Because of the territorial losses from the war, Sultan Abdul Hamid II decided that the Tanzimat reforms were a failure. Worried that they would lead to increased foreign influence or the creation of an autonomous region—as occurred in the Balkans—Abdul Hamid blocked the implementation of Armenian reforms. Instead, he focused on uniting the Muslims in the empire under pan-Islamic policies. Abdul Hamid created the Hamidiye regiments in the 1890s from Kurdish tribes; these were given free rein to commit violence against Armenians with impunity. In 1895, another European reform proposal was shelved after widespread anti-Armenian massacres that killed at least 80,000 Armenians. Akçam considers that "the Armenian genocide was driven by the traumatic memories of the nineteenth century's reform-massacre dynamic."