Afghans Are Among Thousands Of Migrants Hoping To Reach Europe Via Serbia

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Mohammad Bilal, 17, from Afghanistan, plays on a swing at Bogovadja asylum center in central Serbia. He reached Serbia alone after smugglers in Iran put him in the trunk of a car alongside four other children with no water and amid scorching temperatures. «I thought that was my last day on earth,» he says.

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Elisa Oddone

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In Iran, he says, human smugglers squeezed him into the trunk of a car with four other boys.

«I was sure that was my last day on earth,» he told NPR in the spring. «It was boiling inside. I prayed to God to help me. Then Iranian border police beat me very hard before telling me to go to Turkey.»

Bilal is one of the over 1.5 million refugees and migrants who have crossed into the country since the start of the humanitarian crisis in 2015, fueled by Syria’s war. In that year alone, around 550,000 registered migrants transited through Serbia, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency.

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Fifty barracks are available for accommodation in the Krnjaca asylum center in Serbia, just outside the capital Belgrade. Single men live in separate housing, while families stay together. For those who decide to return home, the International Organization for Migration offers a «voluntary return and reintegration» program in the camp.

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Elisa Oddone

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Migrants who don’t stay in Serbia’s state-run camps sleep in makeshift shelters, abandoned houses or in fields and forests along the borders. Asylum-seekers from Afghanistan sit in an abandoned farm field on the outskirts of the village of Horgos, a few paces away from the border with Hungary. Its proximity to the EU border has made this ruin one of the most popular squats among migrants.

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Elisa Oddone

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Jihan Zeb (left), from Afghanistan, and other asylum seekers found refuge in an abandoned railway station in the Serbian city of Subotica, on the border with Hungary. They say they have each tried to cross into neighboring EU countries more than 10 times — and will keep trying.

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Elisa Oddone

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A man from Afghanistan sits in an abandoned farm building on the outskirts of the Serbian village of Horgos, along the Hungarian border. He says that when Hungarian authorities apprehended him on the border, they forced him to stand for 10 hours, threatening to unleash snarling dogs on him.

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Elisa Oddone

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Ahmad al-Ghazali, from Syria, lives just outside the perimeter of Sombor camp in Serbia’s north, near the borders with Croatia and Hungary. He was injured during a recent attempt to cross into the EU, he says, when he tried jumping the barrier that Hungary built along its boundary with Serbia and Croatia in 2015 to prevent asylum-seekers from accessing the country.

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Elisa Oddone

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Hatem al-Hamad, 28, from Aleppo, Syria, and staying in Serbia’s Krnjaca asylum center, shows his scars. He says the main injury came from a bomb blast in the Syrian war. Additional scars are from surgery he underwent in Belgrade in February. He says Hungarian police assaulted him on the country’s border with Croatia. Hungarian officials have denied allegations of abuse.

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Elisa Oddone

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Mohammad al-Muhammad (left) and Hatem al-Hamad in the Krnjaca asylum center in Serbia. Muhammad fled his home in Syria and managed to cross into Romania in December. He says he lost 85% of his eyesight after Romanian police caught him and beat him with a truncheon on his right eye and sent him back to Serbia.

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Elisa Oddone

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Rokaje Musavi, 65, and her granddaughter Helia Musavi, 6, have lived with their relatives in the Krnjaca asylum center in Serbia for the past year. Rokaje, her husband Reza and daughter Masouma escaped from the Afghan city of Ghazni 16 years ago, after the Taliban attacked their home and killed Masouma’s two sisters and four of her brothers.

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Elisa Oddone

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At an abandoned farm on the outskirts of the Serbian village of Horgos, Rahim Kanduzi, 28, from Afghanistan, waits to make a new attempt to cross into the EU on the Hungarian border. Its proximity to the EU border has made this ruin one of the most popular squats among migrants.

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Elisa Oddone

Afghan Masouma Musavi, 24, and her father Reza Musavi, 85, sit in the Krnjaca asylum center near the Serbian capital Belgrade. They arrived in the country with Masouma’s mother and daughter in 2017, after walking across Iran.

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Elisa Oddone

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Tareq Abu Hatim, from Homs, Syria, lives just outside the perimeter of Sombor camp in Serbia’s north, and has been on the road for the past year and a half. He says he paid more than $8,300 in his attempt to reach the EU, selling his house and receiving financial help from his friends and family.

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Elisa Oddone

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An unaccompanied minor leaves the premises of the asylum center in Bogovadja, Serbia, to try to cross into a neighboring EU country.

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Elisa Oddone

An unaccompanied minor leaves the premises of the asylum center in Bogovadja, Serbia, to try to cross into a neighboring EU country.

Elisa Oddone

• Afghan refugees
• migrants
• refugees
• Serbia