Migration crisis in Bosnia:a war between the poor ridden by nationalists and "financed" by Europe

Of Alia Alex Čizmić

On March 4, in a wooded area near Saborsko, a Croatian village about 40 km from the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, a migrant of still unknown nationality lost his life after coming across an anti-personnel mine. According to Andreja Lenard, spokesperson for the Karlovac police, the administrative region to which Saborsko belongs, four other people, including two Pakistanis, were injured. One would be in danger of dying.

That fatal mine was one of approximately 17,000 still present in Croatia, according to data from the Croatian Ministry of the Interior.Saborsko, the victim of a massacre in which 29 people were brutally killed on November 12, 1991 during the war that led to the dissolution of Yugoslavia, is one of the 46 contaminated municipalities.

The problem of unexploded mines also concerns Bosnia and Herzegovina, where 617 people have died accidentally or in demining operations since the end of the war.The Mine Removal Center of Bosnia and Herzegovina esteem that 1.97% of the territory still needs to be demined.Not an easy task, given that the landslides that have occurred over the years, particularly during the floods of 2014, have made mapping mines more difficult.

The Saborsko accident, although accidental, was preventable.It is closely linked to the repressive migratory policies of the European Union and the Croatian government which since 2018 have been violently rejecting migrants at the border, forcing them to rethink their journey and take dangerous routes through woods and mountains at night, with the risk of not noticing the 10,451 warning signs which in Croatia indicate mined areas.

Among other things, even some temporary reception centers built in Bosnia and Herzegovina, such as the center in Vučjak closed in December 2019, or that of Lipa opened in April 2020, are surrounded by or close to mined areas.This constantly puts the lives of the approximately 9,000 migrants at risk - of which approximately 3,000 are excluded from the reception system of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) - who today try to survive in the Balkan country.Especially of those, including many families, who live in abandoned houses along forest borders.

Read also >> Tents, mud and cold:the terrible conditions of thousands of migrants stuck in Bosnia in the hope of reaching the European Union

Last January, when the global media ecosystem remembered the ongoing migratory crisis in the Balkans following thefire that razed the center of Lipa to the ground, the European Union has shown itself concerned and eager to intervene.But the response was in line with the EU's recent history on migration:3.5 million euros to IOM and the Bosnian-Herzegovinian government - which, added to previous financing, amounts to 89 million since the beginning of 2018 - to manage the migration crisis in Bosnia Herzegovina.Not outside it, nor together with the EU.“The EU's humanitarian assistance will provide people in need with access to essential goods to immediately alleviate their current situation.However, long-term solutions are needed." declared Josep Borrell i Fontelles in those days, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

The long-term solutions Borrell spoke of remained a hypothesis.The events that occurred between 2020 and 2021 are a photocopy of what happened in the previous twelve months.The inhuman conditions of the Vučjak center attracted the attention of the international media and consequently the local authorities and the EU were forced to intervene; the center was closed on 11 December 2019 and thousands of people were transferred to the Sarajevo canton;in April 2020 the EU granted 4.5 million and the Lipa center was opened, which caught fire last December 23rd leaving a thousand people in the open.The media returned en masse to Bosnia and Herzegovina and a new round of consultations began in search of more lasting solutions.A vicious circle with no end in sight.

Read also >> Croatian police are accused of violence and abuse of migrants on the border with Bosnia.Is the EU “complicit”?

But how did we get to this situation?Why are thousands of migrants stuck in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Let's take a few steps back and start again from 2015.

Between September and October 2015, Hungary completed 523 km of barbed wire barrier to prevent the entry of migrants from Serbia and Croatia.This maneuver desired by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, not satisfied with the EU's lack of commitment to controlling its borders, diverted the route of migrants towards Croatia and above all Bosnia and Herzegovina.In the latter, migratory flows became more significant towards the end of 2017 along the eastern border with Serbia and the southern border with Montenegro, and then intensified significantly with the arrival of the spring of 2018.

