon fled, leaving 16 machine guns and large numbers of dead and wounded on the field.

But Armenian losses were also serious. On the right sector alone they amounted to 14 officers and 415 soldiers killed and wounded.

The numerical insufficiency of the troops, as well as their exhaustion, made it impossible to pursue the Turks immediately—especially since Colonel Bicherakhov’s Cossacks, who were at Sumgait, ceased fighting and, with 20 guns and 40 machine guns, moved off toward Petrovsk.

Thus Armenian forces alone, numbering only 8,000 men (Petrov’s detachment having been disarmed and Bicherakhov’s Cossacks having withdrawn to Petrovsk), achieved a tactical success against three regular Turkish divisions under the command of Mursal Pasha. After this, a relative lull set in.

On 5 August General Dokuchaev (a Russian) was appointed commander of the troops. Urgent steps were taken to organise and equip the forces and to strengthen the positions.

Confidence in the possibility of salvation increased, all the more so because news was received of the arrival of the British, who were to land a detachment of 4,000 men and subsequently expand it into an expeditionary corps of 20,000.

***

The first British echelon arrived in Baku on 5 August, the very day the Armenians achieved such a notable success against the Turks. This echelon consisted of

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several dozen staff personnel of General Dunsterville’s divisional headquarters and clerk-sergeants. It took no fewer than 12 days to transport this small brigade, which did not exceed 3,000 men, from Enzeli to Baku. The last echelon arrived on 17 August.

It should be noted that, on paper, the brigade was to consist of 3,000 men, but in reality its combat strength did not exceed 1,800; the remainder were auxiliary personnel, mostly Indians, serving in transport and rear services.

Although the British arrived as allies and pursued the same objectives as the Armenians—the defence of the Baku district and the blocking of Turkish access to the Caspian Sea and the roads leading into northern Persia—it proved impossible to establish unified command over all the troops concentrated in Baku.

General Dunsterville was completely independent, and with General Bagratuni’s consent his brigade occupied a separate sector at Mud Volcano on the right flank of the defensive line.

No military specialist is required to understand how abnormal such a situation is, when troops pursuing the same objective do not obey a single commander.

It is not without interest to quote here General Dunsterville’s opinion of those who were the driving force behind the city’s defence: “On 19 August I continued my inspection of the front and late in the evening saw members of the Armenian National Council, among whom were several very worthy men. I also paid a visit to the Minister of War,

[PAGE 201]

General Bagratuni (an Armenian), who was still ill, suffering from the effects of the amputation of his left leg, and he made a very favourable impression on me.” (p. 232).

But the overall situation was assessed by the British commander as unpromising. On the same day, 19 August, he noted: “The situation in Baku is undoubtedly very bad, and it seems that the most we can hope for is purely passive defence with probable ultimate defeat. If a thousand or two of our men arrived, all problems would be solved because of the possibility of counterattacks. Without them our position is hopeless.”

Thus one of the senior commanders of Baku’s defence, even before committing his troops to battle, regarded the situation as desperate.

This conviction of inevitable final defeat on the part of one of the leaders of the defence could not but affect the outcome of the intense struggle that was about to begin.

The absence of official data, as well as the scope of the present study, prevent us from examining why all of General Dunsterville’s requests, in which he insistently urged the urgent dispatch of reinforcements, were ignored. It nevertheless appears that only after the fall of Baku did the headquarters in Baghdad and the Indian Army realise that not Mosul alone, but above all the Caucasus, was the gateway to India.

General Dunsterville was recalled and replaced by General Thomson, commander of the 14th Division, reorganised into the “Army of North Persia,” which later occupied Transcaucasia.

***

After the assault of 5 August, a relative calm

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settled on the Baku defensive front. The Turks awaited new reinforcements, while the Armenians, determined to fight to the last, took advantage of this to undertake by mid-August a series of limited offensive operations in order to straighten and strengthen the defensive line.

This line ran from Mount Beyuk-dag through Mud Volcano–Balajari–the Slaughterhouse–Mount Patamdar–to the seashore. The territory north of Beyuk-dag to the sea was not defended due to the insufficiency of available forces, and small enemy groups were able to infiltrate east of the city, onto the Absheron Peninsula, in order to arm and organise the local Tatar population. The village of Mashtagi was occupied by the Turks.

In view of its tactical importance for the security of the defensive line, it was decided to drive the Turks out by force, but two attempts, made with insufficient means, failed, and the result achieved was limited to the occupation of the village of Diga to protect Baku from the north.

On the morning of 29 August the Turks, with considerable forces, attacked Mud Volcano, which was held by the British. Despite their heroic defence, the enemy’s superiority and heavy losses compelled the British to evacuate part of their position.

On 1 September the Turks went over to the offensive against the right sector, occupying the line of the villages of Diga–the Binagadi Oilfields–Mount Beyuk-dag.

The attacks could not be repelled, and the defensive line of the right sector was moved back to the line: the village of Balajari–the village of Balakhany–the village of Sabunchi–the village of Bulbuli–the village of Surakhany–the village of Zikh, with the occupation of the villages of Zabrat and Romany as outposts.

The result of the Turkish operations of 1 September was the complete encirclement of Baku.

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Communication with the outside world was maintained only across the Caspian Sea. In vain did the Baku Dictatorship place its hopes on the arrival of British reinforcements. The last of Dunsterville’s echelons had landed on 17 August. The general himself had from the outset doubted the possibility of defending Baku, and the unsuccessful outcome of the battles of 29 August and 1 September must have finally confirmed him in that view. According to some reports, in early September General Dunsterville, considering further defence useless, wished to withdraw his troops and proposed that the Dictatorship enter into negotiations with the enemy; but General Bagratuni energetically opposed such a decision, and in the end it was resolved to continue the struggle.

By 10 a.m. on 13 September information was received that opposite the right sector, on the line between the villages of Zikh and Surakhany, there were significant groups of Tatars, on foot and mounted, reinforced by Turks—about 3,000 men in all.

The battle began at about 11 a.m. and continued until midnight; all enemy attacks were repulsed.

However, these attacks were merely demonstrative, and during the night of 13–14 September the Turks launched a vigorous simultaneous offensive against the left sector of the defensive line and along the entire Mount Patamdar–Wolf’s Gate front. The enemy continually committed fresh forces and on the morning of 14 September occupied the Wolf’s Gate.

The central sector was also attacked, and the crushing superiority of the enemy along the entire front became evident. The defenders, having exhausted all their reserves and lacking any possibility of manoeuvre,

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were compelled to conduct a passive defence, deprived of all means of counterattack.

By 5 p.m. the British, without informing anyone, abandoned their positions and returned to the city to embark on their transport flotilla. This became the signal for a general retreat, and the defensive line had to be moved back to the city limits. In these conditions the Dictatorship decided to abandon the defence of Baku.

Late in the evening of 14 September the troops began assembling on the quays for embarkation onto transport vessels.

Along the entire line of the city perimeter 4 battalions remained, against which the Turks confined themselves to heavy artillery fire without launching an attack.

By dawn on the 15th up to 8,000 defenders of Baku and civilians had been embarked; at 5 a.m. General Dokuchaev’s staff boarded ship; last, at 6 a.m., when looting had already begun, General Bagratuni and the energetic chairman of the Dashnaktsutyun party, Mr Rostom Zorian, went aboard.

Baku had fallen. The victors gave the city over to plunder by the mob. Turkish troops entered the city only at 5 p.m. on 16 September and somewhat restored order.

During the two days, 15 and 16 September, according to various sources, between 15,000 and 30,000 Armenians were massacred.

***

After having shown the role of the Armenians in the defence of the city and district of Baku, the burden of which fell almost exclusively upon their shoulders, it remains for us to draw attention to the reflection of this stubborn struggle on the course of the World War.

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Because of it, the Central Powers were for a long time deprived of the products of the Baku oil industry, the need for which was felt in the most alarming manner, and access to the Caspian Sea was barred to the Turks, thus hindering their operational plans in northern Persia and beyond the Caspian.

We must not forget that Baku is the principal port of the Caspian Sea, from which the Turks could easily establish contact with the Muslim population inhabiting its shores, whose sympathies were not in doubt. If one accepts the idea of a Pan-Turkic empire, then the Caspian Sea, occupying a central position within it, would have served as the link between the territories that would have formed part of it.

The operations of the Turks and the Transcaucasian Tatars were paralysed for a considerable period by the defence of Baku, and the Turks lacked the time to link Transcaucasia with the Transcaspian regions and to carry out the German plan of raising the Muslim peoples of Central Asia, in order to threaten British domination in India.

As confirmation of the important role which the prolonged defence of Baku played in connection with the general strategic situation on the Eastern theatre of war, we shall cite several passages from the well-known book by Erich Ludendorff (First Quartermaster-General of the German Army), Memoirs of the War (1914–1918), Paris, Payot.

In the chapter “The Basis for Continuing the War” (Vol. I, p. 379), General Ludendorff writes:

Apart from coal, iron and steel, fuel for submarines, motor cars and aircraft, as well as lubricating oils, was of the greatest importance for the conduct of the war in general. From this point of view we were limited to Austria-Hungary and Romania. Since Austria could not produce sufficient oil and all efforts undertaken to increase its production remained without result, Romanian

[PAGE 206]

oil was of exceptional importance to us. But even with deliveries of oil from Romania, the fuel question always remained very serious and caused us the greatest difficulties, both for the conduct of the war and for the life of the country. The resources of the Caucasus opened up favourable prospects for us in 1918.

The impossibility of satisfying the growing needs for petroleum products did not cease to trouble the German dictator throughout the war, together with his growing dissatisfaction with the Turks, who, in his opinion, should have taken Baku much earlier.

In the work cited above (Vol. II, p. 256), Ludendorff wrote: “The Turks were constantly around Tabriz and near Baku.”

