Political Geography 95 (2022) 102562 Available online 22 January 2022 0962-6298/© 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Geographies of precarity and violence in the Kurdish kolberi underground economy Sanan Moradi * , Adam C. Morse, Alexander B. Murphy, Delaram Pakru 1, 2 , Shehabad H. 1, 2 Department of Geography, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Kolber Underground economy Precarity Violence Biopolitics Borders Borderlands Kurds Kurdistan Iran ABSTRACT This paper investigates the precarious lives of the Kurdish kolbers, underground laborers who transport cargo on their backs across Iran’s border with Iraq. Throughout their arduous journeys, kolbers experience various forms of violence, including direct shooting by border guards. Findings from interviews with the kolbers indicate that kolberi, a strenuous, dangerous, precarious type of labor, is a response to pervasive unemployment in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat), and a long-term consequence of the Iranian state’s systematic economic disinvestment in the Kurdish region. Although kolbers assert agency within their labor at localized scales, the social organization of kolberi is a reaction to the Iranian state’s biopolitical strategies of economic disinvestment and violence. Drawing on a biopolitical framework, we illustrate the analytical interconnections among the economic marginalization of Rojhelat, violence against the kolbers, and the kolbers’ precarious lives. The article offers ideas for future research that come out of our examination of the complexities of kolberi—an examination that demonstrates the importance of incorporating political-economic, ethno-territorial, and biopolitical factors in analyses of underground border exchanges and precarious marginalized lives. 1. Introduction In the absence of job opportunities in his Kurdish town, Simko had no choice but to do kolberi 3 to support his family. Kolberi refers to an extremely strenuous and precarious form of labor that involves Kurdish kolbers carrying loads of goods from Iraq and Turkey across the border into Iran on their backs. 4 Each load can weigh between 30 and 80 kg (66–176 lb), and the routes the kolbers travel range from 5 to 15 km (3–9 mi)—traversing highly rugged terrain. Journeys typically involve mul- tiple life-threatening dangers. The challenges kolberi presents are well illustrated by an incident on the foggy evening of November 20, 2017, when Simko and his group of 14 fellow kolbers were on their way to cross the border into Iraq to pick up loads. Just a few hundred meters before reaching the borderline, his group was ambushed and came under fre by Iranian border guards. In the foggy confusion, the kolbers scattered, feeing for their lives. Bullets seemed to be coming from everywhere and out of nowhere. Simko was shot frst in the left leg. Then, as he was pleading, he was shot again, this time in the right hand and lower back, destroying his kidney and injuring his spinal cord. In the chaos, another kolber, H. Moradi, 5 was killed by bullets in the head. The border guards retrieved Simko’s injured body, dragged him on the ground, and then tossed him “like a bag of grains” into the back of the military truck (interview #20, 2019). Simko had pleaded for the border guards to take him to a hospital, but instead they tortured and verbally abused him. One of the border guards threatened Simko at gunpoint, telling him that he “would be sent to where his [dead] friend had gone, if he spoke too much.” Because of his injuries, Simko was paralyzed in both legs. The court also convicted Simko of crossing the border illegally and “undermining national secu- rity,” even though he had been ambushed inside Iran’s borders. With no insurance or income, and mounting medical bills and court fnes, Simko and his family lead extremely precarious lives, relying on community * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: smoradi@uoregon.edu (S. Moradi), amorse2@uoregon.edu (A.C. Morse), abmurphy@uoregon.edu (A.B. Murphy). 1 The two co-authors of this article who contributed from inside Iran have used pseudonyms to protect their own anonymity. 2 Independent scholar Kurdistan, Iran 3 Kolberi is a Kurdish word that literally means ‘carrying on one’s back’ (kol, meaning ‘upper back; ’ and berî, from the verb birdin, meaning ‘carrying, taking from one place to another’). 4 See also Bozcali (2019), and Soleimani and Mohammadpour (2020b). 5 No relation to the author. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Political Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102562 Received 16 August 2020; Received in revised form 3 August 2021; Accepted 7 December 2021