Iranian activist Farhad Sheikhi struggles to hold back tears as he recalls the crack of gunfire and fellow protesters collapsing under a hail of bullets. Now in exile in Sulaimaniyah, the second-largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan, he can only watch from afar as American and Israeli strikes pound his homeland.
“I literally saw hell,” said the 34-year-old Iranian Kurd, showing AFP photographs he took during recent anti-government protests — images of bodies lying on blood-soaked streets.
But his greatest fear now is for the safety of his family in Iran.
With the internet largely shut down in the country, Sheikhi said he relies on a friend who occasionally manages to get online.
“He calls my father and tells me how they are. That is the only way I get news about them,” he said.
Returning home is no longer an option for Sheikhi. His only remaining dream, he says, is to travel to Germany to complete his law studies.
As the war enters its third week, he says people inside Iran have become more cautious while struggling with worsening living conditions.
“They are also still mourning the heavy price they have already paid,” he said, referring to a government crackdown on protests that rights groups say left thousands dead.
Still, Sheikhi refuses to give up hope that “one day a social revolution will allow me to return, but for now the risk is too great.”
After the crackdown in January, he fled to the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, fearing arrest and torture back home. The moustached, bespectacled activist had long taken part in demonstrations against Iran’s government.
In 2022, he joined the massive protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini after she was detained for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly.
During those demonstrations, Sheikhi said he was jailed three times and tortured, leaving him with permanent hearing loss. Despite that, he again joined protests in December and January.
“The crackdown on the people — the slaughter — it was massive. I saw it myself,” he said.
Choosing to fight
Another protester, Aresto Pasbar, was also wounded during the 2022 demonstrations when shotgun pellets struck his body, leaving him blind in his left eye.
“I have undergone five surgeries,” the 38-year-old told AFP in Sulaimaniyah.
Fearing for his life, Pasbar fled Iran for Turkey. He later tried to reach Europe by boat but was intercepted at sea. A Munich-based human rights organization eventually helped him obtain asylum in Germany in 2023.
Even in exile, Pasbar closely followed developments in Iran, his heart breaking as he watched the latest crackdown on protesters.
When war erupted, he left Germany and traveled to Iraqi Kurdistan to join Iranian Kurdish rebel groups that have increasingly been targeted by cross-border strikes from Iran since the conflict began.
“In my heart, I couldn’t remain in comfort and simply watch my people be oppressed,” he said.
Now dressed in traditional Kurdish military fatigues, Pasbar says he knows he may never see his wife and two daughters again.
Before leaving, he told them: “Even if I die, please stand for your rights. Stand for who you are.”
Seeking justice
For Amina Kadri, the war and unrest have reopened old wounds.
In 2005, her husband Ikbal fled Iran to escape political persecution, believing Iraqi Kurdistan would offer safety.
But 15 years later, Ikbal — then 57 and a member of an exiled Iranian Kurdish armed group — was killed near the Iran-Iraq border.
According to witnesses, Kadri said, gunmen shot him, dumped his body in a river and fled toward Iran on a motorcycle. She believes Iranian authorities were responsible.
Her tragedy deepened just 53 days later when her eldest son, who had remained in Iran, was executed at the age of 30 for murder — a charge she insists was fabricated.
“I no longer care what happens to me,” the 61-year-old homemaker said in a phone interview from a border town that Kurdish security forces barred AFP from entering due to security concerns.
“My life is no more valuable than my son’s or my husband’s,” she said.
Now Kadri says she wants only one thing: to see the Islamic Republic fall.
She hopes that day will bring “revenge for the blood of all those who have been executed.”
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