He returns to this question (Vol. II, p. 276): “The Turks were before Baku. They had also established themselves in northern Persia, though without advancing very far there.”

In the end, in view of Turkish failures, the German commander-in-chief decided to reinforce them with German troops, in order to become master of the oil-bearing territory of Baku as quickly as possible and at any cost.

Here is what Ludendorff writes in his memoirs (Vol. II, pp. 278–279):

We could count only on the oil of Baku, if we were to take it ourselves. I remember only too well the great shortage of fuel in Germany and all the difficulties caused by the problem of lighting in winter, and all that followed.

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After the offensive of the 7th Army, fuel reserves were exhausted; we were in great need of them. The railways of Ukraine also required oil. We accelerated by exceptional measures, within the limits of what was possible, oil production in Romania, and nevertheless could not hope to cover the deficit. It now seems that this would have been possible by bringing it from Transcaucasia, namely from Baku, if we had at the same time been able to resolve the question of transport. … The decisive question, naturally, was: how to reach Baku…

And further: “It seemed entirely possible: one bold blow, requiring only small forces. The High Command prepared against them (that is, the defenders of Baku. — Trans. note) an attack, with the participation of Nuri’s troops, and sent to Tiflis a cavalry brigade and several battalions. The transfer of troops had not yet been completed when Nuri had already taken Baku.”

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DOCUMENTS WHICH SERVED AS MATERIAL FOR THIS NARRATIVE

1. Materials collected by the commission chaired by General Kulebyakin

2. Field journal of the Armenian Corps

3. Copies of telegrams sent by military telegraph by the headquarters of the Caucasian Front and the Transcaucasian government to the Turkish command. Telegrams of the Turkish command

4. Stenographic records of the sessions of the Transcaucasian Seim

5. Report of General Nazarbekov of 14 February 1919 to the Armenian government

6. Report of Colonel Morel, head of the delegation for negotiations on the cessation of hostilities, to the commandant of the Kars fortress, 25 April 1918

7. Report of General Dokuchaev, commander of the troops and fleet of the city and district of Baku, of 6 October 1918. City of Port-Petrovsk

8. History of the 3rd Baku Brigade under the command of Amazasp

9. Report of the commander of the 4th Baku Brigade on the events in Baku from 17 March to 14 September 1918

10. Erich Ludendorff, First Quartermaster-General of the German Armies. Memoirs of the War 1914–1918. Payot, Paris.

11. P.G. La Chesnais: The Peoples of Transcaucasia during the War and before the Peace. Edition Bossard, 43 Rue Madame, Paris, 1921.

12. Poidebard: The Military Role of the Armenians on the Caucasian Front after the Defection of the Russian Army. Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1920.

NOTES

Read the article over at UnHerd.

Below is the text as submitted, before editing

It became clear over the last few days that the long-awaited second American-Israeli military campaign against the Islamic Republic in Iran was imminent. Though Donald Trump’s administration was still ostensibly negotiating with the mullahs over the nuclear-weapons program—and there were positive noises from the Omani mediators—the President was obviously losing patience. There was also the tell of “Secretary of Everything” Marco Rubio announcing a trip to Israel next week that included no journalists, a breach of protocol so bizarre nobody could think of a precedent. The purported trip was duly declared cancelled a few hours after hostilities began on Saturday morning.

What was unusual about the operation—dubbed “Epic Fury” by the U.S. and “Roaring Lion” by Israel—was that it began in broad daylight. Administration officials soon solved the mystery, telling the press that a “target of opportunity” had presented itself, causing them to “accelerate the timeline”. The target turned out to be a meeting of the most senior leaders of the Iranian theocracy, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was confirmed as among the dead yesterday afternoon. This was made possible by Israel’s infiltration of the Iranian regime, a factor for many years, and the Israeli spy was able to show a picture of Khamenei’s body to Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Khamenei’s demise overshadows even the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran’s Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, which was a watershed moment in the region. The only other Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founded the ideology and structures of the Islamic Republic, but he only held the post for ten years, spending much of that time in revolutionary faction fights and a war with Saddam Hussein. Khamenei has ruled for thirty-seven years—the same as the last Shah, incidentally, another of the strange little parallels between the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution and the present uprising. Khamenei consolidated absolute clerical rule, waged worldwide war against Jews, and oversaw a vast imperial expansion into the Arab world and beyond.

Now Khamenei is gone, and with him Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and many other military and intelligence leaders. The signs of hesitancy Trump was displaying two weeks ago have been dispelled. While Trump avoided saying regime change was the American mission, he called on the IRGC to lay down its weapons and told the Iranian people, “the hour of your freedom is at hand”, encouraging them to take advantage of the U.S.-Israeli intervention to seize power from the mullahs. The exiled Crown Prince Reza, who has shown some ability to influence events inside Iran, echoed Trump.

It will not be easy to see the end of such a sophisticated Islamist system, entrenched over nearly half-a-century, with tens of thousands of men who believe protecting this regime is a God-given duty. They testified to their faith by murdering thousands of Iranians in January. However, with such a complete regime decapitation on the first day of this operation, and the likelihood that the U.S. and Israel will continue targeting the second and third layers of the IRGC, as well as its hardware and infrastructure, we are in uncharted territory. There has never been a moment since 1979 when the fate of the Islamic Republic was so uncertain.

Early August 2016 was the point in the U.S. Presidential Election when Donald Trump, the presumed no-hoper candidate, was feuding with the Muslim Gold Star family, hinting broadly that if he lost it was because the vote was rigged, and being renounced by increasing numbers of elected Republicans. Amid this carry-on, it was little noticed that Israel charged Mohammad el-Halabi, the director of the World Vision charity in Gaza, with being a senior HAMAS operative who had diverted humanitarian funds to terrorist activities.

THE CHARGES AGAINST MOHAMMED EL-HALABI

El-Halabi (b. 1978) was arrested on 15 June 2016 and confessed in Shin Bet custody “that he has been a HAMAS member since his youth and had undergone organizational and military training in the early 2000s”, according to Israel.1 “In 2005, HAMAS dispatched El-Halabi to infiltrate World Vision.”

The Israelis said HAMAS had good reason to believe El-Halabi could infiltrate World Vision, which had worked in the Palestinian Territories since 1975, because his father, also a HAMAS member, had “served as head” of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) “educational institutions” for years, and El-Halabi himself had been employed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the Gaza Strip, ostensibly providing jobs to “‘farmers’ in areas close to Gaza’s border with Israel who in fact acted as lookouts for HAMAS”.

The U.N. was—and is—one of the major donors to World Vision, a global Christian NGO that had an annual budget of $2.7 billion and 46,000 staff working in one-hundred countries in 2016. The U.N. and its agencies worked closely with World Vision in Gaza.

After El-Halabi worked his way up to become director of World Vision, “he controlled the budget, equipment, and aid packages”, Israel’s statement went on. El-Halabi thereafter diverted 60% of the charity’s annual budget for Gaza to HAMAS, amounting to over $7 million per year, and used his position to provide specialist equipment and logistical support to the terrorist group, specifically to its military units, Al-Qassam Brigades (Kataib Izzadeen al-Qassam).

Items “ordered on behalf of World Vision” supposedly to assist Gazans in agricultural enterprises—“inter alia, iron rods, digging equipment, pipes, and building materials”—were in fact used “to construct HAMAS military outposts and to dig terror tunnels”, according to Israel. A British government donation of $80,000 (£60,000), given in cash, was stolen entirely to pay the salaries of the HAMAS operatives building a military base codenamed “Palestine”. A project to build greenhouses was used as cover for “sites where terror tunnels were being dug” and another humanitarian effort to rehabilitate fishermen “was actually used to provide motor boats and diving suits for HAMAS’ military marine unit.” During the period of Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt (mid-2012 to mid-2013), “El-Halabi diverted tens of thousands of dollars of the aid organization’s funds to purchase weapons in the Sinai”.

“Another regular method of acquiring equipment for HAMAS”, said Israel, was for El-Halabi to arrange for trucks coming through the Kerem Shalom Crossing between Israel and Gaza to drop their supplies at World Vision-flagged warehouses that in reality belonged to HAMAS: “HAMAS operatives would pick up the supplies in the dead of night.” In this way, the humanitarian aid “that World Vision had intended to go to the needy”—“packages of food, basic commodities, and medical supplies”—was given “almost exclusively to HAMAS terrorists and their families”, Israel reported El-Halabi testified. During the 2014 round of fighting in Gaza, “the terrorists received [World Vision] food packages to sustain them above and below ground, including in terror tunnels.”

The standard means of fraud, by Israel’s account, involved inflating construction costs and sending the difference to HAMAS, and registering HAMAS terrorists and activists as “ghost” employees or among the unemployed eligible for World Vision relief monies. (The latter, according to Israel, was a particular favourite for paying Al-Qassam Brigades, whose terrorists received about one-third of the unemployment budget.) The aftermath of the 2014 war gave HAMAS additional opportunities to fundraise, Israel said. There were World Vision-overseen fundraisers for injured Palestinian children, and children in need of “psychological support” and other healthcare, and HAMAS raked off the cash for its terrorists and their families, sometimes by registering fake children on the lists for aid

Finally, according to the Israeli indictment, El-Halabi had used his status and the protections it gave him to travel within Israel “to engage in serious terrorist activity”, among other things “locating and marking (via GPS) sites near the Erez Crossing that potentially could be used as egress points for HAMAS attack tunnels”.

The Israelis said their “investigation revealed much information concerning additional figures in the Gaza Strip” who exploited the complex of U.N. agencies and “humanitarian” NGOs who collaborated with them for terrorist purposes. “El-Halabi’s statements portray a troubling picture in which U.N. institutions in Gaza are in fact controlled by the Islamist terrorist organization HAMAS”, Israel concluded.