According to i data from the Ministry of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina, immigration sector, 1,454 migrants entered Bosnia and Herzegovina during the month of April 2018.More than double the 629 identified in March 2018 by the border police and registered by the immigration office.At the time, the still low numbers of migratory flows did not scare the local population.Indeed, the precarious conditions of the migrants awakened an inevitable sense of solidarity in the local population.The still fresh wounds of the Bosnian War (1992-1995) pushed the Bosnians to provide all kinds of help to people on the move:from a hot meal to new clothes, up to a bed in which to spend one or more nights.

So what has changed since 2018?Why attacks against migrants today they are no longer negligible and why for months a few dozen citizens of Bihać protested in front of the now closed Bira center to prevent its reopening, particularly following the Lipa fire?

There are mainly three reasons.

First, the number of migrants has increased dramatically and in a very short space of time.There were 23,902 migrants registered at the end of 2018 and 29,302 at the end of 2019, as reported in the Ministry of Security report published in March 2020.The unofficial estimate for 2020 speaks of 16,190 registered entries, which would bring the total count to 69,394.This significant increase has translated into greater pressure on the socio-political fabric of a country of only 3,531,159 inhabitants (according to the latest census of 2013, inflated by members of the diaspora) and among the poorest in Europe with 415,027 unemployed as of 31 January 2021 (according to the latest monthly report compiled by the Labor and Employment Agency).

At the same time, the worsening of rejections at the border with Croatia and the increase in those from Italy and Austria has crystallized a situation that should have been temporary.Migrants, who initially were actually passing through, often saw their stay in Bosnia and Herzegovina lengthen from a few months to more than a year.To date, migrants circulating in the country are permanently between 8 and 10 thousand - the numbers, which are necessarily imprecise, increase during the spring and summer seasons.

The northwestern canton of Una-Sana, where around 5,000 migrants are located, and that of Sarajevo, which hosts around 4,000, are most affected by this pressure.In particular, the bottleneck of migrants in the Una-Sana canton (which, to be clear, is where the aforementioned center of Lipa is located) is due to two reasons:1) It borders the much desired Croatia, the gateway to the EU;2) The other cantonal governments - and in particular that of the entity of Republika Srpska, over which the central government of Sarajevo has almost non-existent power - do not intend to give consent to a more equitable redistribution of migrants throughout the territory.

The second reason suggests further investigation:How many governments does Bosnia and Herzegovina have?The Balkan country most affected by the war of the 1990s has remained a dysfunctional state since the signing of the Dayton Accords which put an end to the conflict.The agreements represented a compromise to be able to put weapons aside, but in 25 years no progress has been made.Bosnia and Herzegovina remains divided into two entities - the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and Republika Srpska (RS) - and the autonomous district of Brčko.The FBiH entity, populated mainly by Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Croats, is in turn divided into 10 cantons, of which 7 have a Bosniak majority and 3 have a Croat majority.Each canton and each entity has a government.

And here we come to the third reason that has exacerbated tensions between migrants and the local population:ethno-nationalist politics, always looking for a pretext to divide the population and maintain the status quo.

“The administrative division of Bosnia and Herzegovina leads to systematic obstruction between the various ruling parties,” says a Blue suitcase Jasmin Mujanović, Bosnian political analyst who emigrated to the United States.“The SNSD and HDZ BiH (Alliance of Independent Social Democrats and Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the reference parties of the Serbian and Croatian communities respectively, Editor's note) they are using the migration crisis to expand, strengthen and once again show their intolerance towards the country."Thus, the RS and the FBiH cantons with a Croatian majority refuse to welcome the migrants, who are stationed almost exclusively in the canton of Sarajevo and Una-Sana, where 5 of the 6 reception centers are located:the aforementioned Lipa, the Miral in Velika Kladuša and the centers of Ušivak and Blažuj near Sarajevo, all for unaccompanied men;Borići and Sedra in the cities of Bihać and Cazin for minors and families.Actually, there is a seventh center that is rarely mentioned:And the center of Salakovac, a town not far from Mostar;it is one of around 150 centers intended for internally displaced Bosnians, but over time a few hundred migrants have also been allowed entry.

