Belarus: escaping Lukashenko’s regime at any cost

Standing in her new house in Lentvaris, Lithuania, Sviatlana seems relaxed. She has colourful braids and she’s wearing a top that reveals Banksy tattoos on her shoulder. The 40 year-old is originally from Mogilev, a city in the far east of Belarus. This region was once president Alexander Lukashenko’s “stronghold”: it’s where he was born, and he still enjoys more support there than any other part of the country.

As a single mother of three children – Aleksey (15), Taisiya (13), and Alina (6) – Sviatlana used to consider herself apolitical. Even though she has never supported Lukashenko, and took part in a couple of opposition rallies back in 2011 and 2017, for the most part she has lived a quiet family life with her kids and her mother Tamara, working as an electronic technician, fixing laptops, phones, and other computer devices.

That all changed in the summer of 2020 when she decided to volunteer as an independent observer for the elections at her local polling station. On election day, on 9 August, she was made to wait in the street together with three other observers while the officials counted the votes. “There’s no way Lukashenko got 80%… we counted at least 50% for Tiachanovskaya (the opposition candidate representing the democratic movement). People came to vote dressed in white, and flashed us victory signs or heart signs to show they were supporting her,” explains Sviatlana.

That night the arrests began. Some of Sviatlana’s friends were rounded up by the special police unit, Omon. The official reason: having attended an unauthorized mass gathering. According to the website Mogilev Online hundreds of people were arrested that day. The exact number is still unknown, but in the period from 9-12 August, all the city’s detention centers were overflowing, and the excess prisoners were distributed among local police stations across the Mogilev region.

By the middle of September, Sviatlana had started to attend peaceful demonstrations in Mogilev and had joined a Telegram group that was run by opponents of the regime. A month later she was on the radar of the security services and received her first police summons. “I was called to the District Police Department as a witness, but left with a case – based on article 23.34 – open against me.” 

Sviatlana’s kids’ toys which include the red-white-red and Lithuanian flags. © Denis Vejas

23.34 is a number that many Belarusians learned very quickly during the months of peaceful demonstrations that followed. The digits refer to a section of the ‘Administrative Offences Code’ which regards the “violation of the organisation or holding of public gatherings or events.” This article is used to justify arrests and unlawful detentions as well as fines, beatings and abuse. Literally anyone attending any kind of demonstration can be taken into custody as a result of it. The human rights organisation Viasna claims that over the last year there were more than 33,000 detentions and over 1000 testimonies of torture in Belarusian prisons.

Very soon after her first arrest, Sviatlana was once again taken-in to the police station. This time the officer on duty went as far as to threaten her family, as she refused to give-up the names of individuals who had been organising protests.

“There’s this well-known detective, Timur Pachomenko, who’s a real sadist. He already knew where my children were. I refused to sign the protocol, but they were threatening me: ‘Now we’re going to pick up your son from high school and your older daughter from music school. And what about your little one? Is she in kindergarten today? We’re going to pick her up as well.’ […] They told me they were going to give my daughter up for adoption to a ‘normal family’, and that women like me should be sterilized.”

In the end Sviatlana gave in. She signed the papers without providing any names. On 11 November she faced a court and was fined 15 basic units (approx 150 euros). Soon after the hearing, she began receiving visits from the DCFS (Department of Child and Family Services). They claimed to have received an anonymous call regarding violence and alcohol abuse in her family.

“I understood that from that moment on I would have to hide. And hiding with children would be way harder”

On 13 November the whole country was shaken by the arrest and later death of the Belarusian artist Roman Bondarenko. He was picked up in front of his home by plainclothes policemen, and then severely beaten in a detention centre in Minsk. Following these events, Sviatlana found she could not remain silent. Members of her Telegram group organised a demonstration that would prove fateful for all involved. The participants gathered on the town’s most important bridge, where alongside red-white-and-red flags they displayed scarecrows of Lukashenko and Ermoshina; a member of Belarus’s central election commission. This act was later described by the police as causing “unbearable suffering” for Lukashenko.