In June 2022, El-Halabi was found guilty on a raft of terrorism charges and in August 2022 he was sentenced to twelve years in prison.

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THE REACTION TO THE CHARGES

The whole ecosystem of political warfare that has become so familiar recently quickly whirred into action. The United Nations and associated custodians of “international law”, the “human rights” activists, “humanitarian” NGOs, Western academics, and the prestige media united in condemnation of Israel.

World Vision denied in 2016 that it was even possible El-Halabi was guilty of the charges: they adhere to “the humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality”, you see, which means the organisation “rejects any involvement in any political, military, or terrorist activities”. And if that was not enough, “World Vision has detailed procedures and control mechanisms in place to ensure that the funds entrusted to us are spent in accordance with applicable legal requirements”. So there was “no reason to believe that the allegations [against El-Halabi] are true”.

When El-Halabi was convicted, Tim Costello, a Baptist minister and former CEO of World Vision Australia (executive director of Micah Australia by then), and Conny Lenneberg, a former regional director for World Vision International in the Middle East, took to the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald to declare: “The verdict overnight announces the demise of the rule of law in Israeli courts.” There was “not a shred of evidence … to substantiate the key charges”, the authors insisted. “El-Halabi was recognised by the U.N. as a humanitarian hero for the calibre of his leadership and commitment to the international humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence. … This case was only ever about discrediting humanitarian work in Gaza.”

Costello et al. were used by an advocacy journalist at the ABC (Australia’s BBC) to further the anti-Israel narrative. El-Halabi’s father, Khalil El-Halabi, was given space in Western newspapers, despite Israel naming him as a HAMAS member, to claim his son “sits in an Israeli jail on the basis of trumped-up charges”, guilty of nothing more than “selfless work supporting Gaza’s people”. El-Halabi Senior also highlighted that El-Halabi Junior “was profiled as one of the U.N.’s ‘Humanitarian Heroes’.” Ostensibly straight news reports by The Associated Press and in The New York Times maintained an air of neutrality, framing the case as a he-said-she-said episode, while telling mostly the defence story and quoting from “human rights” activists who unanimously condemned Israel. The Guardian did its own purported investigation and all will be surprised that it concluded El-Halabi was the victim of an Israeli frame-up.

After an initial wait-and-see statement, the U.N. rallied to El-Halabi’s cause. The amusingly-named U.N. Human Rights Council began including El-Halabi in its encyclicals, the basic themes being that he denied the charges and so did World Vision, which settled the matter, yet Israel continued cruelly torturing him and subjecting him to a secret show trial.

The day before the conviction, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights remained on-message, expressing “serious concerns” over the proceedings, claiming there was a “lack of evidence” El-Halabi had done anything wrong and that there were “credible allegations of ill-treatment in detention”. “U.N. human rights experts”, the notorious Francesca Albanese among them, were up next to say: “Convicting a humanitarian aid worker in serious violation of the right to a fair trial and on baseless charges of ‘terrorism’ is further evidence of Israel’s egregious misuse of counter-terrorism measures to suppress voices of human rights defenders.” The Albanesistas were also sure to point out El-Halabi “was reportedly subject to ill-treatment” [italics added].

By late 2023, the Albanese-led “U.N. experts” had transitioned to a straightforward activist campaign, demanding Israel “reverse the conviction” of El-Halabi release him “immediately”. “Israel is violating international law”, the “human rights” luminaries said, and “using ‘counter-terrorism’ legislation to silence, penalise, and punish Palestinians who engage in legitimate human rights and humanitarian work”.

El-Halabi was released in February 2025, after serving nine years of his twelve-year sentence. Some might have taken notice of El-Halabi being freed because he was among the convicts HAMAS demanded as part of the deal Israel made to recover her hostages taken during the 7 October 2023 pogrom. But not Amnesty International, which put out a statement celebrating El-Halabi’s release and summarising Amnesty’s coverage of the case.

El-Halabi was a “prisoner of conscience”, who had been “tortured, tried in secret hearings, and convicted after a grossly unfair trial”, said Amnesty: this was “a flagrant miscarriage of justice”. Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy, and Campaigns, was quoted saying El-Halabi “was unjustly targeted by Israeli authorities for his humanitarian work”. “His horrifying ordeal behind bars demonstrates how Israel’s discriminatory justice system helps to maintain the cruel system of apartheid against Palestinians”, Rosas added.

Omar Shakir, the recently-departed Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, let it be known in June 2022 that the legal proceedings were a “mockery of due process and the most basic fair trial provisions”, and El-Halabi “should long ago have been released. To continue to cruelly detain him is profoundly unjust.”

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WHAT THE CAPTURED HAMAS FILES SAY

The HAMAS documents recovered by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) from Gaza, seen by The Jerusalem Post and NGO Monitor, leave no doubt that El-Halabi was a senior HAMAS operative at the time he was director of World Vision in Gaza. Not one single participant in the nearly decade-long global disinformation campaign to deny that El-Halabi was a terrorist and vilify Israel for prosecuting him as such has yet so much as acknowledged the discovery of these documents, which was reported two weeks ago, let alone apologised for being so egregiously, categorically wrong.

A key document, entitled, “The Detainee in Zionist Prisons Mohammed Khalil Mohammed el-Halabi”, and dated 11 March 2020, was prepared by the counter-espionage division of HAMAS’s “Ministry of Interior and National Security” (MoINS) in Gaza. The document records the illicit activities El-Halabi undertook on HAMAS’s behalf as part of a counter-intelligence assessment trying to identity the security breach that led to his exposure.

HAMAS was clearly alarmed by Israel’s discovery of El-Halabi because the group had put in place elaborate procedures to shield him from detection. Among other things, El-Halabi “was in contact with [only a] very few parties of brothers in the positive”, the document says. “The positive” is a euphemism used by HAMAS in internal communications to refer to Al-Qassam Brigades.2

The document goes on to describe how tightly HAMAS kept watch over World Vision’s activities and staff. “[A]ll the names of employees working in the association [World Vision] were detailed, under the assumption that the secret witness [in El-Halabi’s trial] is one of the association’s employees working in the Gaza Strip”, the document said, adding that “all the names of employees in the association were examined with information found on the ‘security guide’,” referring to HAMAS’s database of individuals deemed “security threats”.

HAMAS’s effective control of World Vision paid off: they were able to identify who tipped off the Israelis. The 11 March document says: “the indications and evidence have been pointing to Mohammed Khalil Mehdi as the one who gave all the Halabi information.” Mehdi was subsequently apprehended by HAMAS and interrogated. It is most indicative that a copy of the transcript of HAMAS’s interrogation of Mehdi was found “on [El-Halabi’s] personal computer that was seized by the Shabak [a.k.a. Shin Bet]”. Mehdi’s fate is unclear, but it must be presumed he is dead or in Israeli protective custody by now because he was cited by name in the public verdict of the Israeli courts in 2022 as giving evidence “consistent with the operative mechanisms that were detailed by the defendant [i.e., El-Halabi]” in his confession.

The difficulty of gathering and presenting evidence from figures like Mehdi is the reason for the much-complained-about Israeli secrecy during the investigation of El-Halabi. Israel’s methods are as open to criticism as anybody else’s, on the proviso it is acknowledged that there is simply no easy way for liberal States to convert information gathered from counter-intelligence investigations into evidence that can be presented in a legal setting.3

One might also note the irony that the “audit” World Vision said it had conducted, which purportedly cleared El-Halabi, was carried out entirely in secret,4 and the whole organisation has since been convulsed by revelations of its “toxic” culture of secrecy, specifically bullying staff who challenge the leadership, “even … through protected, legitimate channels”, and “routinely” using non-disclosure agreements “to silence staff leaving after negative experiences”.

It may well be this tendency to silence staff who raise uncomfortable issues that led World Vision to fire Mehdi, but the context points to the explanation being the extent of the terrorists’ control over World Vision Gaza. The timing is suggestive: Mehdi was dismissed right after HAMAS identified him as the whistleblower. And this occurred as part of a broader campaign by HAMAS to intimidate witnesses who could provide evidence about El-Halabi to Israel.

A document from 3 March 2020, authored by MoINS’s Branch of Foreign Associations, an element of HAMAS’s Interior Security Mechanism (ISM), reported that the previous day HAMAS had detained World Vision Gaza’s “head of security and safety” as he tried to traverse the Beit Hanoun Crossing (or Erez Crossing). The man had, like many of World Vision’s staff, been placed under surveillance some time earlier “as part of monitoring of the latest updates concerning the case of Mohammed el-Halabi”, the document notes, and “the Division of Crossings and Borders” therefore flagged his attempted crossing. The man was questioned by HAMAS and disclosed that he had been “requested to testify in the Zionist court”, i.e., to Israeli investigators, according to the HAMAS document.

Needless to say, such testimony was never given. A separate HAMAS report from March 2020 boasts: “Our monitoring and coordination with all relevant parties in the case had a role in thwarting multiple schemes to bring about the conviction of Mohammed el-Halabi.” It did not end there.

The minutes of a 15 April 2020 meeting of HAMAS’s “Committee of Non-Governmental Associations”, an MoINS coordinating body for the various HAMAS intelligence, military, and criminal “justice” agencies that deal with the NGOs in the Strip,5 record that the World Vision “head of security and safety” had said during interrogation that another World Vision colleague had been contacted by a lawyer working on El-Halabi’s trial and asked to meet with “Israeli intelligence” at the Beit Hanoun Crossing. The upshot was that this person had been placed under surveillance and all World Vision staff were now “prohibited from going out through the [Beit Hanoun] crossing”.

Perhaps the most significant revelation in the HAMAS documents is that the group had an agent “present at the trial [of El-Halabi] on 21 November 2019”. It speaks to HAMAS’s espionage capabilities, acquired by the organisation’s absorption into Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), that it had a spy at a closed-door hearing inside Israel. It is a revelation freighted with a horrible sense of foreboding, knowing now that four years later such capabilities would play a part in enabling the Simchat Torah pogrom.

