Drawing on recent ethnographic fieldwork in a border village in Rojhelat (Iranian Kurdistan), Moslem Ghomashlouyan discusses how contraband mobility in Iran incarnates entangled multiscalar (dis)connectivities. The contraband links Iran to transnational commercial flows despite economic sanctions and the government’s policy of “resistance economy.” These dynamics foster the decades-old cross-border Kurdish commercial mobilities that connect Iran to Bashur (Iraqi Kurdistan). Ghomashlouyan’s ethnographic narrative, spanning from Kurdistan to Tehran, reveals (dis)connectivities between the marginalized kolbers, who help move the contraband across the border, and the Tehranis in the capital city’s upscale north.
