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Iranian Security Forces Kill More Cross-Border Couriers

Kulbars carry goods on their backs along the mountains of the Iran-Iraq border (Mehr)
Kulbars carry goods on their backs along the mountains of the Iran-Iraq border (Mehr)
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Iranian Security Forces Kill More Cross-Border Couriers

Kulbars carry goods on their backs along the mountains of the Iran-Iraq border (Mehr)
Kulbars carry goods on their backs along the mountains of the Iran-Iraq border (Mehr)

An alarming number of border couriers, primarily from Iran’s Kurdish and Baluchi minorities, have been killed in the first eight months of 2024, as Tehran uses unlawful and lethal force against those who transport goods and fuel across Iranian borders as their only means of survival, said the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) on Thursday.

Headquartered in Washington, CHRI said at least 30 Kurdish border couriers, known as kulbars, were killed and 198 others injured by direct gunfire from Iranian government forces from January to August 2024.

Research undertaken by CHRI also found that six of the injured were children. One of them was 17-year-old Arian Mamandi from Sardasht, who was shot in the face by border guards and lost an eye.

Over the same eight-month period, at least 34 Baluchi fuel couriers, known as sukhtbars, were killed, and 39 others were injured by direct gunfire from government forces, CHRI’s research showed. One of those killed was 14-year-old Omran Baloch Zahi.

“The ongoing killings of border couriers are yet another example of the Islamic Republic’s use of disproportionate and lethal violence against Iran’s oppressed ethnic communities,” said Hadi Ghaemi, CHRI executive director.

“The Iranian government must immediately halt its unlawful use of lethal force against border couriers and instead focus on developing economic empowerment initiatives. This relentless violence against vulnerable populations must end,” Ghaemi said.

In July, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Supporters of Human Rights (CSHR) called on Iranian authorities under the new president to halt their use of excessive and lethal force at the Iran-Iraq border against predominantly Kurdish kulbars (border couriers), who come from marginalized communities.

“It is shameful that our youth have to engage in kulbari [transporting goods across border] for a piece of bread. We must establish a border that facilitates trade, not kulbari,” said Masoud Pezeshkian, the newly elected president of Iran, during his presidential campaign in Sanandaj in June.

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Rutte: Russian Victory Over Ukraine Would Have Costly Impact on NATO's Credibility

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT
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Rutte: Russian Victory Over Ukraine Would Have Costly Impact on NATO's Credibility

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned on Thursday that a Russian victory over Ukraine would undermine the dissuasive force of the world’s biggest military alliance and that its credibility could cost trillions to restore.
NATO has been ramping up its forces along its eastern flank with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, deploying thousands of troops and equipment to deter Moscow from expanding its war into the territory of any of the organization’s 32 member countries.
“If Ukraine loses then to restore the deterrence of the rest of NATO again, it will be a much, much higher price than what we are contemplating at this moment in terms of ramping up our spending and ramping up our industrial production,” the Associated Press quoted Rutte as saying.
“It will not be billions extra; it will be trillions extra,” he said, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Rutte insisted that Ukraine’s Western backers must “step up and not scale back the support” they are providing to the country, almost three years after Russia’s full-fledged invasion began.
“We have to change the trajectory of the war,” Rutte said, adding that the West “cannot allow in the 21st century that one country invades another country and tries to colonize it."
"We are beyond those days,” he said.
Anxiety in Europe is mounting that US President Donald Trump might seek to quickly end the war in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on terms that are unfavorable to Ukraine, but Rutte appeared wary about trying to do things in a hurry.
“If we got a bad deal, it would only mean that we will see the president of Russia high-fiving with the leaders from North Korea, Iran and China and we cannot accept that,” the former Dutch prime minister said. “That would be geopolitically a big, big mistake.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski welcomed Trump's acknowledgement that it must be Russia which should make the first peace moves, but he cautioned that “this is not the Putin that President Trump knew in his first term.”
On Wednesday, Trump threatened to impose stiff taxes, tariffs and sanctions on Moscow if an agreement isn’t reached to end the war, but that warning will probably fall on deaf ears in the Kremlin. Russia's economy is already weighed down by a multitude of US and European sanctions.
Sikorksi warned that Putin should not be put at the center of the world stage over Ukraine.
“The president of the United States is the leader of the free world. Vladimir Putin is an outcast and an indicted war criminal for stealing Ukrainian children,” Sikorski said.
"I would suggest that Putin has to earn the summit, that if he gets it early, it elevates him beyond his, significance and gives him the wrong idea about the trajectory of this,” he said.