Bosnian citizens in Kuwait left to their own devices: Ambassador Čančar returned to BiH, no one responds to evacuation requests!

(Patria) - "Kuwait was attacked again yesterday, and while Iran speaks of peace, the reality here is different. Our citizens, especially mothers with small children, live in constant fear and uncertainty. Many are on the evacuation list, but it seems help is delayed. Given this, I appeal to our government to urgently issue transit visas for all who wish to leave Kuwait" – this was posted on social media yesterday by a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina who has been living in Kuwait for years, writes Istraga.ba.

Dozens of BiH citizens who want to leave Kuwait are currently left to their own devices. After days of futile waiting for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the BiH Embassy in Kuwait to organize their evacuation, many of them decided to head to Saudi Arabia on their own, where the situation is calmer than in Kuwait, and try to cross the border to get to the airport from where they can be evacuated to Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, most of them do not have transit visas, so they cannot cross the border.

Although the BiH Embassy in Kuwait has collected all the necessary data about our citizens who wish to leave Kuwait in recent days, no one has contacted them yet. They applied for visas online, but there is no response. At the same time, the situation in the Middle East is changing by the hour, so BiH citizens fear that they will soon have no options to leave the war-torn areas.

Hankija Fejzić from Tuzla says she fears for the fate of her child who is in Kuwait.

"As a family, we live in fear because we have no clear information or help from our state institutions. While many countries are organizing help and evacuation for their citizens, we feel forgotten. I publicly appeal to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Minister Elmedin Konaković to urgently check the situation of our citizens in Kuwait and to provide us with information and support," Fejzić states.

According to information from Istraga, the BiH Ambassador to Kuwait, Nusret Čančar, is in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he allegedly came for medical examinations. Čančar attended a formal reception at the Sarajevo City Hall seven days ago on the occasion of Independence Day.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of BiH has so far managed to organize the evacuation of only 156 BiH citizens from Dubai, who landed in Sarajevo on Thursday evening. These are mainly citizens who were in Dubai and other cities as tourists and contacted the BiH Embassy in the United Arab Emirates seeking evacuation. They arrived at Sarajevo International Airport on a FlyDubai flight. A second group of BiH citizens arrived on a regular FlyDubai flight on Friday.

According to official information available to the BiH MFA, about 1,000 of our citizens from the Emirates, about 300 in Qatar, about 100 in Kuwait, several dozen in Bahrain and Oman, and three in Iran have requested evacuation from the Middle East.

As a reminder, the Council of Ministers of BiH has allocated 800,000 KM for the evacuation of citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina from endangered areas of the Middle East. The authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina requested assistance from the European Union in the evacuation on Friday, as the country does not have its own airline, i.e., a state-owned aircraft.

While Minister Konaković often emphasizes his good relations and contacts with high-ranking officials in the Middle East, our citizens continue to receive no information or organized evacuation assistance from institutions.

In circumstances where many countries have been actively evacuating their citizens from risky areas in recent days, the fact that BiH has so far managed to organize only a limited number of returns, and mostly from Dubai, speaks volumes about the efficiency of BiH diplomacy in crisis situations.