Bosniak nationalist parties are not immune to the pursuit of political profit.Most parties ride the tension due to the migratory crisis, which is fueled (if not artfully created) by the press close to power, always ready to underline and exaggerate every slightest crime committed by migrants.The case of is emblematic Dnevni Avaz, the most influential newspaper in the country owned by the tycoon Fahrudin Radončić, which already had the headline on its front page on 6 May 2018: “Migrants beat and rob”.Radončić is also the founder of the SBB BiH (Union for a Better Future in Bosnia and Herzegovina) party and former Minister of Security.Yes he resigned on June 2, 2020 due to differences with the rest of the majority coalition - and in particular with the SDA (Party of Democratic Action), the largest Bosniak nationalist party - following his proposal which provided for the expulsion of all migrants from the country.The politicians of the Una-Sana canton - the mayor of Bihać, Šuhret Fazlić, and the prime minister of the canton, Mustafa Ružnić, both opponents of the SDA - have supported Radončić's anti-migration narrative, building an anti-Sarajevo image in view of the elections in November 15, 2020.

Actually, according to an analysis based on data provided by the police published on January 12 by N1, one of the few independent newspapers in the country, of the 17,272 crimes committed throughout the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina between January and September 2020, 222 were committed by people who could be categorized as migrants, i.e. 1.3% of the total.What certainly makes the most noise are the four murders committed by migrants in the canton of Sarajevo out of the 11 total recorded by the police in the same period.

To summarize the reasons listed so far, the persistence and deterioration of a theoretically temporary situation, inserted in a chaotic and profoundly unstable sociopolitical context, has unleashed the classic war between the poor.On the one hand the migrants and on the other the Bosnian citizens who are victims of a political class that manipulates them to maintain power.

So a new question arises spontaneously:How can the European Union delegate the migration crisis to such an unreliable country?

“It is absurd and unrealistic that Bosnia and Herzegovina could become a permanent reception center in Europe.I perceive this as an incredibly insolent act on the part of the EU,” claims Mujanović.“The largest economic union in the world, which has half a billion inhabitants and enormous economic resources, has put itself in the position of having to moralize a small country like Bosnia and Herzegovina.Obviously I don't justify the catastrophic response of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian institutions, but unfortunately this is the reality of the country."

When he speaks of an insolent act, Mujanović is referring to the above-mentioned statements by Borrell who had also condemned the Bosnian-Herzegovinian authorities and ordered them to do more.On January 11, Borrell called Milorad Dodik, leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalist party SNSD and incumbent president of the central government, urging local authorities to cooperate.A possible umpteenth failure, according to Borrell, would have serious consequences on the reputation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is a candidate for EU membership.

To better understand the inability of the Balkan state to deal with emergency situations, it must be remembered that in Bosnia and Herzegovina even today, 25 years later, 99 thousand internally displaced people are waiting for the state to remove them from a perennial condition of precariousness, as indicated by the report of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) published in April 2020.It is unthinkable, therefore, to expect local authorities to commit themselves to alleviating the suffering of third citizens, just as it is understandable that there are sections of the population who demand that the few resources available be made available first and foremost for Bosnians.

That said, if the EU wants to keep them out of its borders, why can't migrants at least enjoy better living conditions considering that the EU has paid the IOM Bosnia and Herzegovina section 89 million euros in three years?
Migrants who return to the IOM reception system constantly report the shortcomings of the centers in which they stay.Especially those related to food, which is poor or insufficient to be able to face the whole day.The frustration they experience on a daily basis often leads to fights or unrest within the centres, promptly exploited by the press and politicians.“If I didn't take a bath for months, if I was cold because there's no heating, if I ate badly or not at all, if I shared a bad bed with other people, I too would go crazy,” he points out to Blue suitcase the journalist and human rights activist Nidžara Ahmetašević, who has been dealing with the migration phenomenon in the Balkans for years and is constantly in contact with the migrants who stay in the centers near Sarajevo, where he lives.

