Iraqi Kurdistan
CNN
—
A teenage dissident trailed behind a gaggle of smugglers in the borderlands of western Iran. For three days, Rezan trekked a rocky mountain vary and walked by way of minefields alongside a winding path solid by seasoned smugglers to circumnavigate the nation’s closely armed Revolutionary Guards. It was a visit too harmful for respite of a lot quite a lot of stolen moments at a time.
“I knew that if an officer spotted us, we would die immediately,” mentioned the 19-year-old Iranian-Kurdish activist, whom CNN is figuring out by her pseudonym Rezan for safety functions. She was touring to the border with Iraq, certainly one of Iran’s most militarized frontiers, the place in accordance to rights teams, many have been shot to loss of life by Iranian safety forces for crossing illegally, or for smuggling illicit items.
She had fled her hometown of Sanandaj in western Iran the place safety forces have been wreaking loss of life and destruction on the protest websites. Demonstrators have been arbitrarily detained, some have been shot lifeless in entrance of her, she mentioned. Many have been overwhelmed up on the streets. In the second week of the protests, safety forces pulled Rezan by her uncovered hair, she mentioned. As she was being dragged down the road, screaming in agony, she noticed her mates forcefully detained and youngsters getting overwhelmed.
“They pulled my hair. They beat me. They dragged me,” she mentioned, recounting the brutal crackdown in the Kurdish-majority metropolis. “At the same time, I could see the same thing happening to many other people, including children.”
Sanandaj has seen the a few of the largest protests in Iran, the greatest exterior of Tehran, since the rebellion started in mid-September.
Rezan mentioned she had no alternative however to take the lengthy and threatening journey with smugglers to Iraq. Leaving Iran by way of the nearest official border crossing – a mere three-hour automotive experience away — may have led to her arrest. Staying in Sanandaj may have resulted in her loss of life at the fingers of the safety forces.
“(Here) I can get my rights to live as a woman. I want to fight for the rights of women. I want to fight for human rights,” she advised CNN from northern Iraq. After she arrived right here earlier this month, she determined to change tack. No longer a peaceable protester, Rezan determined to take up arms, enlisting with an Iranian-Kurdish militant group that has positions in the arid valleys of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Rezan is certainly one of a number of Iranian dissidents who fled the nation in the final month, escaping the regime’s violent bid to quash demonstrations that erupted after the loss of life of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian lady Mahsa “Zhina” Amini throughout her detention by Iranian morality police for allegedly carrying a hijab improperly.
The variety of dissidents who’ve left Iran since the protests began is unknown. In the Kurdish-administered area of northern Iraq (KRG) — which borders the predominantly Kurdish west of Iran — a lot of the exiled activists hold a low profile, hiding in protected homes. They mentioned they worry reprisals towards their households again dwelling, the place mass detentions have turn out to be commonplace in Kurdish-majority areas.
According to eyewitnesses and social media movies, the folks in these areas have endured a few of the most heavy-handed ways utilized by Iran’s safety forces of their brutal marketing campaign to crush the protest motion.
In Kurdish-majority areas, proof of safety forces indiscriminately capturing at crowds of protesters is widespread. The Iranian authorities additionally seems to have deployed members of its elite combating pressure, the Revolutionary Guards, to these areas to face off with demonstrators, in accordance to eyewitnesses and video from the protest websites.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards sometimes struggle the regime’s battles additional afield, particularly in Iraq and Syria, propping up brutal dictatorships in addition to combating extremist teams akin to ISIS.
For the Kurds, the intensified crackdown in the nation’s west underscores many years of well-documented ethnic marginalization by Iran’s central authorities. These are grievances that Iran’s different ethnic minorities share and that precede clerical rule in Iran.
The practically 10-million robust Kurdish inhabitants is the third largest ethnic group in Iran. Governments in Tehran — together with the regime of the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was overthrown in 1979 — have eyed the group with suspicion due to their long-standing aspirations to secede from the state and set up a republic alongside Kurdish communities in neighboring international locations.
Crouched below the shade of a tree in a dusty valley alongside her sisters-in-arms in northern Iraq, Rezan clasps her AK-47 rifle, her faltering voice betraying a lingering worry of Iranian reprisals. After she fled Iran, the authorities there referred to as her household and threatened to arrest her siblings, she mentioned.
But her household helps her militancy, she mentioned, along with her mom vowing to bury each certainly one of her youngsters moderately than hand them over to the authorities. “I carry a weapon because we want to show the Iranian Kurds that they have someone standing behind them,” Rezan mentioned from certainly one of the bases of her militant group, the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK). “I want to protect the Kurds there because the Kurds are protecting themselves with rocks.”
