War disrupts life on the Iraq‑Iran border, isolating families and stifling trade

HALABJA, Iraq (AP) — To speak with his mother inside Iran, Yaser Fattahi waits in self-exile in Iraq for brief calls arranged by a cousin back home who travels close to the border between the neighboring countries where he can pick up a signal to connect them.

Fattahi fled to neighboring Iraq in December, fearing arrest over his participation in anti-government protests in Iran. A trained nurse, he was caring for wounded protesters in their homes so they wouldn't have to seek care in state-run hospitals that were under surveillance.

Now, as the war intensifies, he worries constantly for his mother’s safety amid U.S. and Israeli bombardment.

The war has disrupted telecommunications and concentrated Iranian forces along the frontier, choking off communications and trade for many.

When Fattahi's cousin can make it to the border, he calls over WhatsApp using one phone with an Iraqi SIM card and then connects to Fattahi's mother using another phone with the Iranian cell network.

“The calls last a minute or two,” Fattahi said from Sulaymaniyah, in Iraq’s Kurdish region along the Iranian border. “She tells me to take care of myself, and that they are okay.”

Four days have passed since the last call. Fattahi keeps glancing at his phone. “I thought he would call today but he hasn’t,” he said.

The border between Iran and northern Iraq's Kurdish region has long been porous, alive with family ties, trade and smuggling. Now families are cut off from loved ones, and traders — even smugglers — hesitate to cross. Iranian forces have built up their presence to prevent incursions by Iranian Kurdish militant groups.

Those 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.

In the mountainous Iraqi district of Byara, relatives used to regularly cross the border to visit one another for family gatherings and religious celebrations.

The war has upended those longstanding traditions.

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.

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.

Fayaq was born in Iran. Her parents divorced when she was 2, and she returned with her mother to Iraq, her mother’s homeland. She reached out to her uncles in the Iranian city of Saqqez 18 years later and remained in contact.

“They have electricity, gas and water, but everything has become very expensive because of America,” she said.

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.

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.

They have been occupying schools and gyms against the wishes of local residents, they say.

The war has also brought the work of cross-border smugglers to a standstill.

Known as kolbars, these porters carry goods — such as cigarettes, electronics, and clothing — across Iran’s western provinces. They operate in a legal gray zone and risk death from border guards, harsh weather, and treacherous mountain terrain.

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.

Being a kolbar is all 25-year-old Bilal Osman has ever known. It is a trade passed down from his father and grandfather.

Last year, he recalls, Iranian forces shot at a caravan of 12 mules while they were transporting goods in the mountains. “One bullet even hit a man’s leg,” he said.

“Sometimes 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,” he said.

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.

“The kolbars simply can’t cross. We are always ready, but the borders are tightly controlled,” Osman said.

Iranian forces have “brought cameras for each spot, increased soldiers from five to at eac30 h location, and now even place soldiers between checkpoints,” he said. “We speak to people on the Iranian side every day, and they tell us they can’t come because the border is too heavily guarded.”

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.

Shiwa Hassanpour, an activist with the human rights monitor Hengaw Organization, based in Iraq’s Kurdish region, said people have been shot for approaching the border, because Iranian forces suspect them of being spies or informants.

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.

She said that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard has deployed large numbers of troops across cities in Iran’s Kurdish region. These measures intensified after Iranian Kurdish opposition groups announced a coalition.

Since then, Hengaw has documented a sharp rise in mobile checkpoints, vehicle searches, and violence against civilians.

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.

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.

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.

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 — one to call Fattahi and the other to reach his mother.

“It’s hard to hear her,” he said. “But it’s enough.”

A man rides his motorcycle past a sign bearing a prayer in Arabic reading "Glory and praise be to Allah; glory be to Allah, the Great," along a road near the Iraq-Iran border in the mountainous Kurdish region near Halabja, Iraq, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A horse used by Iraq-Iran cross-border smugglers stands at a compound in a village in the mountainous Kurdish region near Halabja, Iraq, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Ako Abdul Rahman, 22, right, an Iraq-Iran cross-border smuggler, leads a horse at a compound in a village in the mountainous Kurdish region near Halabja, Iraq, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Ako Abdul Rahman, 22, right, an Iraq-Iran cross-border smuggler, chats with local colleagues at a compound in a village in the mountainous Kurdish region near Halabja, Iraq, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Bilal Osman, 25, an Iraq-Iran cross-border smuggler, speaks on the phone with a partner in Iran as he stands at a compound in a village in the mountainous Kurdish region near Halabja, Iraq, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Federal officials on Thursday gave final approval for the Dakota Access oil pipeline to continue operating its contentious Missouri River crossing, an outcome that comes nearly a decade after boisterous protests against the project on the North Dakota prairie.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to grant the key easement means the pipeline will keep operating but with added conditions for detecting leaks and monitoring groundwater, among others. The announcement brings an end to a drawn-out legal and regulatory saga stemming from the protests in 2016 and 2017, though further litigation over the pipeline is likely.

The $3.8 billion, multistate pipeline has been transporting oil since June 2017 from North Dakota’s Bakken oil field to a terminal in Illinois. The line carries about 4% of U.S. daily oil production, or roughly 540,000 barrels per day,

The Corps is “decisively putting years of delays to rest and moving out to safely execute this crossing beneath Lake Oahe," Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle said in a statement.

The pipeline crosses the river upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation, which straddles the Dakotas. The tribe has long opposed the pipeline, fearing a spill and contamination of its water supply. In 2016 and 2017, thousands of people camped and protested for months near the river crossing.

The protests resulted in hundreds of arrests and related criminal cases and lawsuits, some of them still ongoing, including litigation that threatens the future of the environmental group Greenpeace.

In December, the Corps released its final environmental impact statement nearly six years after a federal judge ordered a more rigorous review of the pipeline's crossing. In that document, the Corps endorsed the option to grant the easement for the crossing and keep the pipeline operating with modifications.

Those measures include enhanced leak detection and monitoring systems, expanded groundwater and surface water monitoring and third-party expert evaluation of the leak and detection systems, among others, the Corps said. The conditions also include water supply contingency planning and other studies coordinated with affected tribes.

The Corps had weighed several options, including removing or abandoning the pipeline's river crossing or even rerouting it north. The agency said its decision “best balances public safety, protection of environmental resources, and leak detection and response considerations while meeting the project’s purpose and need.”

Pipeline developer Energy Transfer hailed the decision, saying the pipeline has been safely operating for nearly 10 years and is critical to the country’s energy infrastructure.

“We want to thank the Corps for the tremendous amount of time and effort put in by so many to bring this matter to a thoughtful close,” said Vicki Granado, a company spokesperson.

The Associated Press sent text messages and emails to media representatives for the tribe and left a voicemail at the tribe's headquarters. They didn't immediately respond Thursday.

North Dakota Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong, Interior Secretary and former North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and U.S. Senators John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer each welcomed the decision to ensure the pipeline continues operating.

The Corps' announcement came as officials and oil industry leaders were gathered for a trade conference in Bismarck.

Energy Transfer and Enbridge are in early stages of a project to move about 250,000 daily barrels of light Canadian crude oil through the Dakota Access Pipeline by using another pipeline and building a 56-mile connecting line, spokespersons for the companies said. Enbridge will decide sometime in mid-2026 whether to move ahead.

FILE - A sign for the Dakota Access Pipeline is seen north of Cannonball, N.D. and the Standing Rock Reservation on May 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)