Sviatlana’s struggles began in earnest a few days later when the police turned up at her home. She was taken to the Investigation Committee to discuss the scarecrow incident. Sviatlana could feel that she was no longer safe. She managed to wipe her two phones. “While being questioned I asked to go to the restroom, where I flushed my two SIM cards down the toilet, as I knew they could restore my Telegram passwords.”

Later, the lead investigator called her aside to a room with no surveillance and asked her to provide any information she could about the protests, threatening to lock her up if she didn’t. In the end, Sviatlana decided to testify. “I was mostly giving them things they already knew, trying not to get anyone hurt, just confirming the information they had.” At 3 am they finally let her go.

The next morning the police searched her house. Luckily Sviatlana had removed and hidden all her hard drives days before, so they didn’t find anything. That was the moment she made the decision to leave. The same evening she packed her bags and, together with the children, took a bus to Minsk.

The escape

Sviatlana and her three kids reached the Belarusian capital on a cold November evening. Arriving in Minsk they spent the night at the house of a local activist named Olga Krachiova who was also planning on leaving the country. The next morning they took the first bus together to Ashmyany, a border town between Belarus and Lithuania. Soon after arriving in the town, as they were having lunch, Sviatlana received a call from an activist friend from Mogilev. The police were already looking for her.

Kamenny Log is the main crossing point between Vilnius and Minsk. Most of the time it’s heavily congested with lorries and buses travelling between the two capitals. Crossing the border on foot is forbidden. As Sviatlana, Olga and the kids got out of the taxi that had brought them there, they had to hitchhike to continue their journey. A van full of workers en route to Lithuania stopped and gave them a ride to the first checkpoint.

As they arrived at the frontier, Sviatlana was told that she couldn’t pass. The border officers gave her no reason as to why but stamped her passport with an injunction that forbade her from leaving the country. They advised her to contact the local police for an explanation. At this point, the family was forced to split up. “I understood that from that moment on I would have to hide. And hiding with children would be way harder,” recalls Sviatlana. She asked if her kids could continue their journey with Olga, and the border officer agreed. She gave the children’s passports to the activist and took a clean phone from her daughter.

“I remember seeing my daughter leaving, and I had this thought that it was probably the last time I’d ever see my kids… that was the scariest part of my journey,” says Sviatlana. To this day, she cannot understand why the border officer let her children go. Most likely, she speculates, he’d assumed that Olga was a distant relative of theirs.

Protest signs on the Lithuanian-Belarus border. Writings: “Gulag 2km”, “Concentration camp Belarus””, Stop zone 2km

According to the official statistics, which are no longer available on the Belarus Department of Migration website, 13,500 people left the country in the months following the presidential election. Shortly afterwards, from 20 December onwards, Belarus completely shut its borders with all neighbouring countries except Russia. By preventing its citizens from leaving, save for exceptional circumstances, the regime has effectively turned everyone who disagrees with its policies into hostages. The official explanation was the need to prevent the spread of Covid-19 (even though Lukashenko has personally downplayed the dangers of the virus, proclaiming that the best cures for any illness are vodka, saunas and ice-hockey).

At Kamenny Log, the border officers put Sviatlana on a bus back to Mogilev. Yet she managed to get off once again, not far from Ashmianay. “I was hysterical. I had no internet connection, no news. To calm myself down I went to the catholic church, even though I’m orthodox… but I think, in a situation like that, it doesn’t really matter which god you pray to.”

“Can you imagine? You’re sitting in a rented room at night without any possessions. And you need to write an official note to protect your children”

Back in Ashmianay – alone – she pulled herself together and rented a place for the night. She received news from Olga that they were still at the border. A local NGO, Dopomoga, had organised a humanitarian corridor and their volunteers were waiting for Olga and the kids on the other side. The Lithuanian officials, though, required some scanned documents from Sviatlana, to confirm that she was entrusting her children to Olga.

“Can you imagine? You’re sitting in a rented room at night without any possessions. And you need to write an official note to protect your children.. I had no pen, no paper, nothing at all… I started to look around, and found a pencil and a torn piece of wallpaper. I scribbled down a formal declaration, signed it, and that paper allowed my children to enter Lithuania with Olga.” 

