Zerbricht der Iran?

[Shahab3]

Es ist unbestritten, dass während der britischen und russischen Besatzung Millionen von Iranern verhungerten. Ob dabei 30% oder gar 50% der Bevölkerung umgekommen sind, ist nicht mehr zu erörtern. Und niemand redet hier vom 2. Weltkrieg, sondern vom Zeitraum 1917-1919:

The Great Famine of 1917- 1919 is undoubtedly the greatest calamity in Persia’s history that unfortunately has received very little attention. During this famine approximately 40percents of Iranian population perished. The main factor for intensified and prolonged famine was financial and commercial policies of Great Britain, because at that time Iran was under occupation of Britain.

“Generally, we can divide the causes of famine into two groups of natural causes of famine and socio-historical factors. Among natural causes of famine we can mention the level of atmospheric precipitation, cold and flood, human pandemics like cholera and plague, animal pandemics, and locust plague and eurygaster integriceps damage.” [1] “On socio-historical factors we can name war and blockade, incompetency, governor’s corruption and misguided policies, the rule of tyranny and lack of confidence and empathy between people and rulers, hoarding, chaotic paths, rulers’ and landlords’ cruelties, violence and undue rigor in the face of famine, and political mischievousness.” [2] “Due to its geographical conditions that is located in hot and dry area and faces lack of rainfall, Iran has faced many famines during history.” [3] But sometimes the aforementioned socio-historical factors have reinforced these famines. The Great Famine of 1917-1919 is one of them in which the outbreak of World War I and occupation of Iran and, most important of all, Britain’s policies during occupation resulted in an unbelievable and great calamity. With advent of World War I, Britain, Russia, and Ottoman violated Iran’s neutrality and invaded Iran. After the defeat of Ottoman and occurrence of Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and consequently withdrawal of their forces from Iran, Britain could occupy whole Iran and a vast part of Middle East. Accordingly, Tsarist Russia (historical rival of Britain in Iran) left the scene and two treaties dividing Iran (August 1907, and March 1915) became futile. Britain occupied Iran until June 1918, and finally left Iran on February 1921, some days after coup of February 22 in Iran. But during this same period the greatest calamity of Persia’s history, namely the famine of 1917-1919, occurred. “As will be shown later, approximately between 8-10 million Iranians perished during this famine, and British government not only did nothing to alleviate the famine, but intensified it through confiscating local foods and cereals, preventing food import of foodstuffs from India, Mesopotamia, and United States , and adopting financial policies such as refusing paying oil revenues to Iran. Consequently a larger amount of Iranians expired due to British policies.” [4] According to Majd, since this famine was primarily a result of Iran’s occupation by Russia and Britain and later British policies exasperated it, casualties resulted from famine can be considered as World War I’s damages, damages that are apparently far beyond massacre of Armenians in Turkey and Jewish genocide by Nazis during World War II.
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