Fierce Tribes and Princely Playboys

Abstract

During the period of the Allied occupation, apart from the Kurds, the two largest, most powerful tribes of western Persia were the Luri-speaking Bakhtiari and the Turki-speaking Qashgai to their south.² These were the two Persian tribes which, together with a small but extremely fierce Zagros tribe called the Boir Ahmedi, fully and actively supported the German cause until the strategic Wende (turning point) of the Second World War in late 1942/early 1943. From then on, with a handful of idle or incompetent SS parachutists and an equally disengaged Abwehr spy on their territory,³ their tribal leaders grew increasingly less sanguine about the performance of the Wehrmacht to the north and ever more aware that no Axis military force would invade Persia and topple the shah. Clearly, their admiration for the Nazi Führer was never ideological, but purely opportunistic and transitory. They had obviously been promised that they would achieve greater political autonomy if ever the Germans gained control of the country and the central government, especially since Berlin had prefabricated a quisling government ready to install, with the younger brothers of the supreme leader of the Qashgai at its head. Essentially, these tribes needed gold and guns, and as long as the Nazis promised both, they were beholden to Nazism. However, they would just as readily have accepted such support from any patron, provided he delivered the goods, and this Hitler failed to do.

The curse of the Persian tribal system has been the great fragmentation of the tribes … due mostly to the broken nature of the mountain terrain, that lies behind the disorder, … and not to the innate wickedness of the inhabitants. (Naval Intelligence Handbook)¹