Sarajevo's refugee 'business'

Sarajevo is an easy crossing point for migrants

By Paul Henley in Sarajevo

The "Sarajevo Route" taken by economic migrants to western Europe is fairly well known.

About 10% of the people who arrive unlawfully in the UK have passed through the Bosnian capital.

I think the whole process is given the nod

Julian Harston, United Nations

The fact that Bosnia is an important magnet for those who hope eventually to make it into "Fortress Europe" is not disputed.

What is more controversial is the assertion by many there that the influx is being actively encouraged by people in power in Sarajevo, those who realise what a cash crop the immigrants are for the local criminal economy.

The United Nations representation in Sarajevo has struggled to distribute international funds fairly since they started pouring in with the end of the civil war and the signing of the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995. There has been embezzlement of aid money in Bosnia on an almost unprecedented scale.

The unfortunate truth is that, far from becoming the model new democracy that was envisaged, the country has turned into a major hub of international criminal activity. Prostitutes, drugs and weapons have for several years now been common Bosnian underworld currency.

Organised crime

Economic migrants are the latest money spinner. Large batches of young men from Turkey and Tunisia appear several times weekly in the arrivals hall of Sarajevo Airport, nervous and shuffling, their futures in the less-than reliable hands of people-smuggling gangs who whisk them away into taxis, bound for the Croatian border and the promise of a prosperous life in Western Europe.

Without the tacit support of the Bosnian authorities, could these gangs possibly be reaping profits?

Immigrants often travel across Europe in lorries

United Nations officials do not mince their words on the subject.

"I think the whole process is given the nod," said Julian Harston, deputy chief of the UN mission in Sarajevo. "Don't forget that most of the politicians they have been re-electing in this country for the past four years have had or do have links with organised crime.

"What you have to understand is that people are just another commodity ... and actually, one that has marginally less risk than drugs, for example."

Mr Harston's accusation does not go as far as saying that the supporting the illegal trade is official government policy.

"What I'm saying is that leading politicians in just about every part of Bosnia-Hercegovina are themselves part of a criminal network which operated during the war and which continues to operate," he said.

'Top priority'

The Bosnian Foreign Minister was braced for such allegations long before I arrived in his newly re-furbished office in the centre of Sarajevo to put them to him. Zlatko Lagumdzija is one of the new breed of freshly-elected Balkan politicians; fluent in American English, intellectual, urbane and media-trained to a standard that would be enviable in Westminster.

I am not denying there are government bureaucrats who are still part of the - let's say - crooked network dealing in people

Zlatko Lagumdzija, Bosnian Foreign Minister

He knows that the flow of untraceable individuals in and out of his country is hardly the greatest domestic crisis in the crushingly long list his government has to deal with. He also knows that Bosnia's international credibility (and eligibility for international aid) could well depend on his attitude to it.

"We know that this problem creates a bad image for us... because it shows that this country has very weak institutions and is not of any interest to foreign investors," he said. "But you are talking to a foreign minister who understands that and that wants to fight it.

"We are not pretending that it doesn't exist. We are not pretending it is someone else's problem.

"If United Nations officials are trying to say that the top government officials who just took office are not against illegal immigrants, they are wrong.

"I am not denying there are government bureaucrats who are still part of the - let's say - crooked network dealing in people.

"But I am very firmly saying that this government has the fight against such corruption at the top of its priority list."

What virtually every Western European government hopes is that the minister's promises will soon translate into a reduction in illegal immigrants heading their way. For the sake of the immigrants too, it should be hoped that effective action is taken soon against the criminals who regularly rip them off.

An official from the International Organisation for Migration told me that a truck-load of Turkish men were recently delivered by Bosnian traffickers to a remote place in the wooded mountains outside Sarajevo. The traffickers put up a sign saying "Italian border" and deserted the people who had paid them several thousand pounds a piece to get them to the west.

Paul Henley presents Euronews on BBC Radio Five Live