Bosnia Failing to Ready Local Staff for Syria Returnees

Well before the final fall of so-called Islamic State in the spring of 2019, Bosnian security agencies and counter-terrorism authorities had been contemplating the return of some 200 Bosnian citizens, mostly women and children, currently living in Kurdish-controlled camps inside Syria.

Yet social workers and schools in areas where the majority of the child returnees will be admitted say they have only recently received scraps of information about the plan. The Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Policy in Bosnia’s mainly Bosniak-Croat Federation said it too was concerned about the flow of information.

“We have problems with security agencies because they are only rarely sharing information,” the assistant minister, Miroslav Juresic, told BIRN.

State authorities realised only four months ago that they should involve social workers, health professionals and teachers, he said.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, which monitors implementation of Bosnia’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy expressed similar concerns, blaming “insufficient coordination” and the “complex institutional structure” of the country, in which power has been highly decentralised and split between ethnic communities since the end of a 1992-95 war.

“Although Bosnia and Herzegovina was ahead of other countries as regards a response to foreign terrorist fighters by the criminal-legal system, that is not the case in other fields,” the OSCE’s mission to Bosnia said in a written response to BIRN’s questions.

“…the Supervisory Body [implementing the Counter-Terrorism Strategy] is facing a range of challenges as regards the introduction of comprehensive measures at the local level, the implementation of which should involve social protection, education and health sectors, which have crucial importance for a successful outcome of any efficient intervention,” the mission said.

The relevant bodies at all levels of government, it said, will need “detailed information about the expected returnees in advance. In that way, the competent institutions will have a possibility to prepare themselves adequately.”

The OSCE underscored the problem posed by the fact the Supervisory Board consists only of representatives of the security and intelligence agencies and the state prosecution service.

Bosnia’s Security Ministry dismissed the criticism, saying it provided information in accordance with the law and had held “several workshops and meetings” with representatives of local communities since 2015.

“Contacts and activities have been intensified over the past year since the possible return of a certain number of our citizens, particularly women and children, from zones of conflict was announced,” the ministry said.

“Besides educational and consultative activities, the Security Ministry has initiated and coordinated work on several concrete cases, dealing with needs assessment and resocialisation of returnees, who returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina recently. Also, we are currently active and closely cooperating with local police structures, social work centres and educational institutions in the context of assessment and preparation of plans for treatment of potential future returnees.”

Capacity issues
While the exact number of men, women and children who might return to Bosnia and Herzegovina from Syria remains unknown, state-level Security Minister Dragan Mektic said in November that some 260 were expected back.

An initial return of smaller group including nine men and one child from the Syrian camps was supposed to happen in early October, but has been delayed. In early December, the Security Ministry said that group of several dozen people, mainly women and children, should also arrive. But Mektic cautioned that this could be a problem because “we do not know who they are”.

Juresic said that most returnees are expected to be settled in the Zenica-Doboj Canton and others in the Tuzla, Sarajevo and Una-Sana Cantons as well as Brcko District.

He said it would be vital to develop a protocol on how they are to be treated so that basic needs can be met immediately.

“It must be clear from the beginning what the security agencies will do and how much time they will need,” he said. “We should offer all we can at the very beginning and later on we should try not only to provide for their needs, but also deradicalise both individuals and communities through special long-term programmes.”

Juresic said the federal ministry where he works would begin educating staff at cantonal social work centres and that he hoped sufficient resources would be available, particularly given the support coming from international bodies as well.

“Generally speaking, in our country, the issue is not so much about the lack of financial resources, but bad distribution within the entire system, including in local communities,” Juresic said.

Samra Mehic, director of the Social Work Centre in the northwestern town of Buzim in Una-Sana Canton, said the centre has two social workers for more than 20,000 inhabitants, and would therefore struggle to deal with returnees from Syria too.

Anticipating the challenge, Mehic said the centre, at its own initiative, had been working with the International Office for Migration, IOM, for the past year and had recruited a qualified social worker, funded by the IOM, for training on how to assist returnees.

Mehic, like Juresic, said she had no precise information on how many returnees to expect.

“They will really face big obstacles,” Mehic told BIRN.

“They should get treatment in terms of rehabilitation and reintegration, because such persons are stigmatised and, of course, they will be excluded from the society. Those are the challenges or difficulties which we, the professionals, will face, because, if we want our rehabilitation efforts to be successful, we must work both with returnees and the communities to which they are returning.”

The OSCE said that ideally “multidisciplinary teams” would be formed in areas due to receive returnees.

“The teams should consist of representatives of cantonal and municipal services responsible for social protection, education, health and security, as well as representatives of civil society organizations which have the necessary knowledge and resources,” the mission said.

“The competent bodies should consider the participation of experts with experience in dealing with war-induced trauma, sexual violence, human trafficking and family violence cases.”

Behzad Hadzic, a neuropsychiatrist from the northwestern town of Kljuc who deals with trauma caused by war rape, said that working with female returnees would require great sensitivity as many may have experienced “a form of slavery which has not been seen on this planet for a long time”.

A purely legal or investigative approach should be avoided, he said.

“We should hurry up with their resocialisation and getting them back into the general social track,” he said. “They must be helped to find a new meaning in life and new identity, because they are mostly in some sort of ‘identity confusion’, which prevents them from making the right decisions.”

Child returnees a complex challenge
Juresic warned that child returnees, who were taken by their parents to Syria or born there, posed the greatest challenge.

He questioned proposals to return them to their extended families in Bosnia, saying those families may include members who are also radicalised.

“We are obliged to be guided by the principle of child’s best interest,” he told BIRN. “Is it in the interest of a child to take them back to such an environment? The conditions will not be as horrible as they were at the camps, but all the same, if the environment is poisoned with that ideology, will they be raised in such an ideology upon return.”

“If our goal is to bring those children back onto a normal course as soon as possible, school is one of those segments. Reconnecting those children with their peers who have different interests may have a therapeutic, but also a negative effect,” he said.

Zumreta Behric, a specialist in trauma psychology and teacher in Una-Sana Canton, said that, in collaboration with seven other expert associates and with the support of the OSCE, she had prepared a guide for “Preventing Radicalisation and Violent Extremism through Pedagogic-Educational Process” for use by teachers and psychologists.

“It is foreseen that head teachers will organise workshops during class meetings with the aim of preventing unacceptable and risky behavioural patterns,” Behric said.

The OSCE said that rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, particularly those intended for children, should be “overarching and involve a range of different sectors, including social protection, education and mental health protection, and also involve parents, grandfathers and grandmothers and other members of extended families”.

“Besides that, the community to which they will return should be prepared for the return of families and children in order to reduce the risk of their repeated victimization that may happen as a result of stigmatization within the community, wrong perceptions and prejudices.”

Juresic said that the OSCE supported the work of local institutions, but that the quality and success of such projects depended on the proper distribution of resources from the state level. BIRN has reported previously on the lack of sufficient funding for counter-terrorism efforts in Bosnia.

“The coordination, which is often very bad, is the key issue,” he said. “If this is a state-level issue, we have no problems with that, that is how it should be and we expect the state institutions to lead the entire process.”

The Security Ministry said all institutions faced problems with ensuring resources for their work.

“The lack of material, financial and personnel resources is present at all government levels in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” it said, noting the fact that the state-level budget for 2019 had still to be adopted given Bosnia is only now on the cusp of getting a new state government following elections in October 2018.

“When it comes to the concrete issue of working with returnees, certain staffing, financial and other types of assistance have already been offered by international organisations and donors. The Security Ministry will try to ensure additional help from international organisations for this issue on the basis of demonstrated needs.”