Refugees among Refugees

It is believed that some 9,500 ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo have taken fled to Bosnia. However, the figure is provisional because many of them do not register and quite a few are transported to Croatia illegally as soon as they set foot in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Apart from Albania, this former Yugoslav republic is the only state allowing free entrance to refugees from Kosovo. Ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo don't have to produce any identification documents when they enter Bosnian territory because there are no ethnic barriers between the two populations.

A large number of transport enterprises from Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia are making quite a bit of cash from organizing "tourist trips" to Bosnia for refugees. Apart from the tickets to Sarajevo and Tuzla, they also offer birth certificates for children and passports.

An ethnic Albanian who came to Sarajevo recently said that he came from Podgorica in a crammed van and got instructions how to obtain a passport and apply for immigration to a third country, all that for a price of 30 German marks. Most refugees who crossed the border in the Bosnian Serb Republic say they have been harassed, insulted and humiliated by the local authorities. A lot of families with very young children were asked to produce a 100 mark per child for birth certificates. Oddly enough, foreign embassies in Belgrade accept these certificates as documents which often enable entire families to go west. There are other kinds of refugees, those who fly to Sarajevo from Belgrade and Podgorica.

"They don't look like refugees, especially those who come from Vienna and Ljubljana. God knows what they are doing here", a taxi driver said. Most ethnic Albanian refugees initially moved into the homes of their relatives in Bosnia. However, when they started coming in numbers, the Bosnian Federation government transformed two centers for Bosnian refugees into asylums for ethnic Albanians. The UNHCR joined the operation of accommodating refugees in a manner very convenient for some of Sarajevo's inhabitants, who make up to 40 German marks per head daily for taking ethnic Albanians into their homes. A householder who takes in a family of eight gets 320 German marks every day, or 10,000 marks per month. The sum also covers food for the refugees but - as one of the "hosts" said, an ethnic Albanian family of eight consumes barely 1,000 marks' worth of food per month.

Most of the refugees have no intention of returning to Kosovo. They want to stay in Sarajevo for a while and seek exile in Western Europe or overseas. However, foreign countries are not exactly thrilled with the prospect of accommodating more refugees after providing shelter for a flood of displaced persons from the former Yugoslavia over the past few years. "One month ago, we applied for immigration to Holland. Merely getting the application through is success, because the Dutch government won't even look at applications like ours any more. We are living with our relatives and we haven't been given any support yet", says Skender Skumbij of Djakovica, a father of two children. Skumbij is reluctant to talk about his reasons for leaving Kosovo. He says he was never a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). He claims that he left fearing that the Serbian police might accuse him of being one, because all younger ethnic Albanians have been labeled as terrorists. "I will never go back there. Even if they left me alone, I would have nothing to eat. If the Dutch authorities turn us down, we will go to the United States", Skumbij said.

Bosnia-Herzegovina's authorities do not share a common view on the Kosovo crisis, as well as a number of other issues. Political circles in the Serb Republic (RS) unreservedly support the Belgrade authorities and the idea that Kosovo must remain an integral part of Serbia. The RS media fully justify police operations in the southern Serbian province and qualify the KLA as "so-called" or terrorist. On the other hand, the Bosnian Federation authorities were elated when clashes in Kosovo broke out and some officials virtually treated the southern Serbian province as an independent state attacked by Serbia. The KLA received unreserved support from Bosnia's authorities, while Serb police and army troops were qualified as aggressors. Especially striking was a statement by Bosnia's Vice Premier in the council of ministers, Haris Silajdzic, who said during his visit to Malaysia that Bosnia would offer its air bases to NATO for air strikes on Serb positions in Kosovo.

The statement had no legal effect because Siljadzic couldn't obtain even mineral water without the consent of his Serb counterpart in the Bosnian assembly, but it did stir up political circles in Bosnia. A number of RS political parties lodged vehement protests, calling the statement an outburst of hatred for the Serbs. Tension eased considerably when Bosnia's politicians realized it was neither possible nor advisable to compare the Bosnian war with the conflict in Kosovo.

Kosovo's would-be secession from Serbia would entitle the RS as well as the Croat enclave Herceg-Bosna to do exactly the same thing in Bosnia. The Federation's officials are now talking about peace and stability in the Balkans and some kind of autonomy for Kosovo's ethnic Albanians within Serbia, which is very much what the United States and most European countries are advocating.

The Bosnian government and the major powers don't want ethnic Albanians to stick around in Bosnia too long, because there are still about a million or so Bosnian refugees. Many are afraid that the UNHCR is already accommodating ethnic Albanians at the expense of the Bosnians, especially those who might be deported from Germany in the near future. Therefore, the sudden rush of refugees from Kosovo is treated as a temporary situation caused by the conflict in the southern Serbian province. However, if the situation remains intact for much longer, Bosnia could soon have a clash between two ethnic groups of refugees on its territory. In that case, slogans in Sarajevo about two populations with the "same religion" and a "common enemy" would probably go down the drain.