page_title: Dunsterforce
section_title: Analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Dunsterforce / Aftermath / Analysis
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of troops from the 39th Brigade at Enzeli after the evacuation from Baku.
context_page_description: Established in December 1917, Dunsterforce was an Allied military force named after its commander, General Lionel Dunsterville. The force had fewer than 350 Australian, New Zealand, British and Canadian officers and NCOs, who were drawn from the Western and Mesopotamian fronts. The force was intended to organise local units in northern Iran and southern Caucasus, to replace the Tsarist armies that had fought the Ottoman armies in Armenia. The Russians had also occupied northern Iran in co-operation with the British occupation of south Iran, to create a cordon to prevent German and Ottoman agents from reaching central Asia, Afghanistan and India.
  In July 1918, Captain Stanley Savige, five officers and fifteen NCOs of Dunsterforce, set out towards Urmia and were caught up in an exodus of Assyrians, after the town had been captured by the Ottoman army. About 80,000 people fled and the Dunsterforce party helped hold off the Ottoman pursuit and attempts by local Kurds to get revenge on the Assyrians for their earlier plundering. By the time the rearguard reached Bijar on 17 August, the Dunsterforce party was so worn out that only four men recovered before the war ended.
context_section_description: The Centrocaspian Dictatorship fell on 15 September, after Ottoman-Azerbaijani forces occupied Baku. In 1937, the RAF official historian, H. A. Jones wrote that Dunsterforce had failed to reach Tiflis or to create a Caucasian military force to hold the line between Batum, Tiflis and Baku but the cotton crop and the oil of Baku had been denied to the Germans. The Ottomans took over the oil fields in September, though only for a few weeks. On 30 October, the armistice with the Ottoman Empire required them to leave and allow the Allies to re-occupy Baku. Exaggerated rumours about the strength of Dunsterforce had also tied down Ottoman troops in Kurdistan, protecting the British flank in Mesopotamia.
  In the same year, Charles Bean, the Australian official historian, wrote that after Dunsterforce was disbanded, the officers were allowed to return to their former units, join Indian battalions or stay with Norperforce. The Dunsterville Mission had failed in its original purpose but managed to stop the agents of the Central powers getting into Iran. The obstruction of the Jungle Movement of Gilan (Jangali) was achieved by Bicherakov but this would have not occurred without the rapport with him that was established by Dunsterville. The operations of Dunsterforce gave the British great local prestige as the rest of the Dunsterville Mission carried out famine relief and the organisation of supplies, for which it had little local knowledge but the force adapted and also displayed its military quality in the fighting at Sain Kala and Baku.
  In 1987, Vasili Mitrokhin, a Soviet archivist, wrote that the real objective of Dunsterforce, in the guise of defending British India, was to secure a foothold in the Caucasus. The force would then co-operate with counter-revolutionary forces, to overthrow the Baku Soviet and seize control of Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region. Mitrokhin claimed that General Dunsterville had "forty Ford Model T vans loaded with gold and silver" to pay for the operation.
caption: Soldiers of the 39th Brigade at Bandar-e Anzali, after being evacuated from Baku.
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