Iran and northern Iraq\u2019s Kurdish region<\/a> has long been porous, alive with family ties, trade and smuggling. Now families are cut off from loved ones, and traders \u2014 even smugglers \u2014 hesitate to cross. Iranian forces have built up their presence to prevent incursions by Iranian Kurdish militant groups.<\/p>\nThose who travel close to the border to pick up Iraqi cell signals risk being shot, activists said. Others rely on smuggled Starlink connections and pay steep prices to stay in touch.<\/p>\n
A family divided<\/p>\n
In the mountainous Iraqi district of Byara, relatives used to regularly cross the border to visit one another for family gatherings and religious celebrations.<\/p>\n
The war has upended those longstanding traditions.<\/p>\n
Nyan Fayaq, 25, a law student, stood over giant pots of food as she helped prepare a fast-breaking iftar meal in the final week of Ramadan while dozens of relatives gathered in shimmering Kurdish dress amid rolling green hills dotted with sheep.<\/p>\n
Her thoughts were in the Iranian city of Saqqez, where she has family she has not been able to reach for more than a month. <\/p>\n
Fayaq was born in Iran. Her parents divorced when she was 2, and she returned with her mother to Iraq, her mother\u2019s homeland. She reached out to her uncles in the Iranian city of Saqqez 18 years later and remained in contact. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey have electricity, gas and water, but everything has become very expensive because of America,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
An Iranian Kurdish man who works in Iraq returned to his hometown of Merivan two weeks ago to fetch his wife to bring her into Iraq because he feared for her safety in Iran. He spoke on condition his name not be used, fearing it might compromise his ability to return.<\/p>\n
Since then, he said he has been able to speak with his family only briefly. He said they have told him that Iranian police and security forces are operating outside their bases because many of them have been destroyed by airstrikes. AP cannot independently confirm these accounts. <\/p>\n
They have been occupying schools and gyms against the wishes of local residents, they say.<\/p>\n
A smuggler\u2019s life<\/p>\n
The war has also brought the work of cross-border smugglers to a standstill.<\/p>\n
Known as kolbars, these porters carry goods \u2014 such as cigarettes, electronics, and clothing \u2014 across Iran\u2019s western provinces. They operate in a legal gray zone and risk death from border guards, harsh weather, and treacherous mountain terrain.<\/p>\n
At times, people also rely on kolbars to smuggle themselves across the border. Many are Iranian Kurds without passports because they have not completed mandatory military service, while others are asylum-seekers hoping to make their way to Europe. Kurdish militant groups also use the same mountainous routes to move fighters and equipment into Iran for operations.<\/p>\n
Being a kolbar is all 25-year-old Bilal Osman has ever known. It is a trade passed down from his father and grandfather.<\/p>\n
Last year, he recalls, Iranian forces shot at a caravan of 12 mules while they were transporting goods in the mountains. \u201cOne bullet even hit a man\u2019s leg,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes a lot of soldiers are stationed along the border. If they see us, they shoot, beat us, or throw stones. Our life is hard, but this is how we make money to feed our families,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Near the foot of the mountains bordering Iran in Halabja, he tends to his mules and waits for word from Iranian kolbars on the other side. Since the war began, he says, there has been none. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe kolbars simply can\u2019t cross. We are always ready, but the borders are tightly controlled,\u201d Osman said.<\/p>\n
Iranian forces have \u201cbrought cameras for each spot, increased soldiers from five to at eac30 h location, and now even place soldiers between checkpoints,\u201d he said. \u201cWe speak to people on the Iranian side every day, and they tell us they can\u2019t come because the border is too heavily guarded.\u201d<\/p>\n
A kolbar on the Iranian side, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns, told The Associated Press that business has all but stopped since the war began because of the increased security presence.<\/p>\n
An activist\u2019s mission<\/p>\n
Shiwa Hassanpour, an activist with the human rights monitor Hengaw Organization, based in Iraq\u2019s Kurdish region, said people have been shot for approaching the border, because Iranian forces suspect them of being spies or informants.<\/p>\n
Obtaining information from inside Iran has become increasingly difficult, she said. Locals rely on costly virtual private networks, or VPNs, to report events and send videos, meaning news often trickles out slowly. Hassanpour herself has not been able to contact her family for over 20 days.<\/p>\n
She said that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard has deployed large numbers of troops across cities in Iran\u2019s Kurdish region. These measures intensified after Iranian Kurdish opposition groups announced a coalition. <\/p>\n
Since then, Hengaw has documented a sharp rise in mobile checkpoints, vehicle searches, and violence against civilians.<\/p>\n
Using a VPN to bypass internet restrictions costs the equivalent of about $25. To communicate with relatives abroad, families pay up to the equivalent of $50, an amount most cannot afford, she said. People also pay hefty rates to use smuggled Starlink connections.<\/p>\n
To prevent Iranians from using the Iraqi network to make calls, Iran targeted cell towers operated by Iraqi telecommunication companies Asiacell and Korek near the border and then ordered security forces to shoot anyone approaching the area, Hassanpour said.<\/p>\n
Authorities have also arrested anyone caught with a VPN app on their phone, accusing them of spying for Israel or the U.S, she added.<\/p>\n
Fattahi is still waiting to hear from his mother. Their calls are often muffled by static and wind because his cousin uses two phones to conduct them \u2014 one to call Fattahi and the other to reach his mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to hear her,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HALABJA, Iraq (AP) \u2014 To speak with his mother inside Iran, Yaser Fattahi waits in self-exile in Iraq…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[719,2371,18053,2122,328,197,34,196,94,598,768,18165,200,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-43210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-2024-2025-mideast-wars","9":"tag-2024-2026-mideast-wars","10":"tag-bilal-osman","11":"tag-border-security","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-iran","15":"tag-iran-war","16":"tag-iraq","17":"tag-islam","18":"tag-military-and-defense","19":"tag-mobile-phones","20":"tag-war-and-unrest","21":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116319007084816695","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}