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IMPLICATIONS

Part of the absurd “genocide” accusation against Israel is the claim that the IDF has targeted NGOs providing sustenance and care to Gaza’s civilians. Time after time, Israel has insisted that the targeted individuals were terrorists—often providing the name and rank—and, therefore, legitimate targets, in many ways doubly so, since if they were falsely using civilian organisations and facilities as shelter that is another war crime. Almost invariably the response from the disinformation ecosystem has been the same as it was over El-Halabi.

Now that the war is effectively over, there has been some loosening of message discipline and facts are beginning to trickle out bearing on this issue. Yesterday, for example, a series of “martyrdom” notices were released. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), one of the IRGC units that invaded Israel alongside HAMAS on 7 October, celebrated Fadi Jihad Mohammed al-Wadiya, the deputy head of its Military Manufacturing Unit (MMU), who was sent to his paradisical abode by an Israeli airstrike in June 2024. PIJ muted its pleasure about this at the time because, for political warfare purposes, it was much more beneficial to mention only Al-Wadiya’s employment as a physiotherapist for Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF). MSF’s statement, complete with heart-rending photographs of Al-Wadiya treating children, castigated Israel for killing “a health care worker while on his way to provide vital medical care to wounded victims of the endless massacres across Gaza”. Killing Al-Wadiya was “cynical and abhorrent”, MSF went on, “another brutal example of the senseless killing of Palestinian civilians”. When presented with the intelligence of Al-Wadiya’s real employer, MSF as much as said Israel was lying. As recently as October 2025, MSF mourned the “tragic loss” of Al-Wadiya and said it was “outraged” at Israel for his death.

Samir Suleiman Abu Shawish was said to be a civilian employee of MAAN Development Centre, a Palestinian NGO that cultivates “human resources for sustainable development”, when Israel killed him in April 2025: PIJ was proud—nearly a year later—to announce he was commander of its Yabna Battalion in the Rafah Brigade. Alaa Hassan Abdullah Asbihi, a nurse at the European Hospital near Khan Yunis killed in December 2023, was another PIJ Military Manufacturing Unit operative. Mohammed Akram Abdullah al-Kafarna, the head of the Palestinian Nursing Association and nursing supervisor at Kamal al-Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, mourned internationally by medical associations when he was killed in September 2025, was a HAMAS “mujahid”. The “martyrdom” notices also included several journalists—to add to the catalogue of admitted terrorists posing as “journalists” already known about—which rather qualifies activist claims about IDF savagery towards the media. Then there are the UNRWA officials involved in the 7 October carnage, some of whom Israel has settled accounts with. The U.N.’s admission it employed pogromshchiki notwithstanding, it has continued to present UNRWA fatalities as a massacre of the innocents. One could go on, but if the point has not been taken by now it is not going to be.

The IRGC tactics in Gaza are not novel. Terrorism is by definition a political enterprise and violence is often secondary to political warfare. Terrorists are generally weaker actors fighting stronger ones, usually States: they do not expect to win on the battlefield, but to foster narratives of State injustice and brutality, and where possible to provoke such things, to mobilise “their own” community and to generate international pressure that forces concessions from their enemies. To that end, jihadists have been exploiting the epistemological challenge of identifying members of clandestine terrorist organisations to portray action against them as wanton atrocities for a long time. Such an incident was crucial to the IRGC taking power in Iran in 1979 and a more continual campaign—legal in nature, of course, since it was against America—formed the basis of the whole “controversy” over the Al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

A tactic this successful for this long is not going to be set aside anytime soon, and Israel has special disabilities in combatting it. Still, to have cases like Mohammad el-Halabi’s on record, where such irrefutable proof has emerged vindicating Israel’s contention that he was a terrorist operating under civilian cover, provides a starting point for a corrective after three years of propaganda. The long war against jihadism is far from over and the assumptions being inculcated in elite and popular opinion in the West will impact the ability of all democracies to defend themselves from Islamic militancy.

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NOTES

Read the article over at UnHerd.

During the Russian Civil War, which began with—and was an intrinsic to—Lenin’s coup in November 1917, Bolshevik propaganda affixed the label “Whites” or “White Guards” to the anti-Communist forces. The reference was to the white flag of the restored Bourbon Monarchy in France after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Bolshevik narrative was that its opponents wanted to restore the Tsardom, which was portrayed as an autocracy, despite becoming a constitutional Monarchy in 1905-06. This Communist propaganda had an important role contemporaneously in deterring British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from seriously supporting the anti-Bolshevik cause, and has coloured perceptions of the “Whites” ever since.

“In reality, not one of the so-called White armies had the restoration of tsarism as its stated objective”, Richard Pipes records in Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime: 1919-1924. “All promised to give the people of Russia an opportunity to decide freely on their form of government.” Moreover, as we shall see, none of the “White” leaders were personally monarchists. What the “Whites” were fighting for was to re-open the Constituent Assembly, which had been elected in November 1917 in the largest democratic exercise in history to that point, and forcibly closed down by the Bolsheviks during its first session in January 1918.

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Below is the submitted text of the article

Western and other intelligence agencies recently told the United Nations that Al-Qaeda now has 25,000 members globally. The press coverage has been quick to point out that Al-Qaeda had 500 members on 11 September 2001. The not-so-subtle implication here—that the Global War on Terror was worse than useless—should be resisted.

The numbers themselves should be regarded sceptically. Assessing the size of militant groups, even non-clandestine ones, is fraught. Intelligence agencies presumably have sources researchers do not. Reliable or not, though, visibility is not the main issue.

Defining Al-Qaeda membership was extremely difficult even when its core was a tight-knit cadre based in Taliban Afghanistan. For example, Khaled Shaykh Muhammad was not a formal Al-Qaeda member, yet it would seem bizarre not to count the lead architect of 9/11. The 9/11 Commission, which had an upper-estimate of 5,000 core Al-Qaeda members, documented up to 20,000 jihadists trained at the Al-Qaeda camps, who spread out across the world and maintained various forms of coordination with Usama bin Laden. Do they all count as Al-Qaeda? Some of them? How is the distinction made? It is interpretation all the way down.

Once Al-Qaeda created its “affiliates” structure after 2004, with its first branch in Iraq—what became the Islamic State (ISIS)—and subsequent branches in West Africa, Yemen, and Somalia, things became murkier still.

Perhaps Al-Qaeda is larger now than in 2001, but nobody can honestly claim to know that, and certainly not with any degree of statistical accuracy.

Statistics are also useless is capturing the primary achievement of the War on Terror: to force Al-Qaeda into a strategic reassessment that reoriented its focus from terrorism against the West to insurgent activity in the Muslim world.

9/11 was conceived as a shortcut to push the Americans out of the Middle East so the jihadists could topple the local American-backed regimes and join the captured states into a caliphate. Hit them and they will run, Bin Laden had told his followers. Eighteen months later, Bin Laden and his Taliban patrons had been put to flight, and the Americans had struck into the heart of the Arab world in Iraq. Over the next decade, Al-Qaeda suffered remorseless attrition and saw all its plans for 9/11-scale follow-on attacks in the West thwarted.

The last things Bin Laden was writing before the Navy SEALs came for him in 2011 were confessions of weakness, a need to avoid direct combat with the West, and expand Al-Qaeda’s ranks by integrating with Muslim populations, building up the social base for an eventual caliphate. The “affiliates” had already started doing this, and in the years since Al-Qaeda has sharpened its “populist” approach, in no small part to define itself against the “elitism” of ISIS, its renegade branch which tried to brutally impose a caliphate immediately—and then recklessly went to war with the world.

This is not to say Al-Qaeda is no threat. There will be sporadic opportunistic attacks such as in Pensacola in 2019, and Al-Qaeda may yet overwhelm several governments in West Africa, a Western problem immediately because of the refugees and if Al-Qaeda consolidates African bases close to Europe its calculus on external terrorism may change. Still, this prospective threat is different to ISIS, which poses a current danger.

Unlike Al-Qaeda, which has made efforts, in Africa and beyond, to offer reassurances about its local focus, ISIS has advertised its intention to use its growing strength in Africa to attack Europe, and this is not idle signalling. The organisation recognises, as its leadership constantly emphasises, no borders and no distinction between jihad near and far. External operations are central to its mission, and violence abroad has the benefit of reinforcing ISIS’s claims of continued relevance and momentum.

After the effective destruction of ISIS’s caliphate in Syria and Iraq nearly a decade ago, its terrorism in Western countries never fully abated and has escalated since the officially declared resumption of the foreign attacks campaign in January 2014. The Hanukkah Massacre in Australia in December is only the latest illustration. While Al-Qaeda should never be ignored, for the foreseeable future ISIS will remain the greater internal threat to the West.

The recovery of the body of Master Sergeant Ran Gvili on 26 January, the final Israeli hostage held by HAMAS, brings the war in Gaza to an end in all important senses. Whether the Israeli war aims as set out in policy terms by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can be obtained remains to be seen, but they are less important than the cause, in both senses, of the war: the 7 October 2023 pogrom. That atrocity laid upon Israel several existential obligations: to demonstrate that any such attack comes with a devastating price, that the identifiable perpetrators will die, and to uphold the bond of Jewish peoplehood that commands nobody is left behind. These have now been accomplished. The rest is details.

The political warfare waged against Israel in its various forms over the past twenty-eight months was, at its core, an attempt to deflect attention from the Simchat Torah pogrom—from its immediate victims, those Israelis raped and slaughtered on that awful Saturday, and its ongoing victims, those Israelis kidnapped and taken to Gaza by HAMAS. This campaign was not without success, despite the heroic efforts of the hostages and their families to counter it. At the present time—as many “pro-Palestinian” activists move on other advocacy, notably for the Islamic Revolution in its war against the Iranian population, and the antisemitic craze, or “mass psychosis” as it is more properly called, that they sustained begins to subside—there is perhaps some space to restore balance to the record before a false history of this period is encoded.