Sviatlana had been put on a list of people that were forbidden from leaving the country. Back in Mogilev, her friend Yulya – a prominent member of the local Telegram group – was questioned by the investigator of the scarecrow case. According to Yulya, when the investigator realised that Sviatlana had run away, she exploded and declared she was setting up a manhunt to find her. Staying in Ashmianay was no longer an option.

A travel-consent form, written on a piece of torn-up wallpaper that Sviatlana found in a rented apartment in Ashmianay. It allowed Olga to cross the border to Lithuania with Svetlana’s children. © Denis Vejas

Off to Russia

The next morning the activists were already mobilising to help. Two people came from Minsk and took Sviatlana to Vitebsk, a city in the northeast of Belarus, an hour from the Russian border. The area is home to a network of NGOs and volunteers, who are working across the borders between Belarus and its neighbouring countries, to help people in situations like Sviatlana’s. In this instance, Lithuanian activists, who met Sviatlana’s children on the border, contacted volunteers in Minsk and asked them to come and pick her up.

After a three and a half-hour drive to Vitebsk, Sviatlana was hosted and hidden by other local activists for the next couple of days. “I met amazing people in Vitebsk, Maria and Aleksandr. Unfortunately Aleksandr is now in prison… They gave me shelter and food. By this point I had almost no money, only 100 euros left.”

They also helped her prepare a last-minute Latvian visa application. The plan was to get to Russia illegally and then to try and cross into the Baltic state. The borders between Belarus and Latvia are too heavily guarded to enter directly. This is not the case regarding Russia, however, as the frontier is much longer. In most circumstances, Russian and Belarussian citizens can travel visa-free across the border, simply by showing a travel document at one of the checkpoints. Given Sviatlana was forbidden from leaving the country, though, she couldn’t risk an encounter with the officials.

Three days later, thanks to the help she had received, Sviatlana was off to the Russian border. Local smugglers, who know the area, usually facilitate the illegal crossing. The van Sviatlana took was full of people, many of whom were Central Asian citizens hoping to find work in Russia.

“I will never forget that crossing. We went along dirt roads and through little villages until we arrived at a field. There was a tractor there. It attached a cable to the van and then pulled us across the grass. At the end of the field, there was a ravine and a creek with a self-made bridge. Cars were already waiting for us on the other side of the ravine. We split up and they took us where we needed to go; some to Smolensk, others to Bryansk, others even further.”

And to Latvia

Once in Russia Sviatlana got off in Smolensk and that same evening, after a couple more bus transfers, she reached the Latvian border crossing at Burachk in the east of Russia. Unfortunately, once again, she was unable to get in. An agreement between Russia and Belarus from 2015 dictates that if one party forbids a person from leaving the country, the other has the right to deny transit as well.

“I’m happy that at least they didn’t arrest me. They saw a stamp in my passport, showing that I was forbidden from exiting Belarus and they called a guy from the Federal Security Service. I guess he was from the FSB, because what else could he be? A huge man dressed all in black, not exactly talkative… He started asking questions and writing down information. […] Mostly I told him the truth, and it seemed he was most angry about having had to wake up and come down there at midnight. Other guards were very friendly to me, and curious about the situation in Belarus. Finally at 3 am my entry was officially denied. The officers put me on a truck going back to Russia and tacitly advised me to hide somewhere in the country.”

A couple of hours later, in the cold early morning of the Russian November, Sviatlana left the truck in the middle of nowhere and, with only her backpack, headed to the nearest town on foot. She spent most of what was left of her money on a hostel.

The next morning she got in touch with local Russian activists who visited her that same day. They said it was dangerous for her to stay in the hostel. They claimed they had witnessed a similar situation involving another refugee in the recent past: shortly after he had checked-in, the police had turned up to arrest him.

Russia’s political climate was also heating up at the time, following the poisoning of the opposition leader Aleksey Navalny on 20 August. The people hiding Sviatlana in Russia were local activists fighting Putin’s regime. She was put in touch with them via the same network of activists that had been helping her all along the way. Their communication was mediated throughout by Lithuanian NGO’s who had ties to other groups across the region.

