Disappearing or...

A French UN soldier told me in January 1993, as he was driving me across the airport runway to Hrasnica, how fascinated he was with Bosnia and Herzegovina. He listed the mountains and cities he had visited. Then he suddenly fell silent: “You don’t deserve this beauty! Other peoples will live here and be happy”. He didn’t tell me how it would happen, but he told me what the end of the movie would look like.            

Today, less than four million people live in Croatia. Between 2011 and 2014 alone, about 165,000 residents emigrated from Croatia, and in the next two years, emigration continued with undiminished intensity: during 2015, it is estimated that about 65,000 people left Croatia. Of these 65,000, 35,000 to 40,000 are young people, and as many as 22,000 of them have university degrees, warned Dr. Stjepan Šterc, a professor at the University of Zagreb. The data presented by the media is catastrophic, and according to them, this number was 82,000 emigrants in 2016. In that year alone, about 54,000 emigrated to Germany.

By 2031, if the trends remain the same, Croatia’s population will fall to 2.9 million, which is only a decade away. And it will only get worse. The number of newborns, predicted Dr. Šterc, will fall to 30,000 annually in the next five years, and below 20,000 children in 10 years. At the same time, the number of deaths will approach 60,000, so Croatia will lose about 40,000 people annually - solely through natural decrease, without emigration. 

Solely due to higher mortality than natality, Croatia has 130,000 fewer inhabitants than recorded in the 2011 census.

The situation in Serbia is even worse, and it loses a city of 39,000 inhabitants annually through “natural decrease”. And this number will increase. Serbia has as many as 310,000 fewer inhabitants in just over seven years since the last census. The media are silent about emigration from Serbia as if by order. The figures mentioned in whispers are slightly lower than Croatia’s.    

No one knows how many people have emigrated from BiH. The estimates that 14,000 are emigrating annually are too optimistic.

The negative trend is increasing in Republika Srpska, so it loses an average of more than 5,000 inhabitants annually through “natural decrease”. The Federation of BiH is also in deficit and loses an average of about 2,000 inhabitants each year. This means that the entire BiH loses more than 7,000 inhabitants annually through “natural decrease”. Last year, BiH lost 7,779 inhabitants through natural decrease. If these differences in natural increase are added, it turns out that we lose 22,000 inhabitants in a year, which is tragic for a country devastated from '92 to '95.    

The situation is too serious. We finally have something in common: We are disappearing from these areas. And our destiny is still being shaped by people who are practically working on emigration, spreading threats, fear, and hopelessness, and increasing pressure on people.

When Slobodan Milošević returned from Dayton, where he signed the Dayton Agreement, on December 6, 1995, he boasted to the Supreme Defense Council (VSO): “We have half of Bosnia! A Republic! They (Bosnian Serbs) get all the cities along the Sava River, three cities inland, and the entire Podrinje, with the exception of Goražde. That is 50 cities and 25,000 square kilometers. Our task is to bring back all refugees who are in Serbia to populate these territories“, Milošević said triumphantly. Those who passed through Podrinje in recent years, including along the Sava, could see ruins, burned and desolate land, on which recently there are no longer even stray dogs, nor wild animals that long ago tore apart the corpses of those killed in those houses. Hunters hunt, and rarely eat those animals. Those who live along the Drina and Sava do not fish, after the numerous corpses that sank to the bottom of these rivers. The lifespan of river fish is about 30 years.  

If you pass through Podrinje and especially Posavina, look closely at the settlements and you will see signs on about three out of four houses: “For sale“. It is unknown if anyone is buying, but people are disappearing irrevocably.

Serbia and Croatia launched bloody wars for large states, and they got small and ever-shrinking nations. A few nights ago, I was talking to people on social networks. There were also people from neighboring countries. They all say that babies bring a smile to their faces. Shouldn’t this disappearance, this dying, be replaced by hope and new life?