About one-third of the 251 Israeli hostages were murdered by HAMAS, some on 7 October and some in captivity. The most high-profile case in Israel is the Bibas family, abducted from kibbutz Nir Oz during the pogrom. Shiri Bibas and her two children, eight-and-a-half-month-old Kfir and four-year-old Ariel, were murdered by HAMAS no later than November 2023. The terrorists slaughtered the babies with “their bare hands” and mutilated the corpses to try to cover up what they had done. In August 2024, HAMAS massacred six hostages—Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi—without any attempt to disguise what they had done.

The living hostages were routinely tortured by HAMAS throughout the entire ordeal. The starvation and psychological torment were symbolised by Evyatar David, a young man kidnapped from the Nova music festival, who was seen in a video last year, emaciated in a HAMAS tunnel under Gaza, being made to dig his own grave. HAMAS was unashamed of this behaviour: the terrorists themselves released the video, partly to try to manipulate Israeli politics, and partly simply to gratify their own supporters who like to see Jews suffer. David was thankfully released on 13 October 2025, which was meant to be the day when all the hostages, living and dead, were freed. That Israel had to mount a complex operation to recover Gvili nearly four months later gives an indication of how well this “peace” agreement will work.

There was some attempt by HAMAS to obscure how systematically it deprived the Israeli hostages of food by dangerously force-feeding some of them just before release. Such was the case with Segev Kalfon, a Dimona native kidnapped at Nova. Having been starved for two years, Kalfon was given more food in the days before he returned to Israel in October. Kalfon’s experience in general was representative. Amid unrelenting pressure to convert to Islam, Kaflon was subjected to regular beatings, interspersed with random assaults—such as on the way to and from bathroom breaks—and episodes like being stripped to his underwear and having a Stanley knife held to his throat for no particular reason. All of this intensified Kaflon’s Jewish faith and identity, as it did for David and many other hostages.

Where Kaflon’s experience differed slightly was in initially being held above-ground. Kalfon and two other hostages were being held together in an apartment close enough to see the commotion when Israel rescued four hostages from Nuseirat in June 2024. He was taken down into the tunnels after that. In January 2025—during a ceasefire, it should be noted—HAMAS gathered the group of six hostages Kalfon was now with, and told them to pick three to be murdered and three to be shot in the legs. It was just one form of psychological torture. Lesser forms included the terrorists eating large bags of cookies in front of the hostages, whose starvation was claimed to be a reprisal for the imaginary “famine” in Gaza. Even at the last, HAMAS had one more mind game, telling Kalfon he alone would be not be released.

Another thing that never let up was the cramped conditions. Yosef Ohana, bartending at Nova when the HAMAS Einsatzgruppen arrived, was put in a pit in one of the tunnels, along with six other men, days before he was released last October. The pit was so small that the seven men “could not sit, could barely stand and lean against the wall. There was such a lack of oxygen there that they could have died from that alone.” Avinatan Or, an attendee at Nova, was held in isolation, handcuffed inside a cage roughly six feet high and six feet wide, for the last year before he was released in October. By that time, Or had lost more than one-third of his bodyweight.

Nimrod Cohen, the sole survivor of the tank crew ambushed at the “White House” outpost on 7 October, was savagely assaulted and nearly lynched by a mob of Gazan civilians during his abduction. In captivity, Cohen was treated with special cruelty because he was a soldier. Cohen was not only kept in a cage on his own for eighteen months before he was released in October, he was blindfolded for most of that time and regularly beaten during “interrogations”. No medical care was given for the ear infection and skin rash Cohen developed six months and more before he was freed.

The denial of medical treatment—for injuries HAMAS inflicted or maladies acquired because of the squalid conditions HAMAS kept the hostages in—was constant. A terrible case was Maya Regev, abducted from the Nova festival and released during the first ceasefire in November 2023. She had been shot by the terrorists during the pogrom. The “treatment” administered by the HAMAS doctor consisted of pouring vinegar in the wound to “purposely cause pain” and on one occasion holding Regev at gunpoint while he needlessly cut into the wound with a small knife. Multiple corrective surgeries were needed to repair the damage.

The massive use of sexual violence by HAMAS and the other units of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), notably Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), that invaded Israel on 7 October is just about the only element of the atrocities that day the “pro-Palestine” movement has felt any embarrassment about, if for slightly different ideological reasons among the Islamists and Leftists. The response has been a vast disinformation campaign to deny that it happened, abetted by the difficulties HAMAS et al. created in collecting physical evidence by murdering most of the victims, then mutilating and burning their bodies. However, the reality was plain enough even in the days after 7 October, from the surviving eyewitnesses, among other things, and since then some victims have been able to speak for themselves, as have those who suffered in this way in captivity.

In early 2024, Amit Soussana, a lawyer abducted from Kfar Aza on 7 October and released on 30 November 2023, disclosed that, having been repeatedly sexually assaulted by a HAMAS operative from almost the moment she was taken, she was raped at gunpoint around 24 October. Romi Gonen, kidnapped at the Nova festival, was held for 471 days, until January 2025. Gonen was wounded during the kidnapping and first sexually attacked within days by the doctor HAMAS sent to her. Subsequently, Gonen was molested by a HAMAS terrorist who was “ecstatic, as if he had received the gift of a lifetime.” Thinking to herself, “Romi, everyone in Israel thinks you’re dead, and you’re going to be his sex slave for life”, she was then threatened with a gun at her head: “If you tell anyone, I am going to kill you”. Over a sixteen-day period, Gonen was violated repeatedly by two HAMAS captors.

A 15-year-old girl, Dafna Elyakim, taken from her home in Nahal Oz with her family in one of the abductions HAMAS livestreamed, was held by a terrorist “who would touch me all the time, or tell me that I was going to stay there …, and that we were going to have children together, and a house and all that”. “He would always tell me that he was coming with me to shower”, Elyakim added. Thankfully that did not happen, though the permanent threat had obvious effects. Ilana Gritzewsky, abducted by HAMAS from her home in Nir Oz and held at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, was sexually assaulted “on the way to Gaza” and fainted. She still does not know “what had been done to my body in those lost minutes when I wasn’t conscious”. When she awoke, “I had to beg not to be raped, telling them I was on my period”, says Gritzewsky. She had lost 26 pound from the lack of food by the time she was released in November 2023.

While women and female children were particularly targeted for sexual attack and torture on 7 October, it had been known since late 2023 that there were male victims of the Palestinian IRGC units, and one of the first victims to speak, albeit anonymously, was a man. This, too, continued once Israelis were in captivity.

Sasha Troufanov, an Amazon electronics engineer, was abducted along with his fiancé, mother, and grandmother while visiting his childhood home in Nir Oz on 7 October 2023. His father was murdered that day. Troufanov was released in February 2025. Stabbed, shot in both legs, and his head split open with a rifle butt during his kidnapping, once in Gaza Troufanov was attacked by a civilian mob and thought they were going to kill him. Which they probably would have if the terrorists did not stop them. “Troufanov received almost no medical treatment … [H]is broken leg was wrapped first with a wooden broom and then with part of a metal grill.” On only two of the 498 days Troufanov was held did he see another hostage.

Troufanov, held by PIJ, was kept in the tunnels for most of his captivity. The conditions were damp and he was given minimal food; the silence was total for months at a time and it was “so dark he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face”. Initially, though, Troufanov had been kept above ground “for more than six weeks locked in a cage and given barely enough food to survive”. It was in this early phase that Troufanov was sexually harassed: “one guard repeatedly tried to encourage him to do a sexual act on himself” and he found a “hidden camera filmed him when he was allowed a shower once a week. ‘I noticed it and I took the shower trying to avoid my private parts towards this angle, but I had to do it because I needed to shower’.”

The talented musician Alon Ohel, abducted at the Nova festival and held by HAMAS, reported a similar experience to Troufanov. Wounded seriously in his face and body with grenade shrapnel during the abduction, Ohel was taken to a HAMAS base in one of the hospitals. Ohel was attacked by ecstatic Palestinian civilians as he was dragged in, and “the staff stitched up his eye in a superficial way, leaving the shrapnel in place”. Taken down into the tunnels at the end of November 2023, Ohel remained there until October 2025. “You don’t get used to hunger”, Ohel says. “There’s pain over the whole body, all the time. You look like a skeleton. … And they’re happy. They’re smiling. It makes them feel good.” Ohel says of the sexual assault on him: “In the shower, one terrorist came in. He put shampoo on my body, touched me. I tried to pull away. I told him, ‘I can do it myself.’ He said it was ‘important’ so I wouldn’t get a rash. Luckily for me, it didn’t continue.”

A security guard at Nova on 7 October, Rom Braslavski was released with the last living hostages. Braslavski was beaten once in captivity, then tied to a wardrobe in a house in Gaza and neglected to the point that Palestinian civilians were able to discover him unguarded and tried to murder him. The terrorist captor returned in time to disperse the mob, but Braslavski, severely wounded, was then retied and left again. Unlike most hostages, Braslavski spent little time in the tunnels at all: he was held alone, above-ground, and moved around Gaza for almost his entire captivity.

After refusing to convert to Islam around March 2025, Braslavski was given even less food, denied bathroom breaks, blindfolded, and had stones forced painfully into his ears with nails to block his hearing. The beatings became more frequent. One night, with his hands and feet ziptied, Braslavski was punched in the face until he was nearly unconscious, then lashed with a whip, on his back and the soles of his feet. After a few hours sleep, he was woken up and beaten the same way. The cycle went on. Sometimes the radio brought in to play music as the terrorists laughed and danced while hitting Braslavski would be used as a weapon.