The activists hid Sviatlana at their flat, providing food and other necessities. At this point she knew she would be unable to leave Russia legally, and that sooner or later the police would find her. A couple of weeks later she attempted to cross illegally into Ukraine, though she claims the guides who were supposed to help her do so were bandits of some kind, and the operation failed.

The beginning of the family reunion

Ever since the family had left Mogilev, Tamara, Sviatlana’s mother, had been unable to sleep and had been losing weight due to stress. She had no idea how her daughter and grandchildren had got on at the border. Finally, Aleksey texted one of his former classmates to say that he was in Vilnius. Tamara soon learnt the family had been forced to split up.

As for their first month in Lithuania, the three kids were looked after by Olga. Later, from the middle of December, they moved between different families, until 11 January when their grandmother was finally able to come to Lithuania. Throughout this period, the children were uprooted four times and made to move constantly between hostels, apartments and the care of different adults.

“We always hoped that mum would come soon,” recalls Aleksey, the eldest.“Different people were taking care of us, and, in that sense, we never actually felt abandoned, or in need of anything […] but there was always a feeling of being an outsider, it seemed like people were looking down on us for speaking Russian […] I felt sad… no friends… no relatives.. and the people that took care of us… we basically didn’t know them.”

Two NGOs in particular – Nash Dom and Dopomoga – were responsible for helping the children. They paid the rent, bought food and clothes, and even provided them with some pocket money. Meanwhile, back in Mogilev, Tamara was in a state of constant worry, trying to reach her grandchildren.

“My nephew helped me install Telegram, and the activists helped me to get connected with the kids […] I was always crying. It was so hard to use Telegram, every time I needed to make a call it would take me forever. I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the camera, or where to tap…”

Just before New Year Sviatlana was able to contact her mother and asked her to go to Vilnius, which she did a few days later. Tamara recalls that her hands were shaking as she went through passport control. When asked about the purpose of her visit, she answered that she was going to Druskininkai, a Lithuanian spa resort, for health reasons.

Alina embraces her grandmother Tamara. © Denis Vejas

At this point Sviatlana was still in Russia. A representative of the Lithuanian child custody office contacted her, saying that in order to prevent her kids from being deported they needed to proceed with a temporary custody order in her mother’s name. The children also had to apply for asylum-seeker status in Lithuania. Otherwise, due to international agreements, the state would be forced to inform Belarus that her children were in the country, and they could potentially be sent back.

Fortunately, Tamara had taken copies of the children’s birth certificates with her, so she managed to gain temporary custody. Thanks to the cooperation of the Lithuanian officials, the paperwork was dealt with quickly and smoothly.

Not there yet

With Tamara’s arrival to Vilnius, things were beginning to look up for the children. Sviatlana, meanwhile, was stuck. By now she had been in Russia for almost three months. A fundraising campaign was set up to help her cross into Ukraine. As she waited for her chance to move she decided to use her time, and the connections she’d made along the way, to help other people from her Telegram group in Mogilev. She posted in the chat, to check who had managed to avoid arrest and might still need help leaving Belarus.

Based on Sviatlana’s account it appears that after she left Mogilev the police took away the passports of eight other participants in the scarecrow protest, to make it almost impossible for them to escape. According to Belarusian law, the only times when confiscating this document is permitted are when a person is in prison or in a psychiatric hospital. In this instance no official reason was given. It was early February – just before the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly – one of the most important political gatherings in Belarus, which takes place once every five years. In the weeks leading up to the event, the arrests reached yet another peak as the regime tried to purge the country of all opposition.

Sviatlana’s friend Yulya was the first to run. She had been arrested multiple times already, and on the day she was planning to escape the police came to her house four times, knocking aggressively on her door. She had to flee in a man’s clothes, carrying all her stuff in a garbage bag. She followed Sviatlana’s route from Vitebsk to Russia, eventually making it to the place where her friend was hiding.

“I’ll never forget her eyes when I picked her up. They were open so wide it seemed like they were taking up her entire face. And her face was grey, and her hands were shaking. We picked her up and took her to the shopping mall, because she arrived with nothing, not even a toothbrush. Can you imagine, running away with just a garbage bag and a couple of changes of clothes?”

