The first time Azaan made the jump across the wall, he broke his arm.
Braving the 20ft (6m) drop into a wide trench below is, for many Afghans, the only way to cross into Turkey from Iran – and yet hundreds risk it each day.
“I was in severe pain,” the former Afghan army officer told the BBC.
“Several others had broken limbs. The smuggler left us here and told us to run in the direction of the lights of Van city. Many of us were fading out of hunger. I fainted.”
The wall – which stretches for nearly 300km (185 miles) – was built to prevent illegal crossings, and is patrolled constantly by Turkish border forces.
Jumping off it is among the first of a series of extraordinary risks Afghan migrants take as they cross continents, countries and seas to reach the UK and other countries in Europe.
Over the past year, fleeing their country has become more perilous than ever before for Afghans, because Pakistan, Iran and Turkey have intensified their crackdown on illegal migration from Afghanistan along their borders, and have also carried out mass deportations.
Azaan couldn’t continue. He was in pain, and had barely eaten in days. The migrants were given just one boiled egg every morning and a cup of rice in the evening by smugglers who’d charged them nearly $4,000 (£3,150) for the journey to Europe.
“I had two friends – we had made a promise to not leave each other,” he says. His friends tied scarves around him, hoisted him up the wall, back into Iran. Iranian police deported him to Afghanistan.
It was Azaan’s second failed attempt. The first time he returned from the Afghanistan-Iran border because he’d taken his wife and young children along, and he realised they wouldn’t be able to endure the journey.
Azaan didn’t give up. Roughly a year later, once his arm had healed, he made a third attempt.
“I had sold my house earlier. This time I sold my wife’s jewellery,” he says.
In exchange for the money, migrants like Azaan are promised a route to Europe, handed over from one people smuggler to another along the way.
Back at the wall, the smuggler placed a ladder on the Iranian side, and cut the razor wire at the top to create a path for migrants.
“There were 60 to 70 of us,” Azaan recalls. “We climbed to the top and then the smuggler told us to jump.”
For the law and politics graduate, who served his country and led a dignified, comfortable life until August 2021 when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, it is a humiliating situation to be in.
In its three years in power, the Taliban government has imposed increasing, brutal restrictions on women. According to the UN, a third of the country’s people don’t know where their next meal will come from. And those who worked for the former military fear reprisal.
“The people I fought against for 20 years are now in power,” he explains. “Our lives are in danger. My daughter won’t be able to study once she turns 13. And I have no work. I’ll continue to try to leave even if it costs me my life.
“Here we are dying every moment. It’s better to die once, for good.”
Azaan is now back in Kabul with his family. The third attempt to flee ended with a beating and deportation.
“They beat me with the butt of a gun. One boy was hit on his genitals. He was in a terrible state. An old man’s leg was broken. There was a corpse in the trenches in Turkey. This is what I saw. But Iran is also treating us badly. I know Afghans have been severely beaten in Iran too,” he says.
After weeks of digging through people smuggling networks, the BBC established contact with an Afghan smuggler in Iran, aiming to get an insight into the increased dangers Afghans are facing.
“Iranian police are shooting a lot at the border with Afghanistan. One of my friends was killed recently,” the smuggler says, speaking to us over the phone from Iran.
In October, Iran was accused of firing indiscriminately at Afghans crossing over into Iran’s Sistan province from Balochistan in Pakistan. The UN has raised concerns and called for an investigation. The BBC has seen and verified videos of the dead and injured.