The filthy conditions HAMAS kept the Israeli hostages in were designed to demoralise and humiliate. The PIJ operatives holding Braslavski went further. Braslavski, who is only 21, gave an interview last November where he said: “They stripped me of all my clothes, my underwear, everything. They tied me up from the …” After trailing off, Braslavski went on: “When I was completely naked. I was wiped out, dying without food. And I prayed to God—save me, get me out of this already … It is sexual violence and its main purpose was to humiliate me. The goal was to crush my dignity and that’s exactly what he did.”

Guy Gilboa-Dalal was kidnapped from the Nova festival with his friend, Evyatar David; two of their friends were murdered that day. He was released in October 2025. Gilboa-Dalal’s ordeal up to January 2025 was depressingly familiar: brutalised during the abduction, beaten again by a cheering civilian mob after he arrived in Gaza, and then subjected to a routine of starvation, insanitary and cramped conditions, and physical and psychological torture, the permanent intimidation and fear, banned from even speaking to his fellow captives.

It was during the January 2025 ceasefire, when HAMAS was feeling emboldened, that a new form of torment was introduced:

[A HAMAS commander referred to as] Amon led [Gilboa-Dalal] blindfolded to the captors’ room, saying that HAMAS had information about an Israeli spy who resembled him. The spy, he claimed, had a tattoo on his leg. Amon removed Mr. Gilboa-Dalal’s pants, ostensibly to check. There was no tattoo. Then Amon went onto his computer, complaining that he had not seen a woman in a long time … “He asked if I wanted to watch a porn movie,” [Gilboa-Dalal] said. Amon moved closer. “He came up behind me and began touching me, kissing the back of my neck, putting a hand on my chest,” Mr. Gilboa-Dalal said. “I froze.”

“I said to him: ‘You’re joking, right? This is forbidden in Islam’. He pressed a rifle to my head and a knife to my throat. He told me that if I told this to anyone, he would kill me.”

“A few days later”, Gilboa-Dalal went on:

Amon took the hostages to bathe one by one. When it was Mr. Gilboa-Dalal’s turn, his captor prevented him from dressing and dragged him back to his room. There, Mr. Gilboa-Dalal said, Amon threw him onto a mattress on the floor and began rubbing his penis against his anus for what seemed like 15 to 20 minutes.

“I froze again,” he said. “Should I resist? I didn’t manage to make a sound.”

Mr. Gilboa-Dalal tormented himself with thoughts of whether he was somehow to blame or could have done something to prevent it. “How many times will it happen? How will it end?” he recalled asking himself. “I had nowhere to go. I was in their hands.”

Aware that [the other hostages he was with, Tal] Shoham and [Omer] Wenkert[,] were set to be released during the cease-fire, he decided to confide in Mr. Shoham … [and ask him] to tell his parents what had happened to him if he did not get out alive. He was worried that he might be killed if he resisted a more violent sexual assault.

Mr. Shoham confirmed Mr. Gilboa-Dalal’s account … Mr. Gilboa-Dalal told him about [the sexual attacks] in detail by using a wet wipe to write on a grimy plastic plate, in case their captors were listening. After being released in February, Mr. Shoham said he discreetly told senior Israeli officials about the abuse[.]

Mercifully, that was the last of that. Once Israel resumed military operations in March 2025, “Amon” was no longer left alone with the hostages. In every other respect, the treatment of the captives markedly declined, though. “They starved us in the extreme”, says Gilboa-Dalal, who was off-camera when David appeared in that obscene video in August 2025, as emaciated as his friend, unable to move even his arms without great pain because of the muscle wastage. Gilboa-Dalal responded to the demands to accept Islam by pretending to be interested; some rapport might decrease the chances the terrorists would murder him. All the time, Gilboa-Dalal was deepening his attachment to the Jewish creed and peoplehood.

NB: I aimed to give an overview here. The other Israeli hostages who were among the last of the living released in October 2025—Ariel Cunio and David Cunio, and Gali Berman and Ziv Berman, pairs of brothers HAMAS would not even allow to stay together in their captivity, Bar Kupershtein, Eitan Avraham Mor, Eitan Horn, Elkana Bohbot, Maksym Harkin, Matan Angrest, Matan Zangauker (partner of Gritzewsky), and Omri Miran—have individual stories to tell. They should all be heard, as should the hostages released at other times, the survivors of 7 October, and the relatives of the slain.

The 4 November 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy by the “Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line” (MSFIL) is often said to have been provoked by President Jimmy Carter allowing Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah of Iran, into the U.S. for medical treatment on 22 October, and this is criticised as a misstep by the U.S. that destroyed the possibility of salvaging relations with Iran under the new revolutionary government. The problem with this narrative on its face is the date: while it works in a superficial sense for the Embassy crisis a fortnight later, the more important antecedent question is why the Shah, who had needed treatment for more than half-a-year, was only granted access to it at that point.

The answer is that Carter, having contributed to the Shah’s political demise with his staggering incompetence and shameful refusal to properly support a loyal ally throughout the 1978 crisis, had then betrayed the Shah even after he had fallen. Carter told the Shah via the U.S. Embassy in December 1978 that he “would be welcome to come to the United States”, and then withdrew the offer in March 1979. Carter’s motive was to avoid antagonising those who had conquered Iran from the Shah, the gang of terrorists who were openly pledged to an anti-American program and were already at that moment slaughtering the men and women who had served the U.S.-allied Imperial Government. Carter’s behaviour was so disgraceful in forcing the Shah to wander the earth—from Morocco to the Bahamas to Mexico—in search of a place to die with a modicum of dignity that it made Henry Kissinger the humanitarian of the situation. Kissinger used his political leverage, threatening to withhold public support for Carter’s ludicrous SALT II agreement with the Soviets, to have Carter relent on the Shah getting medical treatment in America.

That context understood, it casts doubt on the whole premise that it was the U.S. that sabotaged relations with Revolutionary Iran by being too unwavering in its commitment to the Shah. And, indeed, on inspection, the reality is the reverse.

For one thing, the U.S. Embassy had already been stormed by the Islamic Revolution, on 14 February 1979, three days after the Islamist-Communist coup that had brought down the Interim Government left behind when the Shah departed the country on 16 January.1 On that occasion the “students” had withdrawn in short order, but clearly the revolutionary regime had the idea for an attack on the Embassy right from the start. The overarching motive for the second Islamist attack on the U.S.’s Iran Embassy in November 1979 was not that the Americans were being too hostile to Revolutionary Iran, but that progress towards some sort of Iranian-American accord was going too well.

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Watching the current uprising in Iran, and the savage crackdown by the Islamic Republic, it is impossible not to notice the muted reaction of those who have, for two years, been so vociferous in condemning Israel’s defensive operation in Gaza after the Iran/HAMAS pogrom. The contrast can seem like a contradiction only if the “human rights” rhetoric of the activists is taken seriously. There was never any reason to.

The first “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations around the world in the hours and days after 7 October 2023, reflecting the euphoria among Palestinians and in Islamdom more broadly, were open celebrations of the rape and slaughter carried out in Israel by the Gaza-based units of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC): sweets were handed out and chants of “gas the Jews” were heard as far away as Australia. The only political demand from the protesters, made as Israel was trying to pick up and identify the charred body parts of her citizens, was that HAMAS be left alone to prepare the next massacre of Israelis it had promised. The demand remained the same after the street activists and the powerful international disinformation ecosystem they are attached to switched from a triumphalist to a plaintive tone amid the IRGC jihadists’ waning fortunes on the battlefield in Gaza.1

The leaders of the “pro-Palestinian” movement denouncing the Iranian protesters as “Zionist” stooges, and “Palestinians say[ing] they hope the [Iranian] regime stays in place and protests die down soon”, are being entirely consistent. They were with the Islamic Revolution when it rampaged through the Israeli kibbutzim and they are with the Islamic Revolution now its central node is challenged. This did not begin in 2023. Palestinians and supporters of the Palestine Cause were integrally connected to the Islamic Revolution long before it swept to power in Iran in 1979.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had first attempted revolution in Iran in June 1963 in response to the modernising “White Revolution” of the Shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, specifically the proposal to provide education to girls. Khomeini was swiftly defeated thanks to the decisiveness of Prime Minister Asadollah Alam.2 Undeterred, Khomeini tried to start trouble again after he was released from house arrest, so the Shah had him expelled in November 1964, initially to Turkey, before Khomeini settled in Iraq in September 1965, where he stayed until his move to Paris in October 1978. Khomeini, taking the lesson that he could not succeed on his own, set about building a coalition capable of toppling the Shah.3 The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was one of the pivotal allies Khomeini recruited, and Palestinians formed the broader matrix that linked the forces ranged against the Shah, which he correctly identified as an “unholy alliance of the Red and Black”, of Leftists and Islamists.

The Mojahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Islamist-Marxist group that is by now a sinister cult, was the inaugural inductee to Khomeini’s cause, functioning as the terrorist wing of the Imam’s Revolution. MEK was officially founded in late 1965 by a circle of students, beneficiaries of the Shah increasing university access.4 After developing its ideology and expanding its activities and membership for two-and-a-half years, MEK was restructured to prepare for a violent seizure of power in the spring of 1968,5 and turned to the PLO for help.

The PLO, grouping together the fedayeen terrorists used by the Arab States in their war against Israel, was created in 1964 as an instrument of political warfare. In the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War, the PLO had been transformed. By 1969, the PLO was a vehicle for one of the fedayeen groups, FATAH led by Yasser Arafat, albeit the PLO was still formally an umbrella organisation and certain other of the emerging Palestinian factions—notably the Communist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—retained autonomy and some influence within PLO structures.