As if that wasn't enough, the center of Lipa, the last in order of arrival, was built about 30 km from the city of Bihać in an isolated hilly area which prevents any type of interaction with the local population.Burnt down in circumstances yet to be clarified on 23 December 2020 - on the day in which the IOM was about to decree its closure - it was rebuilt in a contiguous area and is now in the hands of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian government.Lipa was officially set up to host migrants excluded from the reception system and thus contain the spread of COVID-19 among the migrant population.The migrants evicted from the Bira center were also transferred to Lipa, closed on September 30, 2020.This illegitimate and unilateral decision, which was not communicated by the Una-Sana canton to the IOM nor to the central government, is the clear continuation of the anti-migration policy of the Fazlić-Ružnić couple (who behind the scenes thanks the migrants who spend the money they receive from their families, now that tourism revenues have evaporated).

On 13 January 2021 the IOM he published on its website an analysis - not too detailed - of the expenses incurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the management of the migratory situation.It turns out that around 25 million have not yet been spent and, given that verifying precisely the actual correctness and usefulness of each expenditure would be a titanic undertaking, we limit ourselves to stating that more could be done than renting former ruined factories in which to house small containers with six beds as was the case of the Bira.Or moreover with non-working showers or without hot water, as in the case of the Miral.Conflicts of interest could certainly be avoided as in the case of Sedra, a hotel owned by Halil Bajramović, entrepreneur who financed much of the successful election campaign of Fazlić, the anti-immigration mayor of Bihać.Cost of the operation for the IOM, according to media: 25 thousand euros per month.

The situation for migrants in Bosnia and Herzegovina could not be worse, but despite the growing tension, individual acts of solidarity towards migrants continue, as Ahmetašević points out.Saying that the local population hates migrants is the furthest thing from reality.Most people simply ignore them, while many others do their utmost to try to make the wait for better times that wears out migrants less difficult.Added to them is the solidarity network formed in Europe:associations and individuals who periodically - even now during the pandemic - they travel to Bosnia Herzegovina to bring food and new clothing.

Among the NGOs operating in the area, the work of IPSIA of the ACLI group should be highlighted.Active in Bihać since 1997, the association is led on site by Silvia Maraone, who masters the local language and is now perfectly inserted into the city context.

Among citizens, however, the support that a man - renamed "Baba" by migrants for his paternal attitude - offers to people in difficulty who are staying in an abandoned building in the city center behind the grocery store he runs with his wife is well known. .He gives them the opportunity to charge their phones and distributes food and drinks to those who cannot afford them, but there are also those who accuse him of making money on the skin of some migrant to whom he resells the essential cell phones.“Baba”, a trader with a shy smile and an introverted manner, justifies himself by arguing that “I cannot give everything to anyone who asks for it.I have to earn from someone and I try to do it from those who have more possibilities and then help those who don't have any."

The one who seems to receive unanimous admiration is "Mama", a lady who owns a clothing shop in Bihać.“I do what I can, because it hurts to see these people suffer like this.We've been there too,” he says, while his almost absent teeth highlight how war and destruction can accelerate the aging process of people.

Sanela instead lives in Ključ.She looks sad but hopeful and still remembers everything about her experience as a refugee in Switzerland, especially the way people treated her.“I feel the need to leave a good memory for every person I meet here on the road to Europe.This way they will be able to keep a good memory of us because unfortunately there isn't much good."Helping people in difficulty ennobles man, says Sanela, but for her "it is much more difficult to observe their suffering because it didn't go so badly for me in Switzerland".It is aware that it is possible to behave more civilly towards migrants and for this reason it collaborates with the red cross of Ključ, a town on the border between the Una-Sana canton and Republika Srpska, where migrants arriving by bus from Sarajevo have often been stranded and abandoned in thin air.Sanela, with other volunteers, always welcomed them by offering them food and temporary accommodation in which to stay.

