BANEH, Iran - Growing up in a poor village in Iran’s Baneh province, Faraidoon Farajpoor had to resort to working as a kolbar in order to provide for his family, until he was shot by Iranian border guards four years ago, and his one source of income was forever gone.
Farajpoor, 40, grew up in a rural village in Baneh in Iran’s western Kurdistan province. When he turned 13 he joined many other people from his village in working as a kolbar and carrying goods across the border.
Living as a kolbar was in itself a tragic life, but the real tragedy started when he was shot by Iranian border guards four years ago, and lost his ability to work as a kolbar, which for many people is a last resort.
“On February 28, 2018, around 11 in the morning, just like any other day, a group of kolbars and I made our way to work, we were around 15 people,” Farajpoor recalled the day he was shot to Rudaw English. “The soldiers made their way to us and got really close, we had no loads with us, but they suddenly started shooting and injured another boy and me, a bullet hitting my left side and another my knee.”
Still suffering from his wounds four years on, Farajpoor can barely walk without the aid of a walking stick, and his three kids are left in a family without a breadwinner.
Kolbars are a small cog in a sophisticated and hugely profitable machine. Clothing, alcohol, cigarettes, mobile phones - they all arrive in the Kurdistan Region 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 incoming 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 the 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.
Farajpoor claims that at the time of his injury, the Iranian border guards would not let him return despite his wound, therefore he was transferred to Sulaimani in the Kurdistan Region where he received treatment.
After receiving treatment and undergoing surgery that cost him around $5000, barely leaving him with any of his savings, Farajpoor returned to Iran in order to pursue a lawsuit against his shooters.
“He came to me to pursue his case,” Rahman Pirasta, Farajpoor’s attorney told Rudaw English. “I initially filed a suit against those policemen that shot him, and Farajpoor had witnesses that he was not carrying any loads with him.”
The case was transferred to the city of Saqqez since Baneh’s revolutionary court does not have a section where one can file a lawsuit against armed forces.
Farajpoor was ruled innocent by the court after proving that he had no loads on him, but that did not mean he had won the case.
“For the final verdict, the court sent the case to the armed forces court of Sanandaj, and when we went there, the main judge was not there,” Pirasta said. “We were really shocked and surprised that despite all the witnesses that were in the benefit of the injured kolbar, the verdict ruled the armed forces innocent.”
Farajpoor survived two bullets, but 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.
In their May report, the KHRN reported the death of at least one kolbar and injury of at least 12 more at the hands of Iranian border guards.
Additional reporting and translation by Dilan Sirwan
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