Trapped in the Krajina
By Peter Lippman
Transitions Online
November 10, 2020
Stuck just miles from the EU border, thousands of migrants
are helplessly entangled in the complexities of Bosnian politics.
In the past few years tens of
thousands of migrants have passed through Bosnia and Herzegovina on their way to
a more secure life in the European Union. Of that number, thousands remain in
Bosnia, stuck in atrocious living conditions. The hobbled political
structure of Bosnia prevents the country from living up to
its legal and moral responsibility to help the migrants.
The precursor to the influx of
migrants into Bosnia took place in 2015 with the arrival to the Balkans of
thousands of people from northern Africa and the Middle East. For much of 2015,
the migrants passed through Macedonia into Serbia, and then into Croatia or
Hungary on their way west. But by the fall of that year, Hungary, Austria, and
Slovenia closed their borders to migrants, and Croatia closed the border with
Serbia. The continent was reaching a low point in its treatment of the migrants,
even though Germany remained open to the desperate travelers.
The migrants then started shifting
their route through Bosnia. Although Bosnia is the country least prepared in the
Balkans to accommodate an unorganized mass influx of impoverished, often
undocumented immigrants, by 2018 hundreds of people were coming into the country
daily, especially across the Drina River from Serbia. Most of them headed toward
the northwestern region of Bosnia known as the Krajina, the closest area to
Croatia and passage into the EU.
Two Entities, Two Systems
Local authorities in the region
set up improvised camps for the migrants near Bihać
and Velika Kladuša, in Uno-Sanski
Canton. With time, sporadic incidents of violence inside the camps began to take
place, with weary travelers acting out their frustrations. Some concerned local
residents kept a "night watch" in the vicinity of the camps. The number of
migrants quickly overwhelmed the service infrastructure in the region and tried
the patience of local leaders.
Compounding the difficulties,
officials in Uno-Sanski Canton have received precious little help from
authorities in Sarajevo. The blockage of assistance from the top down is a
manifestation of the fractured political structure enshrined in the Dayton
constitution, which broke the country up into two "entities" (the Serb-dominated
Republika Srpska and the Croat- and Muslim-controlled Federation of
Bosnia-Herzegovina) and the Brcko District; 10 cantons in the Federation; and 14
parliaments. The bloated and lethargic governmental structure is good for very
little other than maintaining an ethno-nationalist, clientelist system that
keeps its demagogic leaders comfortable and its three main ethnic constituencies
divided and mistrustful of each other.
On the other hand, ordinary
Bosnians – especially Muslims residing in the Federation – have a natural
sympathy for the migrants. Many experienced displacement and exile themselves in
the 1990s, after all. Individuals and a number of local NGOs responded with
compassion to the migrants early on, working to supply food, clothing, and
blankets to the travelers. At times these grassroots activists have been forced
to work undercover, concealing their activities in the face of obstruction from
hostile local authorities.
The most inhospitable response of
all has been that from the Serb-controlled Republika Srpska (RS), under the de
facto leadership of Milorad Dodik (the Serb member of Bosnia's three-part
presidency and head of the dominant Serb nationalist party, the SNSD). Ever
ready to stir up hateful sentiment in service to his long-term secessionist
goals, in 2018
Dodik accused the Muslim leaders
of plotting to resettle migrants in the RS "to change
the demographic structure" in that entity. And he refused to set up any refugee
camps in the entity.
Allegations Against Croatian
Border Guards
The assistance
and employment opportunities available in Western Europe are incomparably
greater than what is available in any country along the Balkan route of the
migrants. There are jobs for newcomers in Germany; but the migrants must arrive
there. However, they are thwarted at the borders of the EU and, for migrants
trying to leave Bosnia, Croatian border enforcement poses a formidable
obstruction.
Migrants trying to enter Croatia
have encountered great brutality on the Croatian side, with border police
detaining and beating them, stealing their money, breaking their cell phones,
and at times molesting the women. Croatian police have strip-searched people and
destroyed their personal documents, detained them, and chased them back across
the borders into Bosnia. Some migrants succeed in avoiding this treatment – at
times after many attempts – but the blockage at the Croatian border means that
at any time, thousands remain stranded in the Krajina.