Protesters throughout Iran are largely unarmed. Yet Iran blames Kurdish-Iranian armed teams in Iraqi Kurdistan for instigating unrest in Kurdish-majority areas. It has repeatedly struck Iranian-Kurdish targets in Iraq with drones and missiles since the protests started, killing scores of individuals.
Last Saturday, Iran’s Armed Forces chief accused the Iraqi Kurdistan area – which has a semi-autonomous authorities – of harboring 3,000 Iranian-Kurdish militants, and vowed to proceed to assault their bases except the authorities disarms the fighters.
“Iran’s operations against terrorists will continue. No matter how long it takes, we will continue this operation and a bigger one,” mentioned Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of employees of Iran’s Armed Forces.
PAK and different Iraq-based Kurdish-Iranian armed teams say they haven’t supported the protests in any concrete manner. But they’ve referred to as on the United States to intervene on behalf of the demonstrators, and have mentioned they’re ready to assist Kurds in Iran take up arms in case of an extra escalation in Iran’s disaster.
“What’s happening on the streets with the protesters was not engineered at my base,” PAK’s chief, Gen. Hussein Yazdanpanah, advised CNN. He was talking from certainly one of the group’s barracks that was blown up by Iranian missiles and drones on September 28, killing eight militants.
“(Iran) is using us as a scapegoat for the protests in Iran and to distract media attention from Iran,” mentioned Yazdanpanah, who believes that he was the goal of that assault.
“I won’t hide the fact that I am a military support for my people,” he mentioned, standing amid the destruction at his base close to the city of Altun Kupri. The stench of two militants slain in the assault, however whose our bodies haven’t but been recovered, rises up from the rubble.
“For a revolution to succeed there has to be military support for the people,” he added. “(Iran) wanted people to question this principle. (By bombing the base) they wanted to say to them that there is no military support to protect you.”
Across the nation, protesters with quite a lot of grievances — particularly associated to the dire state of Iran’s financial system and the marginalization of ethnic teams — have coalesced round an anti-regime motion that was ignited by Amini’s loss of life. Women have been at the forefront of the protests, arguing that Amini’s demise at the fingers of the infamous morality police highlights girls’s plight below Islamic Republic legal guidelines that limit their gown and habits.
Kurds in Iran additionally noticed their grievances mirrored in Amini’s loss of life. The younger lady’s Kurdish title — Zhina — was banned by a clerical institution that bars ethnic minority names, ostensibly to forestall sowing ethnic divisions in the nation. Amini additionally was crying for assist in her Kurdish mom tongue when morality law enforcement officials violently pressured her right into a van, in accordance to activists.
The first giant protests in Iran’s present rebellion erupted in Amini’s Kurdish-majority hometown of Saqqez in western Iran, which has additionally been subjected to a violent crackdown. “When we were in Iran, I joined the protests with friends. Two days later, two of my friends got kidnapped and one of them got injured,” mentioned one man who fled Saqqez to Iraqi Kurdistan, who CNN isn’t naming for safety causes.
Seated on carpet below a tree to keep away from any identification of their protected home, the man and his household mentioned they fear about the lengthy arms of Iran’s regime. The household cowl their faces with medical masks, the man wears lengthy sleeves to cowl figuring out tattoos and a plastic tarp is hung up to obscure them from the ever-present worry of incoming Iranian drones.
He and his household determined to go away Iran when he noticed safety forces kill his good friend close to a mosque in the first days of the rebellion, the man mentioned. “How can they claim to be an Islamic Republic when I saw them murdering my friend outside a mosque?” he requested in disbelief.
He mentioned the neighborhood couldn’t retrieve his good friend’s physique till evening fell, after which they secretly buried their lifeless. His testimony is analogous to a number of accounts CNN has heard since the begin of Iran’s rebellion. Many in the Kurdish areas of Iran report opting not to obtain medical take care of injured protesters in hospitals, for worry of arrest by authorities. Eyewitnesses additionally say some have even averted sending their lifeless to morgues, for worry of reprisals towards members of the family.
Since they fled, dissidents in Iraqi Kurdistan say they continue to be in touch with the family members they left behind. Every cellphone name to their households comes with information of an intensified crackdown, in addition to stories of individuals defying safety forces and persevering with to pour into the streets.
“From what I know, my family is part of the revolution and the revolution continues to this day,” mentioned Rezan. “They are ready to die to get our rights.”
