THE DISORDERS IN PERSIA.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1252, 7 October 1911, Page 5

THE DISORDERS IN PERSIA.

WILD TMBESJrEN HOLD SHIRASS. By Telegraph—Press /«<wistioTi—Conyrißht Calcutta, October 5. Advices from Persia utafe that the disorder in the southern provinces is increasinsr. Shiraz, tTio oanitiij of the province of Fars, nnd one of tho principal trading cmitiYv; in tho south, is in tho hands of wild tribes. Tho 30a Regiment (Central Indian Horfe) has been ordered to proceed thithor. Nowhoro else perhaps, says the "Times," haa Persian "sovereignty" been reduced to Suite such a sinister farco as in Persian aluchistaii. Hut tho situation in tho other provinces adjoining tho PcTsian Gulf—say from Bunder Abbas northwards as far as Korman, and to tho west right up to and even beyond Bushiro and Shirnz —differs very little except in degree. Whatever the Constitutional movement may have dono for Northern and Central Persia, it has yielded eo far nothing but chaos in Southern Persia.

If (ho presence of British men-of-war can alone nowadays check tho lawless forces to which the paralysis of Persian authority leaves a free field nil over Southern Persia, it is easy to imagine what g-oos on in the interior beyond reacli of our ships. New feuds are superimposed upon old feuds, tribes light against tribes, villages against villages, petty chiefs against petty chiefs, and even those, who lire, peacefully inclined are compelled in their own dflfonco to lake sides or are plundered tare by their more aggressive neighbours until sheer want and misery drive them in turn to take lo tho road or to swell tlio marauding bimds in tho service- of some.successful freebooter. Is it lurprising that in these, circumstances scarcely a road, in Southern Persia should bo eafo either from violence and pillage or from tho almost equally ruinous exactions of the chiefs, who profess merely to tako legitimate toll of the passing caravan which they are subsidised to protect?