By 2020, of the roughly 50,0000
migrants who entered Bosnia in the previous two years,
several thousand remained in the country.
In 2019, two privately-run camps, "Bira" and "Miral," were set up, funded by
international organizations such as the International Organization for Migrants
(IOM). Another camp, on state-owned property, was established at Vučjak, near
Bihać, in mid-2019. International relief agencies objected to the location, but
many migrants were nevertheless relocated there. The local Red Cross and some
volunteers helped out at the site, but resources were stretched. And there was
no electricity, an unstable water supply, few toilets, and scarce medical
relief.
By mid-2019, with the
internationally supported camps filled to overflowing and migrants gathering in
the towns and cities, local authorities decided to compel those who were not
already at one of the camps to go to Vučjak. The police rounded up hundreds of
mostly young men – families, far fewer in number, were sent to another camp –
and marched them, on foot, the 10 kilometers from Bihać to Vučjak. Migrants
complained, understandably, that they did not appreciate being sent into the
woods, to a place without resources or services.
Some local authorities, rather
than simply lashing out at the migrants, began to speak out about the
inattention of those responsible at the entity and state levels. The prime
minister of Uno-Sanski Canton, Mustafa Ružnić, criticized the state-level
Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Security, the Foreigners' Affairs Service,
and the border police for not doing their jobs, saying,
according to Oslobodjenje,
that it was shameful that everywhere in the world, the state deals with migrant
problems, but in Bosnia-Herzegovina, only the cities of Bihać and Velika Kladuša
are doing anything.
Center vs. Periphery
Parts of the Bosnian government
have been in disarray since the 2018 elections, as nearly two years on, a new
government has still not been formed in the Federation. But this does not excuse
the acting officials, still in their old positions, from working on the migrant
problem. However, as
the mayor of Bihać
commented in September 2019, "We sit down for
a meeting with state ministers and then they complain to each other about how
the state is not functional. That is very frustrating … being left to ourselves
in this is very difficult for us.”
The scandal that was Vučjak
festered over the winter into 2020, when the problem was
compounded by the oncoming COVID-19 pandemic. Migrants stuck in the unsanitary
camp or out on the streets and fields were particularly at risk – but precious
little COVID testing was available to them. In the face of this worsening
situation, in April of this year the IOM finally set up a new, more sanitary
camp near the village of Lipa, outside Bihać, to house some 2,000 of the
estimated 7,500 migrants that were present in Bosnia at the time. Vučjak was
closed down and people were moved into the isolated new camp. At the beginning
of October 2020, Bira camp was also
closed down.
The struggle of the migrants to
survive and press northward carries on, with tension increasing between them and
local police and residents; a confrontation between Afghan and Pakistani
migrants recently ended with two Pakistanis
stabbed to death, and some vigilante
attacks against migrants have also been reported. Authorities in the Krajina
have been trying to curtail free movement of the migrants. Exacerbating this
problem is the practice in the Serb-controlled entity of rounding up all
arriving migrants and busing them to the administrative boundary with the
Federation, leaving many stuck in limbo. Dodik characterized this as
"organizing transportation for them to go where they
want to go."
Today, with camps full and
hundreds of migrants sleeping in fields and abandoned buildings in the Krajina,
hope for a resolution is dim.
One local resident complained
about the situation in the town, saying the presence of migrants made her feel
insecure: “I cannot just let my children go off to school.” While she was
referring to the feeling of insecurity and powerlessness among local residents,
the sentiment applies to the migrants as well. The leaders of the state of
Bosnia and Herzegovina have failed to act responsibly on behalf of its citizens
and of the wretched arrivals to their land.
Peter Lippman is a human rights
activist and writer. He has written extensively on conflicts and refugees in the
former Yugoslavia and is the author of
Surviving the Peace: The Struggle for Postwar
Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina
(Vanderbilt University Press,
2019). See his blog at
http://survivingthepeace.org