During her almost three months of hiding, Sviatlana, together with other activists from Belarus, Lithuania and Russia, managed to help numerous people, including the rest of Yulya’s family, to flee to Europe. At the beginning of March, the network finally collected enough money to pay for one person’s journey from Russia to Ukraine. The smugglers usually request a fee of between 1500 and 1800 euros per person for such an operation. Yulya didn’t have a passport, which made her presence in Russia even more dangerous. It was therefore decided that she should go first.

“The chase was like a Need for Speed game, when you run from the police, racing 150 km/h in the complete darkness through the fields”

It took Yulya two attempts to eventually cross the border. During the first effort she was spotted by Russian officials, along with the guides and two other Belarusians. The guards then opened fire on the group using flare guns. According to protocol, officials are required to shoot into the air in such instances, but Yulya claims they aimed the devices directly at them.

“The chase was like a Need for Speed game, when you run from the police, racing 150 km/h in the complete darkness through the fields. It was scary, we were lucky that the car was a 4×4, suitable for the conditions,” recalls Yulya. Eventually the guides managed to lure the guards away and she was able to escape.

The second attempt, a few days later, went more smoothly and Yulya made her way to Kiev where she was reunited with her husband and three children who were already there waiting for her.

Two weeks later, Sviatlana repeated Yulya’s feat. In her case, though, she made the entire journey on foot, together with the guides. They started walking at 5 am, and after three hours they reached the first Ukrainian town. Their clothes were soaked from the long trudge through the forests and fields, so they changed into clean ones before continuing the journey to Kiev.

Sviatlana stayed with Yulya and her family for the next few weeks, trying to figure out ways to get to Europe. Yulya went to the police and told them she had lost her passport. She received a form that she took to the Belarusian embassy, asking for a temporary document that would allow her to return home. “When I came to the embassy they already knew about me. I saw a photocopy of my passport printed out, and I heard the officers giving a call to the national security service notifying them of my presence in the embassy. Then they muted the microphone, so I couldn’t hear. I wanted to run, but it was clear that I wouldn’t succeed. There were about eight guards and a bunch of people in civilian clothes. I was hoping that Sviatlana, and others who were waiting for me outside, would make a scene and wouldn’t let them take me away. To my huge surprise, they gave me the document, and asked when I was leaving. I said today.” This document allowed her to buy a plane ticket to Minsk with a transfer in Warsaw. She got off the plane there and asked for asylum. Her family soon followed.

Sviatlana left Kiev and landed in Vilnius on 20 May. She’d prefer not to explain how she managed to board the flight. “You always have to think about people who will follow the same path, and if I were to make this information public, that road might become closed for them.”

The entire family was waiting for her at the airport. Six months had passed since they had seen one another. “The children were very happy, especially the little one. The eldest had changed a lot. I left him as a child, and I was met by a grown-up, with a deep voice and a bearded face.”

Sviatlana and her son Aleksey (15) spend time by the lake in Lentvaris © Denis Vejas

The family is now waiting for political refugee status. On 12 September, Tamara and the kids will receive the verdict of their application. Sviatlana’s will come later. Since she is not allowed to work until then she is dedicating her time to volunteering. Using the contacts she has made during her journey, she’s connecting those who need to flee Belarus with those who can provide help. Other than that, she’s also taking a coding course, learning the Lithuanian language, and has applied for a grant to the Marine Academy.

“I’d like to wish peace and cooperation to all our diaspora, because only through cooperation will we be able to help one other. In my case, help came from everywhere […] a little help from everyone is a huge contribution. If I hadn’t received this kind of assistance from each person, my story wouldn’t have been possible. Bysol helped me with the escape, Natalya Kolegova, Dopomoga and Nash Dom helped my family with paying the rent and buying food. The volunteers from the Netherlands paid the plane tickets for my mother and I […] The Russian volunteers are something out of this world, they helped me and Yulya completely selflessly, paying for us out of their own pockets […] The most important thing is unity.”