The PLO was always a practitioner of coalitional politics, willing to give and receive support from any actor that could help its cause. Most importantly, the PFLP’s terrorism division came under direct KGB control in 1972, and the broader PLO was in the Soviet orbit by this point. MEK’s point of contact with the PLO, Ali Hassan Salameh (Abu Hassan), a key Arafat lieutenant, even worked the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).6 Salameh was in charge of Arafat’s Praetorians, out of which evolved the PLO’s special Force 17 in the early 1970s, a unit with an important part in the Iranian Revolutionary drama, and he was an architect of the “deniable” Black September front the PLO used to carry out its worst atrocities, most infamously the horrific torture and murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.7

Deeply impressed by the PLO’s pioneering international terrorism, hijacking airplanes and murdering Jews around the globe, MEK made its initial outreach to the PLO in the autumn of 1969, and met with PLO representatives in Qatar and Dubai in March 1970. At a second set of meetings weeks later in Amman and Beirut, MEK got to meet—and were vetted by—Salameh. MEK passed ideological muster, its antizionism judged sincere and its “anti-colonialism” properly formulated so as not to oppose Soviet imperialism. Moreover, MEK was recognised as a useful tool against the Shah, despised by Palestinians for being Israel’s closest and most powerful Muslim ally. Salameh signed-off on developing relations.8 MEK sent its first detachment to the PLO terrorist training camps in Lebanon and Jordan in July 1970, and many more would follow.9 Members of MEK’s “Central Cadre” were present in the camps when the PLO launched its revolt against the Jordanian monarchy in September 1970; they would claim the experience considerably improved MEK’s military proficiency.10 MEK’s operatives were deported with the defeated PLO to Lebanon.11

In late August 1971, shortly before MEK planned its inaugural terrorist atrocity, the majority of its leadership was arrested. Though the Shah had survived two assassination attempts by the religious opposition, in 1949 and 1965, he was by this time less concerned about the Islamists, partly because of Alam’s reassurances that he had, during the 15 Khordad events, “crushed them once and for all”.12 It was a self-deception that benefited Alam at Court and the Shah wanted to believe it. Had MEK remained an insular organisation, its plans to sabotage the celebration of 2,500 years of Monarchy in Iran might well have succeeded, but immersion in the PLO milieu meant, almost by definition, contact with Eastern Bloc intelligence officers and the Soviet Communist apparatus.13 It was moving in such close proximity to the KGB that led to MEK’s detection.

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The Soviets reportedly brought some of the Mojahedeen for terrorist training in the Eastern Bloc. Moscow Centre certainly did facilitate MEK in reaching the PFLP camps in Lebanon, Syria, South Yemen, and Libya under Muammar al-Qaddafi. Qaddafi, a natural ally, embodying as he did a fusion of Islamism and Communism,14 also provided significant amounts of money to MEK and helped with the logistics of their transfer back into Iran.15 While Libya was not literally a Soviet colony in the same way as South Yemen, the only fully Marxist Arab State established during the Cold War, Colonel Qaddafi’s role as a reliable cut-out for Moscow makes this a distinction without much difference.

Soviet influence was apparent in Libya within a year of Qaddafi’s September 1969 coup, and by the end of the 1970s the CIA, which wilfully underplayed the Soviet role in international terrorism because of its policy preferences,16 conceded that—despite allegedly “incompatible ideologies”—Qaddafi’s Libya and the Soviets were consistently united on the “immediate course of action”, specifically training, arming, and funding radical groups throughout the Middle East, Palestinians most notably, and supporting South Yemen. The result, said the Agency, was that “on a practical level, the Libyans have acted for the Soviets in the Third World in a manner similar to that of the Cubans”,17 the most important non-European Soviet colony, administered by Fidel Castro, the Communist bridgehead in Latin America and spear-tip of Revolution as far away as Africa. It was as near as the CIA could bring itself to admitting Qaddafi’s Libya acted as a Soviet Satellite State in the Cold War.18

The large Soviet role in international terrorism was obvious in real time to anybody who wanted to notice,19 but Moscow regarded it as one of its most closely-guarded secrets, and took steps to publicly distance itself from its terrorist assets, namely by dealing with them at one step remove, through its KGB clone services in the Captive Nations. This paper-thin veneer was remarkably successful in getting most Western public intellectuals and even the CIA to generally treat the idea Moscow was behind groups like Baader-Meinhof in Germany, the Italian Red Brigades, and the Japanese Red Army as a conspiracy theory.20 Naturally, therefore, in a case like MEK—where Moscow was interfacing with terrorists through other (Palestinian) terrorists that were handled by, say, the East German Stasi and Qaddafi—the Soviets had further deniability and immunity from consequences.21 In the West, anyway.

The Shah, a firm sentry in the Cold War even when the West’s nerve faltered in the détente era, was not deceived by the Soviets and ensured SAVAK, the small but effective secret police, never lost sight of the Communist menace.22 The Soviet attempt to assassinate the Shah in 1962, at a time when the KGB had largely ceased assassinations abroad, is a measure of the difficulties the Shah caused Moscow.23 By the late 1970s, thanks to the ingenuity and diligence of SAVAK,24 the Legal Soviet apparat in Iran was virtually paralysed.25 The Soviet-run Tudeh (Communist) Party was widely infiltrated by SAVAK,26 and MEK, unfortunately for them, approached one such spy trying to acquire dynamite in the summer of 1971.27 After interrogating the MEK leaders, SAVAK rolled up the wider network. Those picked up in the dragnet against whom there was insufficient evidence were released, and SAVAK thwarted a MEK attempt to kidnap the Shah’s nephew, intending to trade him for their imprisoned comrades. In total, nearly seventy MEK conspirators were imprisoned for subversion, contacting foreign agents (the PLO), and terrorism, among other things, and in May 1972 five senior MEK terrorists were executed.28

It was at about this point in 1972 that Khomeini established a tactical alliance with MEK, declaring that it was “the duty of all good Muslims to support [MEK] and overthrow the Shah.” Khomeini gained the ability to reach inside Iran and MEK gained legitimacy with Shi’a Islamists, some of whom were perturbed by the Leftist dimension to their ideology and spiritual leader Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani (known as “the Red Mullah”), increasing MEK’s ability to recruit as it set about rebuilding.29 It was the first bridge between Palestinian militancy and Khomeinist Islamism, the backbone of the Revolution to come.

When the Shah spoke of his enemies in the 1978-79 Revolution as an “unholy alliance of the Red and the Black”, of Communists and Islamists, he was not engaged in propaganda. From the spring of 1972, if not earlier, the Shah was aware of the PLO “training Iranian terrorists”,30 and learned of the “lunatic” Qaddafi funding these elements shortly afterwards.31 The secret intelligence the Shah had proving this, and the discovery of Libyan and Palestinian documents on the murderers inside Iran,32 were hardly necessary. That “armed actions inside Iran” by terrorist-revolutionaries took place under “the direct influence of the armed Palestinian struggle” was so blatant that it was being reported publicly in the Arab world by the end of 1971. Everyone in Lebanon, and anybody else who could read Arabic newspapers, knew the PLO was providing “practical training in the use of arms” to anti-Shah Iranian terrorists, and then helping these people return to Iran where they could “train other members” of their groups,33 a train-the-trainers system that reached thousands by 1978.

A year after Khomeini engaged the Palestinian milieu via his compact with MEK, in 1973, Khomeini forged a direct relationship with the PLO. The Imam would develop a personal relationship with Arafat in time,34 and Arafat even offered to provide personal sanctuary when Khomeini had to leave Iraq in 1978,35 but at this stage it was Khomeini’s trusted aide, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur, who went to Beirut to work out the details with Arafat. The benefits were mutual: Arafat saw the chance to increase his stature in the Muslim world and beyond by association with the struggle in the region’s keystone State, and Khomeini could independently build up the nucleus of his own army—on Israel’s doorstep.36

The eradication of the Jewish State, a goal shared with the PLO, was not, to Khomeini, an extraneous task but a core part of the transnational vision that motivated his desire to capture Iran. When Arafat was received in Iran as the first visiting “Head of State” days after Khomeini’s total triumph in February 1979, the Imam declared that the priority once the Islamic Revolution was consolidated was to “turn to the issue of victory over Israel”.37 It has been well-said that “Khomeini’s system … can best be understood as a Soviet Union in Islamic garb”,38 and the Islamic Republic intelligence-security apparatus was visibly modelled on the Soviet KGB.39 Like Lenin before him,40 Khomeini had no concern for his “own” country per se. On the plane back to Iran in February 1979, after fourteen-plus years in exile, Khomeini was asked what it meant to him and famously answered, “Hichi” (“Nothing”). Iran was to Khomeini, as Russia was to Lenin, merely a useful launchpad for worldwide Revolution.

