British occupy Birjand

The British chronology of the war, published in 1922 by the Committee of Imperial Defence, records briefly under 7 October 1915: “Birjand (East Persia) occupied by British forces.” Nothing suggests that a battle or siege lay behind this. Birjand was the capital of the Qainat, a mountainous region in the east of Persia on the border with Afghanistan, and the seat of the hereditary governor of the Qainat and Sistan. Persia was a neutral country, but its government in Tehran lacked the strength to stop foreign troops. Units of the Indian Army, which had been forming the East Persia Cordon since the summer, simply took up station in the town and remained there permanently from then on. Known accounts mention no resistance.

Birjand was a key point for the cordon. The British and Russians divided the watch on the Persian–Afghan border so that the Russians, mainly Cossacks, held the northern sector, from Mashhad southwards, and the Indian troops the southern sector, from Sistan and the meeting point of the borders with Baluchistan northwards. As the British general William Dickson later wrote, the Russians were to extend their net from the north “to meet ours at Birjand”. The infantry of the 19th Punjabis under Lieutenant-Colonel G. A. Dale reached Birjand, and according to the regimental history he set up his headquarters in the town; later a squadron of the 28th Light Cavalry joined him. Birjand was about 300 miles, or nearly 500 kilometres of desert, from the main base at Robat on the Baluchistan border. Food, ammunition and mail had to be brought in by camel caravan, and communications were provided by a telegraph line running along the whole cordon.

The Indian troops arrived in Birjand too late to stop the most important German expedition. The group of Oskar von Niedermayer and Werner Otto von Hentig slipped through the still incomplete cordon in August, entered Herat on 24 August and on 2 October, only five days before the occupation of Birjand, reached Kabul. There the Germans began urging the Emir, Habibullah Khan, to go to war with Britain. The cordon’s main task now was to cut them off from further reinforcements, money and news from Persia, and also to stop arms smugglers supplying the frontier tribes.

The post at Birjand lasted until the end of the war. In March 1916 the British part of the cordon was renamed the Seistan Force and placed under the commander-in-chief in India. When the Russian sector of the cordon fell apart after the revolution of 1917, the British had to take over its tasks as well. From Birjand, which then became the headquarters of the whole cordon, their posts reached as far as Mashhad and the border of Russian Transcaspia.