Sviatlana and her family on the porch of their new home. © Denis Vejas

Sviatlana, her mother and her kids are now living in a house with white walls, which they share with another Lithuanian family. Their home is filled with life; the children are visited constantly by Lithuanian and Belarusian friends. They live in the town of Lentvaris, 40 minutes from Vilnius. Many Belarusian families have settled here since people began fleeing the country. “Shortly after we moved here, we met the girls next door. They’re also from Belarus but their story is different to ours. Their parents weren’t arrested, but their godfather was,” says Sviatlana’s oldest daughter, Taisiya.

In Belarus, Sviatlana has been charged with a criminal offence based on the scarecrow protest. Officially her case has been described as “angry hooliganism, clinically and nihilistically neglecting society’s norms and ideals, as well as insulting the president.” Around thirty people were part of the Telegram chat that organised the demonstration. Three other participants were sentenced to over three years each in prison. Seven have fled the country. The rest were not identified by the authorities and still live in Mogilev.

Across the country, the Belarusian opposition continues to be persecuted. On 23 May, the exiled journalist Roman Protassevitch was arrested in Minsk airport after his flight to Vilnius was diverted there. He has been detained by the authorities ever since. On 6 July another opposition leader and presidential candidate, Victor Babariko, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for corruption and money laundering. The day before, on 5 July, the United Nations envoy for Belarus called for the immediate release of 530 political prisoners.

The world turned its back on Afghans a long time ago

I met Idris at the train station in Sarajevo in the summer of 2018. A young man, whose name I later learned was Ahmad, had asked me to help a friend. Ahmad took me to where Idris was sitting on the ground. As I approached, even from a distance, I could see the pain on his face. He was in some kind of spasm, his entire body.

I approached him, went down on my knees, greeted him with a little Farsi I learned from Afghan friends I had met in Greece and asked if he could speak any English. He could, as well as his friend. Not much, but enough for us to talk to one another. Together, they told me that they had just come by bus from the direction of Tuzla after a long walk from Serbia and that Idris was in pain.

They were both in their early 20s and from Afghanistan, which I could see from the traditional clothes they wore. I asked Idris to tell me where he was hurting, expecting I would hear the usual story about blisters and sore muscles after a very long and difficult walk. But this was completely different.

“Bomb, bomb, Kabul,” he tried to explain while pulling his left pant leg up to his knee. I was not prepared at all for what I saw.

Part of his leg was destroyed. But really destroyed. It had been stitched badly some time ago, and now it was covered in blood and pus was seeping from the scar. I understood the scar was a couple of years old, never really healed, but due to long walks, it first started hurting, then bleeding.

Idris had been walking down the street in Kabul when a car bomb exploded.

I called another volunteer who was there and had a first aid kit with her. Soon we were left alone with Idris. At the time, the train station in Sarajevo was always full of people who were on their perilous journeys through the Balkans. Some were sleeping there, between the train tracks; some just came looking for volunteers who used to bring food, clothes and first aid.

The other volunteer was a young American woman, younger than Idris, who told me he was 20. I could see how difficult it was for her to help him, and how she was holding back tears. I was as well. We needed to show him we were not petrified by his pain and scars. We needed to find a way for him to feel safe, at least for a moment, and to trust us. We, unlike him, were aware that he had come to a place where there is no proper care, and that he would need to stand up and continue walking after our modest help.

Idris and Ahmad told us the story about Idris’s leg. Idris had been walking down the street with his mother several years ago in Kabul when a car bomb exploded near a marketplace. Idris and his mother were among the few survivors. But Idris lost his left hand and half of his calf. In the Kabul hospital, they did what they could; they gave him some basic stitches and let him go.

It took him months to get up on his feet, over a year to start taking small steps and then ultimately walking again. After three years, when he felt strong enough to walk, his family decided he needed to go to Europe to look for a doctor to help him. They sold what they could, collected just enough money to pay a smuggler, and sent him alone. He was only 16. They could not afford a good smuggler who would take him out with a fake passport, possibly by plane. Instead, their smuggler could only provide basic assistance and arrange parts of the travel. And like that, Idris started walking alone.

It took him three years to reach the Balkans, the EU’s doorstep, and then another two years to see a doctor in the EU. Unfortunately, they told him it was too late to operate, but they promised they could at least take care of the pain.

