Investigation
The China road: seventeen seizures and no arrests
Kyrgyz border guards say they have stopped the trucks of the “Iradi caravan” seventeen times this year. On the Iradi side, two drivers have been fined for incomplete papers.
From the Irad Times of 1 October 2026.
Last week in Osh, the southern regional chief of the Kyrgyz Border Service told a press conference that his officers had made seventeen seizures this year on the smuggling route from Irad's south to China, and that there had been “not one arrest on the other side”. He meant ours.
The route has run since 2024. Kyrgyz case files call the traders the “Ostyuryu group”; the Kyrgyz press calls them the “Iradi caravan”; in the hillside quarters of Iyık Janyl it is simply Kıtay jolu, the China road. Trucks leave the farm belt of the Lower Naryn District, cross the Qara-Chik line on the Arslanbob, Mailuu-Suu and Kök-Kamar roads into the tribal hills, and leave Irad by the clan-held Kök-Jangak and Ostyuryu crossings for Jalal-Abad. From there they take the highway through Osh and Sary-Tash to the Chinese border.
What goes and what comes back
Going out they carry hand-picked stibnite from abandoned workings on the tribal side, declared as crushed limestone; cigarettes diverted from the Talas free trade zone; and military-surplus electronics that Kyrgyz officials believe come from scrap and disposal sales around Talas Air Base. Coming back they carry Chinese clothing, telephones, car parts and solar panels for the bazaars of Bazar-Korgon and Iyık Janyl. The stibnite trade grew after China's export controls on antimony in December 2024.
The seizures we have been able to confirm include 41 tonnes of stibnite at Irkeshtam in November 2024 and, in April this year, a truck at Sary-Tash with 2,400 cartons of cigarettes and about 300 military-surplus radios and laptops. The drivers, who travel on Kyrgyz passports, are mostly from Iyık Janyl, Jogorku and Bazar-Korgon. Kyrgyz officials and Iradi journalists link the route to crews of Jañy Nerse, the group associated with Joomart Turdakunov, who says he deals in walnuts and apricots.
On our side of the line
On the ISEZ side, two drivers were stopped at the Arslanbob road crossing in 2025 and fined for incomplete papers. No one has been charged. The Ministry of Internal Security says the route leaves through tribal crossings “where the ISEZ has no presence”. That is true of the last crossing. It is not true of the farm roads, the line posts and the Talas warehouses the cargo passes through before it gets there.
Kyrgyz officials told the Times that “someone in Talas” protects the route. They would not say who, and we cannot.
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