Welcome to Bihac!: A Conversation with Amir Husak
Interview conducted by Guillermina Zabala Suárez and Sumita S. Chakravarty. Photography by Amir Husak.
“What I have observed first-hand could be called a border-industry complex, with IOM (International Organization for Migration), EU authorities, border police, smugglers, local and federal politicians all implicated in a severe humanitarian crisis that, for some, has become quite profitable.”
Amir Husak is a brilliant, thoughtful, and socially-engaged multi-media artist and educator based in New York. His early experiences as a refugee from eastern Europe have informed his interests and sensibility, providing the impetus for much of his documentary work. In addition, he experiments with various techniques that combine the essay, photography, and interactive elements. A dedicated teacher, he inspires students to take risks in their own video work as they explore new modes of expression and media interventions. In the following interview, Amir shares his views on the situation in his former homeland, deploring both its embroiled politics and the invisibility of its suffering for outsiders to the region.
Tell us a bit about yourself in terms of your cultural background and media career.
AH: I was born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the former Yugoslavia. As the war broke out in the 1990s, and my hometown came under siege and became a hot war zone, my sister and I – then in my early teens – fled and lived as refugees in Germany. Shortly after the German government decided to repatriate and deport the refugees, we were forced to leave again – this time for the United States, where I reside to this day. The resulting experiences have profoundly shaped the way I live and perceive the world, and they have prompted me to embrace media arts as a means of overcoming communication barriers and other borders, real or imagined.
Combining emergent and traditional media, essay and experimental techniques, my work explores documentary as social practice and investigates digital media representations of history and memory. I am currently an Assistant Professor of Media Studies and chair of the Documentary Studies Graduate Certificate program at The New School.
Can you explain briefly the socio-political conflict that is taking place in the border region of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian city of Bihać? And do you have a personal connection to this area?
AH: I am hesitant to call this a socio-political conflict. It wrongly suggests that the scope of this crisis might be limited to local actors only. There are, of course, some frictions and power struggles on a local level, prompted by the recent ousting of the nationalist coalition and palpably different politics of the new administration under liberal-centrist POMAK party governance. But, first, to better grasp the dynamics of the current situation, it is important to look at both history and geography. Bihać is a Bosnian border town, located at a doorstep to the EU. The neighboring country of Croatia is in the European Union since 2013, while Bosnia remains on the waitlist with a distant prospect of joining the union. Bihać is also the administrative center of the USK (Una-Sana-Kanton), the country’s northwest region, separated from the federal seat of power – the capitol of Sarajevo – by mountains and difficult terrain (long winding roads, poor infrastructure, etc). Generally speaking, and this goes way back, residents of Bihać and the surrounding area – the majority of whom are ethnically white Muslims – feel disconnected, misunderstood and neglected by their federal government.
This distrust was further exacerbated with the arrival of migrants in the region in 2018, when the city became a de facto key transit point. Bihać was left to its own devices to handle the influx of thousands of people in transit, with limited or no help from the federal government. Additional pressure was added when the federal authorities decided to reroute the migrants – in most cases forcibly – to the country’s northwest. In a short period of time, those who entered the country via eastern and southern borders were all aggregating in dense groups in Bihać and the surrounding areas. Strapped for resources, appealing for aid to both federal government and the EU/international authorities, the local government struggled to provide the incoming migrants with basic necessities and control the situation. This led to all sorts of emergencies, including the harrowing pushbacks and brutality by the Croatian/EU border police, who to this day continue intercepting migrants and deporting them back to Bosnia. Conditions in makeshift camps and transit centers deteriorated quickly and, over time, there was a significant rise of anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric among the locals. On top of that, COVID-19 only deepened the existing problems and worsened the already hazardous public health situation.
As the international press began to pay attention, the image of this crisis became quite complicated and elusive. In a whirlwind of emergencies, many forgot one critical fact: it is the foreclosure of asylum in the European Union and the ongoing militarization of the EU borders that have led to police brutality and pushbacks against the refugees and migrants, who end up stuck in countries on the EU periphery such as Bosnia-Herzegovina. What I have observed first-hand could be called a border-industry complex, with IOM (International Organization for Migration), EU authorities, border police, smugglers, local and federal politicians all implicated in a severe humanitarian crisis that, for some, has become quite profitable.
I have a strong personal connection to this area. Bihać is my birthplace and I still have many relatives there. Even though I have left the city in my early teens, I visit on a regular basis. It also continues to be one of the key sites in much of my research, creative practice and activism. My returns to this region are multifaceted.
What role do you think your media intervention can play in this conflict? What strategies in particular strike you as significant in telling this story?
