Iran's Kurdish kolbars: Two sons, two deaths, two months

Iran’s Kurdish kolbars: Two sons, two deaths, two months

Jabar Dastbaz reports on Iran’s kolbars, Kurdish porters who carry untaxed goods on their backs across the mountain borders with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Turkey, often the only work available in the impoverished Kurdish border regions. The story centres on the Ahmadi family of Kuran, a village on the Iran–Turkey border, who lost two sons within two months in 2020: Arsalan was shot dead by Turkish border forces in May, and his younger brother Shamzin, working to pay for his wedding, was shot by Iranian border guards on 1 July and died of his wounds eight days later.

Their father, who worked as a kolbar for 15 years, says guards used to confiscate goods but now open fire, and their mother alleges that the authorities made her promise not to sue. Monitors estimate that tens of thousands of people do this work, and a rights group recorded 237 kolbars killed or injured in 2019. The family’s youngest son, who had already left school because the family could not afford it, has now given up the work.

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