‘What about our future?’ The Iranian Kurds trapped in Iraq and forgotten by the international community
In May, 25-year-old Ako sat in a hospital room next to his friend Behzad Mahmoudi, who was wrapped head to toe in bandages.
Behzad, an Iranian Kurdish asylum seeker, had set himself on fire outside the United Nations’ headquarters in Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. He was protesting his desperate living conditions and what he saw as neglect by UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency.
“Behzad was crying,” Ako - also an Iranian Kurdish asylum seeker - recalled in Erbil last week, speaking under a pseudonym. “He said, ‘I really didn’t want to end my life like this. I wanted to live, but it just happened.’”
Behzad died days later. Soon afterwards, Ako sewed his mouth shut for four days, in another protest over the conditions endured by Iranian Kurds in the Kurdistan Region.. Unable to return to Iran after taking part in anti-government demonstrations, he cannot find enough work to afford rent.
“I just want to leave Iraqi Kurdistan,” he said. “I don’t care where I go, I just want to get away from this risky life.”
Behzad’s harrowing act - and Ako’s ongoing despair - draw attention to the longstanding marginalisation of Iranian Kurds in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Ignored by their hosts and the international community amid other displacements in Iraq and Syria over the past decade, they are never far from the long arm of Tehran.
Iranian Kurd refugee children are pictured at the Bahrka refugee camp some ten kilometres west of Erbil
" height="5464" width="8192" srcset="?width=320&auto=webp&quality=75 320w, ?width=640&auto=webp&quality=75 640w" layout="responsive" i-amphtml-layout="responsive">(AFP via Getty Images)
In a series of interviews with 20 Iranian Kurdish asylum seekers and migrants, Iranian Kurdish opposition party officials and human rights activists, two Iraqi Kurdish lawmakers, and representatives of stakeholder agencies like UNHCR, The Independent uncovered a limbo-like status quo for people fleeing Iran into the Kurdistan Region, where they eke out tenuous existences. Poverty, ill-treatment and deportation are constant threats.
Of around 40 million Kurds living in the Middle East, an estimated 10 million live in Iran. Most are in the mountainous areas of the country’s western provinces, known to Kurds as “Rojhelat.”
Fleeing political threats and worsening economic conditions in Iran, more than 10,000 Iranian Kurds are registered as refugees in the Kurdistan Region, according to UNHCR statistics [note to ed: confirmed to us in UNHCR response to request for comment.]. There are more without any legal status. They live mainly in refugee camps or the major cities of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, where they enjoy few rights, and have trouble finding stable jobs and housing. With little hope of either gaining Iraqi citizenship or being resettled in a third country, many are rendered effectively stateless. They often fear leaving their homes, frightened of arrest or harassment by the local security forces.
Despite these challenges, more arrive all the time.
“People [in Iran] are all hungry, have no jobs and no money,” said 28-year-old Azad, sitting on the floor of his brother’s house in a poor district of Erbil. He crossed from Iran into the Kurdistan Region illegally in April last year. “I was thinking that the situation would get better [in Iran], but it did not, so I had no other choice and came here.”
When he can find work, Azad - not his real name - now earns 15,000-20,000 Iraqi dinars (£7.40-£9.90) for 12 hours of manual labour. He says the money is not much better than what he might earn in Iran. But he clings to hopes of building a better life for his five-year-old daughter. “I really want to make a future for her, so she does not remain in Iran and have the same future as mine.”
While Azad has been in the Kurdistan Region for just a short time, Husein Karimi, 52, fled Iran the year after the 1979 revolution. He has been in Iraq ever since. His situation is not unusual. Many Iranian Kurds have spent decades displaced from their homeland. Because the Kurdistan Region does not have the powers of a state, it cannot grant citizenship. Instead, Iranian Kurds here rely on residency permits that must be renewed in a drawn-out and bureaucratic process every 6 to 12 months. The permits do not allow travel outside the semi-autonomous region nor do they guarantee unhindered passage through internal checkpoints. They cannot register businesses, cars, or mobile phone numbers under their own names.
“Now our children question us about their future: ‘How many years should we wait for change? What about our future?,’” Karimi said from his home in the Barika refugee camp outside Sulaymaniyah. “It’s very scary. Why were they born into this condition?”
Some of them, like Behzad, are driven to despair by financial woes. There are other dangers too. In Iraq’s southern governorates, Iran-backed militias are suspected of responsibility for dozens of kidnappings and assassinations of activists. But very real threats exist for Tehran’s critics in the Kurdistan Region as well.
Over the past year alone, multiple political activists have been killed in suspicious circumstances. This month, Musa Babakhani, a senior official in an Iranian Kurdish political party that opposes the government in Tehran, was found dead in an Erbil hotel. “Musa was very active in contact with civil society in Kermanshah [in Iran] - the most sensitive region for the regime,” a former associate of Babakhani told The Independent on condition of anonymity. In a separate incident, a member of another Iranian Kurdish opposition party was shot dead outside Sulaymaniyah a few weeks earlier. Tehran describes Iranian opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region as terrorist organisations. The groups have armed wings, with fighters who sometimes operate in Iranian territory.
Other Iranian Kurds in the Kurdistan Region have no connection with the opposition parties, but still feel Tehran’s influence on this side of the border. A journalist and human rights advocate, Mohammed Amini, 38, was forced to flee Iran in 2007 after receiving threats from the security forces, and settled in Sulaymaniyah.
“Here we are at risk. The security forces of Iran pressure us, threaten us, and [Iraqi] Kurdistan is not a safe place for us. When we go to a third country, we can live in a safe place,” he added.
He does not have an Iranian passport, so his main form of identification is his UNHCR card. It is currently expired because the local UNHCR office suspended renewals during the Covid-19 pandemic and is only now slowly beginning to wade through the backlog. Like others, renewal of his residency permit is never guaranteed, mostly dependent on whether he can find stable work in a faltering economy.
“It’s really stressful. We’re stressed all the time,” he said. “We cannot go anywhere. We cannot register anything under our names. The future of our children here is not clear. We fear for their future.”
Many Iranian Kurdish asylum seekers say they feel abandoned. They see the relevant governments and international agencies as uninterested and unwilling to meet their responsibilities, either because of pressure from Tehran or bureaucratic inertia.