AH: It is not the story per se that interests me the most, but the exposing of networks, relationships, and power dynamics. I am interested in the invisible apparatus, infrastructures and power brokers enmeshed in this impasse. As a native of the region and former refugee myself, I also wish to examine how these cultures encounter and understand each other. Images and reports that appear in the media either glorify the spectacle of suffering, or neatly fit into xenophobic and racist narratives about the barbaric other invading the occident. Aside from a small number of independent (and courageous!) media outlets, most of the reporting continues to oscillate between an obtuse humanitarian impulse and reactionary propaganda. As a counter-strategy, I feel it is important to turn the camera (and other research tools) not on the migrants themselves but on those who control and organize the boundaries of their movement. More broadly, my aim is to detect and make visible the deadly flexing of power that Achille Mbembe has called necropolitics.
What changes were you able to witness and record when you first visited the area? And are you interested in addressing the broader political situation, or in highlighting the infamous camp?
AH: What I’ve witnessed during the summer of 2018, when the first migrants started arriving, was nothing short of alarming. Except for the local volunteers and International Red Cross, barely anyone took notice. Natives of Bihać and the surrounding area were mostly confused by the sudden influx, and their response was mixed. There were large groups, mostly of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, including families with small children who took shelter in the park, by the road, in the abandoned buildings of defunct local industries, etc. Nearly all of them were trying to cross the border at night, repeatedly getting caught by Croatian border police and being pushed back to Bosnia. There was a shortage of everything: food, medication, clothing, etc. As the numbers kept growing, it was more than obvious that a real humanitarian crisis was beginning to unfold.
I became more interested in addressing the broader issues here, not just what I had witnessed in the camps. That being said, it is important to add that Vučjak, the most infamous of the camps, was a humanitarian disaster. Located on the outskirts of town, in the mountains, on a former trash depot and near the battle frontlines of the 1990s conflict, it was an improvised camp surrounded by war-era landmines, thick forest, and swarms of insects. Responding to the mounting pressures by his constituents and fearing that the presence of migrants in the city proper was going to ruin an already weak tourist season, the city’s mayor Šuhret Fazlić decided to forcibly relocate all migrants to Vučjak in the summer of 2019. The camp eventually closed a year later, but its dark legacy continues to haunt the local discourse on migration. Even though it was important to document the conditions in the camp, Vučjak was just another episode in a string of many that showed just how compromised most of the migrants were. Countless others, including the migrants themselves, have documented what was happening in the camp. I knew that the terms of my engagement there were limited, and that I needed to set clear boundaries. There were, however, moments that I considered to be critical, and I had to find a way to photograph them without being obtrusive. For example, at one point several Pakistani migrants who tried to cross the border reported to me that the Croatian police resorted to a new tactic – they used their batons on the feet of those who they intercepted, to disable and discourage them from crossing again. And sure enough, soon I started to notice many young men in the camp limping, with their feet in bandages. I knew I had to photograph and share that as evidence of police brutality and human rights violations. It was also striking how cunning and disturbing this tactic was; knowing that most migrants already have battered feet from hundreds of miles of walking, the police tried to conceal the evidence of their abuse of power by bruising the already injured feet.
How were you able to have access to these camps? As a media maker and researcher, how were you received/treated by the migrants?
AH: In the beginning, the camps were totally makeshift and without any security. Anyone could walk in, at any time of the day or night. This presented a lot of problems. Later, in a controversial move, the IOM (The International Organization for Migration) hired private security firms to fortify the gates and guard the entryways. It became incredibly difficult to enter. As news about deteriorating conditions in the camps began to spread, access became nearly impossible. Many were kept away, independent journalists and researchers in particular. But back in 2018, I signed up with the local International Red Cross office to volunteer at the camp Borići, which washoused in an unfinished student dorm. That’s how I’ve met most of the migrants and volunteers, many of whom I’ve interviewed over the course of summer. Later, in 2019, I had to request a permit as a filmmaker and, on a couple of occasions, I accompanied medical personnel to enter the camps. My camera and sound recording equipment were purely incidental, and I did not use them until much later. Everyone inside was understandably wary of cameras and media attention. Our relationship was different, though. I was showing up almost every day, participating in aid distribution and listening intently. Together with several local activists and students, I have also helped organize a screening of cartoons and an arts & crafts workshop for the many children who resided in the camp at the time. We brought a projector and a large screen, then screened a compilation of animated films and cartoons in Farsi, Urdu, Arabic and English. That was one of the most memorable moments. It was also a very difficult one, because it revealed just how many unaccompanied minors were present in the audience.
