MARIWAN, Iran - Following the loss of his two brothers almost three years ago, then 18-year-old Behzad Khosravi watched his family fall into poverty as the only source of their income - his brothers’ work as kolbars - disappeared with their death. Fast forward three years, Behzad has taken the same dangerous path in order to make ends meet in Iran’s poverty-stricken west.
Sitting in a corner of their small house, located on the side of a mountain in Ney village, around five kilometers east of the Kurdish city of Mariwan, Osman Khosravi and Farida Rahimpenah hold pictures of their dead sons, Azad and Farhad Khosravi, who froze to death in the Tata mountain range of the Hawraman area in December 2019, while trying to transport goods from the Kurdistan Region to the Kurdish areas of Iran (Rojhelat).
Almost three years later, Osman’s already severe eyesight condition has gotten worse, and the promises made to them by the area’s officials following the loss of their sons have turned out empty. On top of this, he lives in fear of losing yet another son down the same treacherous path.
Their house portrays the hardship of living in poverty. Located on the side of the mountain, they still have blue sacks covering their bathroom doors, and you cannot find even the simplest technological devices such as a TV in their home.
A third son working as a kolbar
The Khosravi family now has very limited income, with 21- year- old Behzad now the only person working in the family. After the death of his brothers, he grew tired of the promises made by government officials and, despite the disapproval of his parents, has resorted to working as a kolbar to make ends meet.
Kolbars are a small cog in a sophisticated and hugely profitable machine. Clothing, alcohol, cigarettes, mobile phones - they all arrive in Iraqi Kurdistan from Dubai, Turkey, or Iraq’s southern borders, where they are then transferred to depots close to the Iranian border. At night, hundreds of mules transport the goods to a collection point, where wholesalers set up guarded tents to hand tens of kilos of goods over to oncoming kolbars each morning.
Powerful businessmen in Tehran, Erbil and across the Middle East make handsome sums of money in the process. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), whose own guards survey the area, is reportedly involved in the trade and uses the smuggling routes.
Though no more than seven kilometers each way, the kolbar’s trek is no mean feat. The rocky path is laden with landmines and border guards who at times fire to kill or injure. But it is especially frightening in winter, with snow several meters deep, ice-laden paths, and potent blizzard winds.
Due to limited job opportunities in many border areas of Iran, people are frequently left with no option but to take on such dangerous journeys to make a living.
“The promises made to us were never fulfilled, we received some aid from philanthropists to paint our house and get [a] gas line,” Behzad told Rudaw English. “The officials promised to pardon me from military service, I spent a lot of money on the procedure, but it did not work, and now I have no other choice but to work as a kolbar despite my mother and father begging me to not do it.”
The journey Behzad takes is not only exhausting physically, but also mentally, as he walks down the same path his brothers lost their lives pursuing.
“It is very hard for me to step on a land that my brothers lost their lives on, but poverty has led me to pursue that path, this is our house, we only have an old radio, and when it rains, we are afraid the mountain might collapse on our house,” he said, pointing to the terrible situation of their house.
Osman suffered from an eyesight condition for some time, but following the death of his sons, his condition dramatically worsened as a result of the trauma.
“Even though I had problems with my eyes before, after the death of my sons I lost my sight in one eye completely and the other only has a 30 percent ability to see,” Osman said, adding that his wife had also developed an eyesight condition and her operation requires around 10 million tomans (around $400), which they cannot afford.
Life has been very hard on Farida as well, and living with the thought of the many times she had told her sons to not work as a kolbar haunts her mind every day.
“I never approved of my sons taking such a dangerous path, but their father had no job and we had no source of income,” she said. “They would say that they want to take us all out of poverty, and they headed down that path, until they got into that tragic accident and left us with nothing but grief.”
Related: Iran's kolbars: Two brothers' perilous journey to feed their family
“For the past two years, our lives have become grief and tears, we have not slept well for even a night, and despite losing two of my sons, we are still in poverty,” Farida said, adding that their only source of income is Behzad occasionally working as a kolbar.
“I pray all the time until he comes back, it is very hard for a mother who had lost two sons while working as a kolbar to approve of her third son doing the same thing,” she added.
While the Khosravi brothers froze to death, dozens of kolbars face death every year as they are attacked by Iranian border guards.
Families of kolbars are among the main victims of these attacks by Iranian border guards, as the transportation of goods is their primary source of income. Iranian border guards have previously raided the houses of kolbars, confiscating their belongings.
The Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) in their annual report on human rights violations in Iran published in January said that, “at least 46 Kurdish kolbars lost their lives and 122 kolbars were injured in the border areas of the western provinces of West Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and Kermanshah as a result of shootings by border forces and natural disasters” in 2021.
Amnesty International addressed the brutal treatment kolbars face in their 2020 human rights report.
“Iran's border guards continued to unlawfully shoot scores of unarmed Kurdish kolbars who work, under cruel and inhumane conditions, as cross-border porters between the Kurdistan regions of Iran and Iraq, killing at least 40 men and injuring dozens of others,” the human rights watchdog said, sourcing Kurdish human rights organizations.
However, despite the danger their two lost sons had to go through, and the danger their remaining son faces traveling on the borders, the Khosravi are in no way richer, and as the sun sets on their small mountainside home, the clothes left behind from her lost sons and their torn shoes are all that give Farida some relief.
Additional reporting and translation by Dilan Sirwan
