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For Kurdish Smugglers, Iran Sanctions Are Starting to Bite

Seen from the road, they look like dots on the snow-covered mountainside. Rows of men crossing the border from Iraq into Iran at almost 10,000 feet, carrying up to 150 pounds of goods on their shoulders. After a four-hour march, they entrust their loads—in exchange for about $10 to $25 per person—to a group of […]

Sergio Colombo and Andrea Prada Bianchi write for Foreign Policy:

Seen from the road, they look like dots on the snow-covered mountainside. Rows of men crossing the border from Iraq into Iran at almost 10,000 feet, carrying up to 150 pounds of goods on their shoulders. After a four-hour march, they entrust their loads—in exchange for about $10 to $25 per person—to a group of pickup truck drivers, ready to bring them to the nearby city of Marivan and, from there, to the rest of Iran.

These kolbars (literally “those who carry on their back”) are smugglers from Iranian Kurdistan who cross into Iraqi Kurdistan, collect goods, and bring them back to Iran, defying the harsh environmental conditions and border guards’ bullets. The growing difficulties they face in doing this work are an emblem of how tensions between Washington and Tehran have affected daily life in one of Iran’s poorest regions.