Even though I have photographed quite a bit inside the camps, I do not consider these images to be central to the project. It was a part of my research and it helps put things into perspective, but – again – the focus is elsewhere.
As a documentary media maker, what’s your process in terms of approaching your subjects and capturing their lives and surroundings?
AH: All media makers who work with and within communities of any kind have a particular method and approach. It is important for me to have a genuine connection to the place. Something profound must connect me to that community. In this case, it was the place of my birth and I have observed my community of origin being perplexed by these developments. In addition to that, as a former refugee myself I felt I had a lot in common with those who were on the move and stuck in this nightmarish limbo. First, I had to listen. So, while volunteering, I positioned myself as an intermediary – hoping to help the displaced find their way around and access local resources while in transit. At the same time, I knew that there was another burden of responsibility: as a documentarian-cum-arbiter I had to address my community of origin and work against the many misconceptions, racism and xenophobia that caused further strife between the locals and the incoming migrants. Not an easy position to be in, especially when you are trying to document and organize with a host of different interlocutors, whose opinions about the situation can vary greatly. Hence it became even more important to expose the intricate networks and various power brokers that continue to influence public opinion. My methods were developed largely as an attempt to enable and practice different forms of solidarity.
Have you visited the areas during the COVID-19 outbreak? If so, what’s the current situation?
AH: I have not visited the area after the COVID-19 outbreak. Obviously, the pandemic has presented a host of new challenges. Bosnia was hit particularly hard by the virus, with many infections and deaths unaccounted for due to poor testing, weak lockdowns, and one of the slowest rollouts of the vaccination program. I am returning to the site this summer and hope to have a clearer picture of its impact.
In your opinion, what do you think the government should do in order to solve this ongoing migratory catastrophe?
AH: The answer here depends on which government we are talking about. There are many players involved. A whole range of different governments bear the burdens of responsibility here, some more than others, but any form of unilateral action can only go so far. First and foremost, it is important for the EU (and the US) to expand their asylum programs and enable safe corridors for those to wish to make their way to the global north. The ongoing militarization of borders and foreclosures of different asylum programs have turned places such the Mediterranean Sea, Bosnian mountains and the Arizona desert into mass graves for thousands of women, men and children who are fleeing war, persecution and poverty. The current border regimes are not only cruel and costly; they are fundamentally unsustainable. Statistics show that the number of forcibly displaced individuals has reached a record high. In total, over 66 million people globally are experiencing forced displacement. We are likely to see more migration in the coming years that will make the current crisis look like a cakewalk. Practicing sound migration policy based on solidarity and care is of paramount importance, and we should employ all tools available – especially the domains of cultural production – to exercise pressure on those who are at the helm of this militarized global apartheid. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the ghosts of colonialism and imperial domination that have led to deep inequalities of the present day must be met head-on.
Who or what is the intended audience for your project? What kind of impact are you hoping for?
AH: I think the ideal audience for the project are those who have a one-dimensional view of this crisis. However, I can also see how this work could be of use to other researchers interested in regional history and politics as well as those who examine migration in the Balkans more closely. As explained earlier, I am interested in exposing the networks and revealing the invisible apparatuses, infrastructures and power brokers enmeshed in this impasse. Even though the final format of this work is yet to be determined, my hope is to exercise and inspire different forms of solidarity with those who are caught in the crossfire of hegemonic politics.
Other resources
Feature films
Quo Vadis, Aida? [2020]
Nominated for an Academy Award in the Foreign film category and directed by Jasmila Zbanic, this narrative film takes place during the Bosnian War and tells the story of a former teacher working as a translator for the United Nations forces.
“‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’ Asks: Where Does A Society Go After War Ends?” NPR (article featuring Amir Husak)
“‘Quo Vadis, Aida?,’ A New Film About the Bosnian War” PBS
The Museum of Forgotten Triumphs [2018]
As a child, director Bojan Bodruzic was evacuated from Sarajevo in 1992 and emigrated to Canada. In 2000 he returned and began filming his grandparents, recording their incredible life stories over the course of the next 15 years. IMDb page
Logbook_Serbistan [2015]
Director Zelimir Zilnik follows the trails of refugees who have ended up stranded in the Serbian hinterland, and holds a mirror to Europe’s restrictive immigration policy. IMDb page
Articles
From one hell to another: Life of migrants in Europe today Migrant Women Press
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Migrants Left in the Cold Human Rights Watch
What are the real reasons behind Bosnia’s migrant crisis? Euronews
For Migrants In Bosnia, The ‘Game’ Is A Perilous Journey To A Better Life NPR