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The Khomeinist cadres trained in intelligence and terrorism at the PLO camps in Lebanon in the 1970s became the core of the IRGC.41 On its own, this Palestinian contribution would be of unexaggeratable importance, providing to the Islamic Revolution the capacity to form the key institution that has sustained it and exported its malady in the region for nearly half-a-century. But the PLO role in the concept and creation of the IRGC seems to have been even more direct.42 The Palestinian-trained Khomeinists were a large enough coterie that they were also the basis of the other Islamic Republic security-intelligence institutions.43

The PLO-trained Khomeinists who went to Iran during and after the Revolution were officially flagged as Pasdaran.44 Others remained in Lebanon and adopted the label Hizballah (Party of God),45 becoming the first of the IRGC’s “external armies”. A lot of the stay-behind IRGC cadres in Lebanon had Lebanese citizenship because wherever Khomeinism is planted,46 again like the Soviets, it acts like a virulent cancer, replicating itself and consuming the host. Khomeini briefly continued using the PLO to train the IRGC inside Iran,47 but, even had Arafat not so quickly exhausted the Imam’s patience,48 the Khomeinist infrastructure had outgrown PLO tutelage before 1978 and begun to annex swathes of the PLO, notably from Force 17, whose bases were used to train the first batches of militants Khomeini sent to Arafat.49 By 1982, the PLO was broken in Lebanon and Hizballah filled the void. Within a few years, the IRGC, significantly aided by its entrenched Lebanese base, was peeling away chunks of the PLO in the Palestinian Territories and ultimately usurped the Palestine Cause entirely through its HAMAS unit. (The same dynamic played out with MEK, which realised only too late the liability of it increasing closeness to the Khomeinist apparatus after 1975.50 MEK, crippled by the defection of over-half its “most loyal” armed cadres to the IRGC in the spring of 1979, could not hold off when the Imam came for them in 1981.51)

Of note, it was a Force 17 veteran, Imad Mughniyeh, a fully commissioned IRGC officer,52 who served as the military chief of Hizballah until he was killed by MOSSAD and the CIA in 2008. Mughniyeh was, before Usama bin Laden, the most deadly anti-Western terrorist. Bin Laden, indeed, was inspired by the Marine barracks bombing that Mughniyeh operationally led, and it was with Clerical Iran’s assistance, starting in the early 1990s under a pact signed personally between Bin Laden and Mughniyeh, that Al-Qaeda became a truly global organisation capable of 9/11.

The other major pool of recruits to IRGC/Hizballah in Lebanon came from the Amal Movement, the militia formed in 1974 to protect Lebanese Shi’is from the bullying of the PLO, which had created a State-within-a-State in the Shi’a-majority south of Lebanon after the expulsion from Jordan. By the spring of 1975, the PLO had plunged a second country into civil war and this time there was no Hashemite monarch (with Israeli support) to terminate the chaos swiftly. Amal’s leader, Musa al-Sadr, an Iranian-born cleric, was a most improbable warlord. Al-Sadr, in theory a traditionalist opposed to Khomeini’s version of Shi’ism, blurred the lines amid the radicalism of the moment, becoming a hectoring critic of the Shah, and deputised Mostafa Chamran, a PLO-trained Iranian anti-Shah émigré, to lead the military effort.53 The immediate-run effect of this was to anger the Shah, heretofore Al-Sadr’s patron, cutting off an important source of support at a highly inopportune moment,54 and in due course there would be a shattering exodus from Amal to the PLO-aligned Khomeinists under a protégé of Chamran’s, Husayn al-Musawi.55

The disappearance of Musa al-Sadr and two companions in Tripoli, Libya, on 31 August 1978, put on display the external support system—the tripartite alliance of Khomeini, Arafat, and Qaddafi, with the Soviet Union hovering in the background—that drove the Islamic Revolution in Iran.56 Eliminating Al-Sadr was important in paving the way for Amal’s fragmentation, but this local impact in Lebanon was secondary. The conspiracy against Al-Sadr was driven by those who were using Lebanon as a launchpad for the Islamic Revolution, which was entering its crucial phase in Iran.

In the summer of 1978, as the simmering turmoil in Iran visibly became a Revolution, the Shah was working to patch things up with Al-Sadr. By giving support to Al-Sadr, the Shah could potentially smother the nerve-centre of the Revolution against him in Lebanon, and if Al-Sadr ceased to play footsie with the Shi’a radicals advocating clerical government and publicly blessed the Shah’s government, it might impede the ideological drift of Iranians into Khomeini’s camp. Al-Sadr understood that Khomeini prevailing in Iran would reverberate in Lebanon and endanger his political position.57 What Al-Sadr did not understand was the personal danger he was in. When Khomeini asked for Al-Sadr to meet in Libya with Ayatollah Muhammad Beheshti, Khomeini’s indispensable agent coordinating the Islamic Revolution on-the-ground in Iran, to try to find a compact, Al-Sadr did not sense a trap. To Al-Sadr, it was a chance to explore his options, and the venue seemed perfectly safe.

Al-Sadr was personally friendly with Colonel Qaddafi, who had provided funds to Al-Sadr’s Amal, and in any case it seemed inconceivable to Al-Sadr a Muslim ruler could harm a high-profile cleric.58 Al-Sadr was unaware of the depth of Qaddafi’s anger that Amal continued clashing with the Palestinians and refused to fight Israel,59 the enemy against whom Al-Sadr had said in public the weapons of his militia—many bought with Libyan money—were directed.60 This made it easier for Beheshti to convince Qaddafi that Al-Sadr was a Western agent, though, in pressing Qaddafi to liquidate Al-Sadr, Beheshti was quite explicit that it should be done because Al-Sadr “was a threat to Khomeini”. Qaddafi clearly found this a persuasive argument and Beheshti telephoned Qaddafi on the day Al-Sadr vanished to impress upon him that Al-Sadr must not leave Libya.61 That Salameh, Arafat’s liaison to the CIA, was immediately able to tell the Agency station chief in Beirut about these events speaks to the PLO’s complicity.62 Arafat had certainly communicated to Qaddafi that the Palestinian Cause would benefit if Al-Sadr went away.63

The architects of Al-Sadr’s removal from the board got what they wanted. The Lebanese epicentre of the Islamic Revolution became easier to navigate for those hellbent on bringing down the Shah. Qaddafi’s stature was already high in a situation where any illusions of Lebanese State authority had been obliterated and militias on all sides wanted access to Libyan largesse.64 Now Qaddafi and his allies had the aura of winners, diminishing the will to stand against them. Qaddafi was able to deliver vast sums of cash to Khomeini’s agents and MEK operatives at the PFLP and other Palestinian camps through the Libyan Embassy in Beirut. Qaddafi’s money allowed Khomeini to suborn clergy inside Iran, who otherwise would have sided with Grand Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari in opposing Khomeini’s velayat-e-faqih concept, and bought MEK further weapons for an arsenal already called “impressive” by the CIA in September 1977, as well as sophisticated communications equipment. The Palestinian military and intelligence training, derived from the Soviets, enabled MEK to infiltrate the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and even the motor pool used by U.S. army advisers to the Shah’s military.65 As the end drew near in late 1978, the PLO openly revelled in the accusation it was “fomenting trouble in Iran”,66 and an undisguised flood of Soviet-aligned Palestinians from Lebanon joined the Palestinian-trained terrorists inside Iran.67

The coalitional aspect to the anti-Shah campaign shows up in the non-military dimensions. For instance, Qaddafi and Arafat assisted on the propaganda side, maintaining relations with the circle in and around the “moderate” Islamists of the Liberation Movement of Iran (LMI), who carefully shielded Khomeini in Paris from revealing his true intentions.68 (The LMI played a similar role inside Iran, obfuscating Khomeini’s program to the Iranian middle class and religious “modernists”.) As on the terrorism side, this was not really hidden. A Libyan emissary and the PLO “foreign minister” overtly met Khomeini in Paris in late 1978,69 and soon after the Shah’s departure in January 1979 the chief spokesman of the PFLP boasted publicly that his group had assisted “the Iranian people’s struggle for the past seven years” with “everything from propaganda to the use of weapons”.70

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The same Palestinian matrix, embedded in the broader Soviet infrastructure, was, unsurprisingly, in evidence with the Red wing of the Revolution, represented primarily by Sazman Cherikha-ye Fedayeen-e-Khalq (The Organisation of Iranian People’s Self-Sacrificing Guerrillas), known as the Fedayeen in Iran and called “Chariks” by the Americans.71 The Fedayeen attack on the police at Siahkal, on 8 February 1971, began the terrorism wave that plagued the Shah’s Iran through the 1970s, and the Fedayeen was the most active terrorist group. While often described as leaning Maoist, the Fedayeen owed the bulk of its structure and ideology to the Soviet Union,72 and publicly admitting to receiving support from South Yemen and the PFLP. Even the CIA, which performed catastrophically throughout the Iran crisis, understood that the money and other resources delivered through South Yemen came from the Soviet Union.73

The Fedayeen, like MEK, had access to the Palestinian camps of the Soviet proxy PFLP in Libya and received money from Qaddafi. Fedayeen sojourns in Lebanon connected them to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Baader-Meinhof Gang, among others. And the Soviets—not-quite-directly, via Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Poland—provided weapons on a large scale to the Fedayeen.74 This obviously enabled the Fedayeen terrorism campaign, and the psychological-political impact was immense: eroding confidence in the Shah’s government, emboldening its opponents, and creating a novel security situation decision-makers struggled to adapt to.75 The prestige of the Fedayeen was burnished further by its participation in foreign conflicts—supporting the Palestinians in Lebanon and the Communist Revolution in Oman, which the Shah took responsibility for crushing after the British pulled out East of Suez. The Fedayeen’s tactical alterations around 1976 enabled it to put down roots among the lower classes, setting it on a footing to play a meaningful political role in the Revolution, while continuing its essential military role. The Fedayeen was a leading element in the violent coup against the Interim Government of Shapur Bakhtiar on 9-11 February 1979 that brought Khomeini to power.76

Khomeini officially shunned Communists and never personally established contact with the Fedayeen. But he had no need. The Imam could keep his hands ideologically clean and benefit operationally from the Communist capacity for popular mobilisation and violence via MEK. By mid-1977, the Fedayeen and Mojahedeen “had agreed to form a united front and share resources”,77 an arrangement doubtless smoothed by the Soviet and Palestinian connective tissue that already bound them in a common program.

It was at almost this exact moment in 1977 that the Shah began his political liberalisation, intending to hold elections to refashion Iran from an executive Monarchy to a constitutional one by the end of 1979.78 The coordination of the two main terrorist groups meant they were able to more effectively test whether the announced changes were for real, and to find that they were.79 It was the Shah’s terrible misfortune that almost the only people to believe he wanted to reduce his own power were those who saw this as an opportunity to impose totalitarianism.80

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FOOTNOTES