The Times, UK Sept 30 2017 Chaos in the Caucasus exposes a gap in the frontier that the British must close With an unguarded region that offered the Turks a route into the Caucasus, the British had to safeguard a possible route through neutral Persia to Afghanistan and on to India by Michael Tillotson The 500-mile wide neck of land between the Black Sea and the Caspian is a natural breeding ground for conflict and chaos. It is a corridor from Christian Europe to Muslim northwest Asia, an area crowded with small nations competing for allies to help them take advantage of their neighbours or exact revenge for age-old hatreds. Allegiance to tsarist Russia was a nebulous concept, overshadowed by the authority of the local strongman and his followers ready to string up your menfolk and burn your house down. Yet news of the announcement in far off Petrograd of the Provisional Government to succeed that of the Tsar, on September 14, 1917, had an oddly unifying impact in the Caucasus. Hitherto antagonistic groups met in the old tsarist administrative centre, Tiflis (now Tbilisi) the capital of Georgia, to form a government of their own. Fair representation appears to have been the watchword. The Transcaucasian Commissariat had a Georgian president, three other Georgians, three Armenians, three Azerbaijanis and a couple of ethnic Russians thrown in to be on the safe side, in case whoever was in charge in Petrograd woke up to what was happening and decided to assert control over what looked increasingly like a breakaway region. Politically, the Tiflis government was broad-based, accepting revolutionaries of most kinds, including the Mensheviks, but not the other part of the Social Democratic Labour Party that had split off to form the Bolsheviks. Each member of the cabinet, or "commissioner", had a portfolio of responsibility for agriculture, education, finance and so on. All seemed stable until the tsarist troops manning the Caucasian front with Turkey began to withdraw. Although the armistice on the Eastern Front was not to be agreed until December 1917, fighting between the Russian and Turkish armies in eastern Turkey had lapsed. This was because, hearing of the grants of land available to military veterans, the Russian units began to melt away northwards so as not to miss their shares. The result was an unguarded frontier that offered the Turks a route into the Caucasus and, as the British government suddenly became aware, a possible route through neutral Persia to Afghanistan and thence to India. At the same time a rival authority appeared in the port city of Baku on the Caucasus east coast facing the Caspian. The Bolsheviks had seized control of the city and surrounding countryside, much to the alarm of the Muslim Azerbaijanis of the region, who feared that the Bolshevik leader, an Armenian friend of Lenin's called Stepan Shaumian, might use the arms left behind by the withdrawing Russians for a pogrom against them. They would certainly be ready to act at what would later be termed a "fifth column" if their coreligionist Turks could be persuaded to take advantage of the open frontier and invade. In London the war cabinet pondered urgently as to what could be done to plug the Caucasian gap before the Turks moved through it. No British force was to hand, the nearest being General Sir Stanley Maude's army 600 miles to the south in Baghdad, removal of which, even if logistically feasible, would leave Mesopotamia wide open for the Turks to reoccupy. Local allies had to be found and - without doubt - generously funded. The Georgians were tough and resilient fighters, but nationalistic to a fault, so unlikely to be interested in fighting beyond their borders. As the Azerbaijanis would be supporting the Turks, the only remaining option were the Christian Armenians, hopefully without Stepan Shaumian, the Bolshevik leader in Baku, hearing about it. The next problem was how to persuade the Armenians to act - ostensibly in part in their own defence - and deploy to the frontier. Their acceptance of substantial financial support was not thought to be an issue, but how to deliver the requisite roubles - still the main currency in the region - most certainly was. A small British military mission positioned to advise the tsarist army on tactics and logistics lingered uselessly in Tiflis, but seemed more likely to become a liability as hostages than a guileful negotiating and money-handling team. Then someone remembered Aeneas Ranald MacDonell, the British vice-consul at Baku, who knew the Caucasus as well as any foreigner, had a reputation for a resolute disposition and be could be supplied with all the roubles the British government sought to provide through one or other of the international trading banks in Baku. He was granted a commission as a major in the British Army, presumably to give the Armenians an impression of sound British military intention, and invited to get working on them. Baku, as the capital of Azerbaijan, was no place for him to start so he decided to consult the residual military mission in Tiflis to ask whether they had useful Armenian contacts that he could exploit. As the British vice-consul - in effect the local head man in the consulate - one would expect him to have a prestigious British-made automobile. However, motor roads outside the towns were infrequent, so he had a private train comprising the engine, a coach as office and living quarters, a second one for sleeping and a third to carry his escort. Arriving in Tiflis, he found that the Transcaucasian Commissariat had failed to establish authority in the Georgian capital in any way comparable to the Bolshevik grip on power in Baku. His first report to London included depressing news: "The town is full of loafing soldiers, the cafés, hotels and night clubs in the fashionable Golivinsky Prospect are filled with officers in splendid uniforms and beautiful dark-eyed Georgian women. As long as the wine and women last the Georgians were content to enjoy themselves and no one else seems to give a damn." This was a discouraging start to a difficult mission, but Major MacDonell went on to risk life and limb and distributed millions of roubles from his private train while trying to close the Caucasian gap. https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.thetimes.co.uk_article_chaos-2Din-2Dthe-2Dcaucasus-2Dexposes-2Da-2Dgap-2Din-2Dthe-2Dfrontier-2Dthat-2Dthe-2Dbritish-2Dmust-2Dclose-2D7m3wq3xjm&d=DwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=LVw5zH6C4LHpVQcGEdVcrQ&m=FI0XZBRwzrsRhy8J_GE7tqhhDpX1bVFhekqN9p-sQ1I&s=LiTJockqoVC7GEgiM1dh4wfBHDCn0HHpPnjUA9XKjJc&e=