SANANDAJ, Iran - As dusk fell, three Kurdish porters set off to transport their goods on their backs to neighboring Turkey through the rugged border mountains of Iran to sell them.
Carrying tea and cigarettes, Barzan Mihnai, Asaad Saedani Fard, and Fard Bilhul left the village of Bawan in Urmia province last Wednesday to Turkey. On their way home, the three Kolbars disappeared amid the heavy snow that has blanketed the region.
Despite constant efforts by locals and authorities to discover them, they have remained unaccounted for due to heavy snowfall.
"Barzan Mihnai, Asaad Saedani Fard, and Fard Bilhul left [Iran] to the village of Gilsum in Turkey to sell their goods. According to villagers from Gilsum, they sold their loads and left their area on the morning of Thursday [to return to Iran]. But contact between them and their families has severed," Farkhir Mihanni, the cousin of one of the missing Kolbars told Rudaw English.
Kolbars are semi-legal porters who transport untaxed goods across the Kurdistan Region-Iran border and sometimes the Iran-Turkey border. They are constantly being targeted by Iranian border guards as well as being victims of natural disasters. Many are pushed into the profession by poverty and a lack of alternative employment, particularly in Iran's Kurdish provinces.
Since then, local authorities in Urmia province, families as well as relatives of the missing Kolbars have been looking for their whereabouts, but to no avail. The one-meter-high snowfall in the mountainous region has made the rescue and search operation almost impossible. The distraught families call on authorities on both sides of the border to join efforts to discover them.
The unprecedented snowfall, which in some places has reached two meters, comes after years of drought that had plagued the Kurdish western border regions of Iran.
'Black market' - 'Price hikes'
Despite making people happy that the snowfall will put an end to the past droughts, it has heaped misery on several other sectors of life.
In several neighborhoods of Mariwan near the Kurdistan Region's border, people have faced power outage with traffic coming to a standstill due to the blockade of roads.
"Our electricity has cut since the snowfall started, forcing us to move to our relatives' houses. Despite having called the relevant electricity authorities, we have not yet received an answer from them," Payman Danish, a resident of the neighborhood of Zagros, Mariwan, told Rudaw English.
The drastic plummet of temperature has hit the Kurdish provinces of Iran hard, including Kurdistan province, west Azerbaijan, and Kermanshah. Locals across these provinces are plagued by the cold snap, most notably blackouts, road blockades, price hikes of goods and services. They accuse the Iranian government of having done little to alleviate their concerns.
In Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, more than 50 centimeters of snow has fallen, sending temperature degrees below zero.
Traffic has come to a standstill, people find it difficult to move around. Plenty of people could be seen in the streets desperate to take a taxi, or they have to walk in the freezing streets to reach their destinations.
"A black market has emerged due to the halting of traffic and a lack of food essentials," Bayan Ahmedi, 38, lamented as she angrily got off a taxi and held the little hands of her two-year-old child to walk home.
"Last night, I went to my sister's house. The snow blocked me from coming back home. I stayed there and I was forced to come back home today. I waited for more than one hour to get a taxi to drive me home. All the taxi drivers demanded many fares. I took this taxi for 120,000 tomans [$5] which is ten times higher than the original fare. We are poor people and we cannot afford it. I just do not understand why the authorities do not care about us," she said angrily.
Iran’s economy is in dire shape mainly due to mismanagement, US sanctions, low oil prices, and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The economy has left hundreds of thousands of workers unemployed or in desperate need of government subsidies.
According to the Kurdistan province's traffic authorities, excessive snowfall has blocked roads to more than 550 villages in the cities of Baneh, Mariwan, Saqqez, Diwandara, and Kamyaran. The government has declared a public holiday for schools over the past three days.
Feeling the pinch due to high inflation and an already deteriorating economic situation, what adds to make locals furious is a price hike in their daily life essentials, including bread.
One could see massive queues of people desperate for their turns to arrive to get home some hot bread to their children, despite the high prices.
"Even though this snow made us all happy, lack of services and the negligence of the authorities has made me walk for more than an hour to reach this bakery shop from my home and I have been waiting for two hours in queues for my turn to come to buy bread. Yet, I do not know when my turn will arrive," Saeed Mohammed, 55, said.
Municipality teams have not done enough to plow snow from the streets to make traffic easier.
Civil activists and locals have taken to social media to express their anger over the government's inaction.
"The snow crisis showed the real image of the authorities to us. The frozen streets, the broken trees, a lack of public transport, showed the authorities' misuse of their power and how they have monopolized all sectors" for their own advantages, Ejlal Qawwami, a civil activist claimed.
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