Balkans

The recent repatriation of families of ISIS fighters to Kosovo, Albania and North Macedonia poses a tough challenge to all three countries to rehabilitate them back into society.

By Fjori Sinoruka, Xhorxhina Bami and Sinisa Jakov Marusic*

On July 18, North Macedonia announced that it had repatriated 23 of its citizens who had spent the last few years on the battlefields in Syria and Iraq and been one-time members of Islamic State, ISIS.

Legal changes are now helping Croatian Serbs who couldn’t get citizenship of Croatia for years because of administrative failings, but a few are still having trouble obtaining approval, sparking claims of ethnic discrimination.

After amendments to Croatia’s Citizenship Law came into force last year, the problems of Croatian Serbs who had not been able to obtain Croatian papers since the collapse of federal Yugoslavia in 1991 have finally started to be resolved.

This week, while Croatia celebrates its victory in 1995’s Operation Storm and Serbia mourns the victims, nationalists on both sides will be seeking to profit politically from one of the war’s most traumatic events, says sociologist Marijana Stojcic.

Every August, relations cool between Croatia and Serbia and officials exchange harsh words about what happened back in 1995 – the Croatian Army’s Operation Storm, which liberated territory controlled by rebel Croatian Serbs and effectively ended the Croatian war.

After Croatia’s victory over rebel Serbs in Operation Storm in August 1995, President Franjo Tudjman set off on a triumphalist cross-country railway journey, staging celebratory rallies along the way – with harsh words for the refugees who fled.

Two weeks after the Croatian Army’s victory in Operation Storm in early August 1995, which effectively ended the war in Croatia, President Franjo Tudjman gathered state officials at the Presidential Palace in Zagreb to discuss his next political moves and a new strategy to promote his Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ party.

Thousands of people seeking safety in Europe are living in dangerously cold and harsh conditions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today, warning that people may die without adequate shelter and other basic services.

More than three-quarters of a million migrants poured through the Western Balkans at the height of Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015.

Five years on, the numbers in countries like Bosnia and Serbia are a tiny fraction of that.

Soufyan Ali, a Pakistani living in the Lipa camp in northern Bosnia for the past three months, has sent an open letter to MEPs, urging them to act on behalf of asylum seekers trapped in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The association No Name Kitchen forwarded his letter to InfoMigrants.

After Alessandra Moretti, a member of the European Parliament (MEP), visited the Lipa camp near the town of Bihac in northern Bosnia on January 31, Soufyan Ali decided to write a letter to all members of the European Parliament to ask for their help.

Around 1500 migrants were rounded up in northwestern Bosnia and moved to a camp in the country on Wednesday. The town of Bihac cannot provide adequate shelter for these people in the winter weather, authorities said.

A long line of male migrants, walking two or three together, wind their way about 10 kilometers along a road in northwestern Bosnia. The men have been rounded up from the town of Bihac where they had been camping and staying. The video of the march, from the Associated Press news agency (APTN), shows mountains lining the horizon and trees at the side of the road sparkling gold, red and brown in the autumn sunshine. Some migrants carry plastic bags with belongings, others appear to just have the clothes they’re wearing. A few Bosnian policemen accompany the group, walking purposefully at the top of the column and making sure everyone keeps together along the side of the road.

The European Commission has announced today an additional €3.5 million in humanitarian aid to help vulnerable refugees and migrants in Bosnia and Herzegovina facing a humanitarian disaster. More than 1,700 refugees and migrants remain without appropriate shelter and support in Una Sana canton. After the closure of the reception centre in Lipa, which was not winter-proof and which also suffered a fire, 900 people are currently on the former campsite. In addition, a further 800 refugees and migrants are staying outdoors in harsh winter conditions, including children.