Page 357 - PERSIAN 5 1905_1911

AND THE MASKAT POLITICAL ACENCY FOR THE YEAR 1900. 57
strong to order the besiegers to retire before. The old fashioned ideas of
storming parties or sorties would lead to bloodshed and produce bad-feeling
which was particularly to be avoided. After a sufficient delay in Bain, Wali
Khan marched on to Baluchistan and encamped within parleying distance
of Bahrain Khan, who was satisfied with the size of the force with him and
consented to retire. When the Baluchis had retired to a safe distance
Wali Khan and his army entered Bampur in state and despatched news at
once to Kerman. Having accomplished this he will probably he satisfied
to leave the Baluchis to their own devices, as they have been left for some
years, so long as he can recover enough revenue to keep himself going and
to stave off the insistence of higher authorities for more.
Sirjan was the next district taken in hand and Mirza Agha Mustaufi
was sent to make peace between the two parties and to try and combine
them in the defence of the district against the Fars robbers. His efforts
were not successful and after making himself about equally disliked by
both parties he was recalled to Kerman. The Mutaan-ul-Mulk was appointed
to succeed him, hut before he started the heads of both parties had come in
to Kerman where attempts were being made to reconcile them. After much
trouble and talk a temporary truce at any rate was patched up between them
and they returned to Sirjan where the Mustaan-ul-Mulk was engaged in
the two equally difficult tasks of extracting money from empty pockets
and keeping off Fars hawks with Kerman sparrows.
For the restoration of authority in Baft, Rudbar and Jiruft a largo
expeditionary force under Sartip Abdul Muzaffar Khan was collected at
Mashiz, and Muhammad Khan, Sartip of Jiruft, was ordered to collect his
available forces in Jiruft to co-operate with and join it somewhere about
Rudbar. There being no special correspondence with cither force and neither
post nor telegraph throughout its area of operations, very little news of its
performance has come through. It seems to have met with opposition only
in Rudbar where the total casualties amounted to one killed and two wounded.
It appears however to have been successful in enabling the governors to
return to their respective governments and is still busy in sweeping up the
districts for revenue and, of course, for its own maintenance.
No attempts have been made to deal effectively with the robbers who still
rob and plunder at their will from the Meshed road on the north to the
roads on the south-west below Sirjan.
The general situation now is that Kerman and Bam are cowed but
simmering with discontent while in the districts a sullen but helpless peasan­
try are being fleeced of the little that robbery and chaos have left them. The
only people who are contented are the various bands of robbers whose only
fear is that there will soon be nothing more left for them to rob. Although
outwardly order and authority have been re-established, the last state of the
district is worse than the first.
The postal service has naturally followed the way of everything else Pol­
and got gradually worse and worse. No contractor would continue to go on
replacing the horses stolen and the carriages burnt by the robbers indefinitely,
especially as the payments under his contract were becoming less and less
regular. Practically about two out of every three posts from the north
were gone through by robbers and any letter suspected of containing anything
negotiable was opened. Throughout the year parcels have accumulated under
cover at fixed points and advanced like attacking parties by short rushes
to the next cover as opportunity offered.
The letters and papers gradually were reduced to the same tactics and
were delivered frequently in accumulation of two or three and once even
four weeks’ posts. Annoying as such a state of affairs is one can only admire
the solidity of the lower staff who continue even intermittently to carry the
mails, past places, in which they always ran the risk of being stripped of
everything but their hats and trousers.
No new telegraph line has been opened during the year and Bunder TeWiiu
Abbas is still 300 miles distant as the crow flics and some 2,000 by the tele­
graph wire.
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