Kurdish border couriers face snow, heavy loads, and death for $10

Human rights organizations have documented an increase in deadly shootings by Iran’s security forces targeting Kurdish border couriers transporting goods into Iraq, who are trying to make money to survive.

In 2023, Iran shot at 507 Kurdish people carrying goods from Iraq, and 44 of them were killed, according to human rights organization United for Iran, and since the start of this year 111 Kurds have been shot at the border for that same reason.

The Kurdish border couriers, known in Kurdish and Farsi as Kolbars, have limited access to justice, said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Norway-based Iran Human rights.

"When the guards see them, they shoot at them. We hear about people who have been killed, but there are also people who have lost their limbs. They get paralyzed because of spinal cord injury,” said Amiry-Moghaddam.

Many of them are boys as young as 13, but others are highly educated men and women, and some as old as 77 years of age, who rely on carrying a heavy load of goods through dangerous, mountainous terrain as a means of survival, said Shaghayegh Norouzi from United for Iran.

“You can find doctors that they are just finished their education and they came back from Tehran and they cannot work in Kurdistan,” Norouzi told Iran International.

The Kolbars typically bypass customs to earn payment based on weight and the type of good they are transporting. They often carry loads between 55 and 110 pounds through mountainous terrain for upwards of 10 kilometres, according to reports.

Items are up for resale once it makes its way through border with goods ranging from tea, electronics, textiles, beauty products, and cigarettes. Alcohol is usually avoided as it involves harsher punishment.

Ethnic pressures

Taimoor Aliassi, the Executive Director and UN Representative of the Kurdistan Human Rights-Geneva (KMMK-G) called the shootings “extrajudicial executions” that reflect a “systemic” targeting of one Iran’s most marginalized ethnic groups.

“People have a right to food, right to work, a right to health, right to life,” said Aliassi.

He told Iran International the shootings of Kolbars has been happening for two decades and poverty is the main force driving them to this work.

According to official figures around 20 million landmines have been planted in the Kurdish region of Iran since the war with Iraq in the 1980s, which has made the land unsuitable for farming and created lethal conditions to walk through, said Aliassi.

"We have a lot of people living in the area who cannot work on their land. And then, there's no invest investment, and development projects in the region” he added.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report on the increase in Iran’s security forces shooting Kolbars. HRW interviewed 13 Kurdish border couriers between October 2021 and April 2024, who survived and or witnessed the shootings.

Witnesses told HRW that Iran’s FARAJA Border Guard force and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) carried out the attacks on border couriers.

According to the Monday’s report, six people told the human rights group that Iranian security forces aimed at them and shot them, and that they had seen others shot. Two others told them that Iranian security forces shot and killed their relatives who worked as border couriers. One lost a leg after stepping on a landmine.

HRW reviewed medical records and court documents.

A security issue

HRW said in its repot that Iran’s deceased president who died May 19 in a helicopter crash, Ebrahim Raisi, suggested to Kurdish communities to consider regulating Kurdish border couriers work, yet officials in Iran often deem it a security issue.

Kurdish political prisoner, Mohiyedin Ebrahimi was a Kolbar who was executed in Iran on March 17 2023 on security charges. He was arrested in 2017 after being caught carrying alcohol through the border.

"I support twelve people in my family in Oshnavieh and have been working as a kolbar (human mules who carry goods across border) for several years,” he wrote in a letter published on Iran Human Rights website.

“On 17 November 2017, I was crossing the border from the Kurdistan region in Iraq with two horses and four carts in the dark of the night. Several other people were walking a few hundred meters ahead of me when border forces started shooting at them and they started running. The border forces shot at me as well and hit me on the leg, causing great injury. Two horses and four cartons of alcoholic beer were discovered and confiscated from me and I had to be transferred to the hospital,” he wrote in the letter.

He was officially sentenced to death on charges of baghy (armed rebellion) through membership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran.

Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran human rights cited another similar case.

On June 9, 2024, Edris Ali, also a Kurdish Kolbar was sentenced to death on “trumped up” charges of “espionage for Israel” said Amiry-Moghaddam based on confessions “extracted under torture.”

He said “his only crime was to smuggle alcoholic drinks as a Kolbar.”

For 10 dollars

Amiry-Moghaddam said Tehran is also targeting people carrying goods from Baluchistan, and that the targeting of ethnic minorities like Kurds and Baloch is a means of controlling and persecuting them.

“It’s indicative of a regime that doesn't value human lives and wants to create fear,” he said.

Aliassi of KMMK-G said in addition to gender and religious apartheid, Iran is also committing ethnic apartheid.

Aliassi said between 84 to 160 thousand people do work as a Kolbar on a daily basis, citing Iranian data.

"10 dollars" is what Kurdish border couriers get for transporting a heavy load through snow and cold weather, with the possibility of getting killed, injured or jailed, said Aliassi.