East Persian Cordon is formed

The British chronology of the war records under 29 July 1915 the beginning of the formation of the East Persian Cordon. This was a chain of posts and patrols that Britain and Russia stretched along the border of Persia with Afghanistan. It was meant to stop the German and Turkish missions that were trying to reach Kabul through neutral Persia. The neutrality proclaimed by Tehran was no obstacle to them. Both powers had long treated Persia as their own backyard, divided into spheres of influence by the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907.

German missions to Kabul

Berlin hoped that the Emir of Afghanistan, Habibullah Khan, could be persuaded to go to war with Britain. An Afghan attack on British India, supported by a rising on the frontier such as the one heralded by the skirmish at Miranshah, could, as Berlin reckoned, tie down hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the Indian Army. According to British accounts, by July 1915 London and Petrograd already knew of five German groups making their way eastwards through Persia. The most important was the expedition of the officer Oskar von Niedermayer and the diplomat Werner Otto von Hentig, accompanied by Indian revolutionaries, among them Raja Mahendra Pratap. At the beginning of July its members set out from Isfahan, and at the end of the month, crossing the desert by night, they reached the oasis of Tabas.

Russians in the north, British in the south

The cordon was divided into two sectors. The northern one, from Mashhad towards Birjand, was manned by the Russians, mainly Cossack cavalry. The southern one, from Birjand to Sistan and the meeting point of the borders of Persia, Afghanistan and Baluchistan, fell to Indian troops. A telegraph line ran along the whole line, allowing the posts to pass messages to one another quickly.

The British sector was built from scratch, in some of the most difficult terrain in the world. The core of the force was a detachment of the 19th Punjabis under Lieutenant-Colonel G. A. Dale, stationed on the desert frontier near the post of Robat. Dale was ordered to intercept, capture or destroy any German parties that appeared in Sistan. Support was to come from two squadrons of the 28th Light Cavalry from Quetta under Colonel J. M. Wikeley, which travelled by rail to the railhead at Nushki and from there marched for five weeks across the desert on camels. Only then did the combined force enter Persia. The infantry left garrisons at Robat and at Nasratabad, the capital of Sistan, and marched about another 350 kilometres north to Birjand. There Dale set up his headquarters, and a little further north, in the village of Sedeh, he made contact with the Cossacks at the southern end of the Russian cordon. According to the British chronology, Birjand was not occupied until 7 October.

A broken net

The cordon failed its first test. Niedermayer sent out decoy patrols that drew the attention of the Russians to the north-east and of the British to the south-east, while he himself crossed the desert by forced marches and reached the Afghan border on 19 August. A few days later the expedition was in Herat, and in the autumn in Kabul. The Emir received the Germans courteously, but would not be drawn into the war. The cordon stayed in place and in time grew into a permanent body of troops. In March 1916 it was renamed the Seistan Force and placed under the command of the Commander-in-Chief in India. In the following months its patrols were still pursuing German parties trying to get across the border.