These people compensate for the coldness of the IOM and the Bosnian-Herzegovinian institutions.They help migrants openly despite being targeted by the police and some citizens.For some time now, in fact, there has been an ongoing criminalization of solidarity which has led many people to desist from providing support to migrants or has pushed them to do so secretly.Local authorities want migrants to be marginalized:it is forbidden to rent them a house, give them a lift in the car and they cannot use public transport, so much so that the Talgo, the train that connects Bihać to Sarajevo, has been suspended indefinitely because it was mainly used by migrants.

Who are the migrants present in Bosnia and Herzegovina?Where do they come from?Why do they flee?What do they dream?

From the analysis reported by TV N1, cited previously, emerges that, according to the declarations of the 16,190 migrants identified in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2020, 4,560 come from Afghanistan, 3,872 from Pakistan, 2,740 from Bangladesh, 1,460 from Morocco, 665 from Iraq and 635 from Iran.The nationality of the remaining 2,258 is unknown, but it is known that there are also migrants from Nepal, Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia.Like Zied Abdellaoui, who fled Tunis because he was at risk of persecution for his political ideas.He spent the first year in Velika Kladuša in abandoned houses, among rubbish and books of various kinds that he enjoyed in the evening with the flashlight on his cell phone before falling asleep.Now he is in the Blažuj camp in the Sarajevo canton and dreams of one day being able to return to Tunisia as a free man.

Also in Bosnia Herzegovina one of the most widespread conspiracy theories it's there good old “great substitution” theory.Many older Bosnians wonder why the migrants are all young Muslim boys from Asia and Africa.They believe that they serve to replace the young Bosnians who leave their country every year to look for job opportunities.Data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs reveal that 178 thousand Bosnians left the country between 2015 and 2019, the year in which 30 thousand left.

So does the stereotypical profile of the “young, male, Muslim migrant from Asia or Africa” apply to all migrants?Certainly for the majority yes, given the difficulties involved in traveling for years on foot, without resources or certainties, in mostly inhospitable countries.But we must never forget that every human being is unique and brings with him his own equally unique story.For this reason it is right to also give voice to the "exceptions".Like the families that Lorenzo Tondo and Alessio Mamo followed for The Guardian.

And like Elena Kushnir, a 41-year-old Ukrainian woman who has been in Bihać since June 1, 2020.She is the guest of a Bosnian family who, in order not to face retaliation, only allows her to take a shower and stay the night.For Kushnir, this is the second attempt to reach the European Union.The first time was in 1996 when at the age of 16 he requested a tourist visa and left for Amsterdam.When his visa expired he settled illegally in the Netherlands, where he remained for 23 years.“I have never applied for asylum because Ukraine is considered a safe country, nor have I ever attempted to get married to obtain citizenship.I would just like to live in a democratic country and be able to express myself freely,” says Kushnir, who remembers how “my parents didn't agree, but they understood my choice.”To avoid the risk of seeing his dream disappear, Kushnir never returned to visit his family and never had the opportunity to see them again.

She was deported from the Netherlands on May 10, 2018, after her ex-boyfriend reported her to the police because she dared to ask him for the money she had lent him.Without a home and a family to support her, on 18 December 2019 she left for Hungary.Alone, because the trafficker she trusted robbed and beat her.The Hungarian border police rejected her and took her to Serbia.From there he reached Bihać, where he spends time with Afghan and Pakistani migrants who live in the abandoned building behind the “Baba” shop.He learns words of Pashto, the language spoken by most of these children who come mainly from the province of Nangarhar (the Afghans) and the district of Peshawar (the Pakistanis), two areas particularly affected by the actions of the Taliban.“They are my family,” Kushnir says in English mixed with a few words of German.“It will be difficult to abandon them when the pandemic has passed and I decide to leave.”

“I like Amsterdam and I would really like to go back,” he continues, and then reveals his secret dream.A vocation that he cultivated during his time crossing the Balkans.“If one day I were to be able to obtain documents in a European Union country, I would like to return here on the Balkan Route as a volunteer to be able to lend a hand to migrants living on the streets”.

Preview image: Alba Diez Domínguez / No Name Kitchen