Before Germany, he had entered the EU in Greece, arriving on a dinghy from Turkey that landed at the Greek island Chios. He was placed in an unbearable camp for several months with only the basics and didn’t receive adequate medical attention. He decided to set off for Athens with friends he had made along the way. Not being able to find accommodations, he lived for a while on the streets of Athens before making his way to northern Greece, and then on his fragile feet to North Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia and then Bosnia and Herzegovina where he got stuck.

In Bosnia — where the EU and their partners on the ground, various international organizations, are responsible for “migration management” — he was left for a long time out in the open, in the streets and forests, and then taken to Bira, one of the soulless “temporary reception centres” run by the International Organisation for Migration. At that camp in Bihać, his life became even more difficult. Northwest Bosnia is where most refugees end up due to the close proximity to the border with Croatia, an EU member state. Most of them are trying endlessly to cross the border on foot, and enter the space where they hope to receive asylum.

He made it through the border and into Croatia, and after 18 days of walking he made it to Italy.

Idris and I stayed in touch all this time while he was in Bosnia. I tried to do what I could to be there for him. Most of the time, all I could do was just exchange messages on Facebook, tell him to stay strong, and occasionally, I went to visit him in the places he slept. In the forest, abandoned buildings, under bridges…

Finally, in Bihać, I found a local woman to take care of him, changing his bandages regularly, providing a place for him to take a shower (which in the camp was close to impossible) and occasionally to rest and sleep. Over 20 times, she helped him get ready for “the game,” a risky attempt to cross the border into the EU. Each time, Idris — as well as many others — were pushed back violently by Croatian border guards. But he tried again and again. Walking through the forests, across the mountains, toward Italy, with the dream of reaching Germany, where, his mother told him, “the doctors are the best.”

He kept going even when we were sure he couldn’t make it. His leg was getting worse. He kept telling us about the pain, but we could do little to help. Finally, he made it through the border and into Croatia, and after 18 days of walking, he made it to Italy. A few days later he made it to Germany. There, after a harrowing journey of almost five years, his asylum request was twice rejected by the authorities. With the help of lawyers, he finally received asylum this past winter, and now he is waiting to get a passport, for the first time in his life.

Years of hostility and ignorance

Idris is just one of many people from Afghanistan who I met over the years on the so-called Balkan Route. All of them are running from the horrors in their country. In the 20 years since the US-led military intervention began — an intervention many EU states participated in — Afghanistan has not been a stable or safe place. Many people have had no other option but to flee.

Over the past few years the number of Afghans migrating has increased and today they are the second-largest group of asylum seekers in the EU. Many EU member states, however, have considered Afghanistan safe, and have been deporting people back — a fate that Idris avoided after a difficult legal struggle.

Over the years, along the Balkan Route, I met hundreds of people from Afghanistan. Doctors, nurses, students, activists, seamstresses, teachers, interpreters, journalists, poets… young people, old people, women, men… They told me horror stories from their home country and incredible stories from the road they were forced to take to save their own lives. Many of them, even after reaching the EU, are living difficult lives under the constant threat that they could be sent back to Afghanistan.

In the Balkans, they were treated inhumanely, left with only basic care, if any, suffering from violence and hunger, and deprived of their basic rights as human beings.

These stories, deeply ingrained in my memory, come to mind again when I see the news of the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan which left the country and its people with no protection from the Taliban. In the news, I hear some countries from the West offering to take people who they consider more vulnerable and to give them temporary protection. Among those hosting refugees will be some Balkan countries whose leaders had apparently been contacted by the U.S. government back in July.

People from Afghanistan will start arriving as soon as this week. It is probably a good decision, even though at the moment nobody knows how it will be implemented, along with many other unanswered questions.

Who can come and who cannot, and who decides?

Is it really possible at all, and what will happen with them once they are here? How many of them can come? How will they come and who will support them? Will they be allowed to start a life or will they be treated inhumanely like others who are now on the Balkan route?

How will this affect all the other people from Afghanistan who are already stuck in one of the Balkan countries, in some cases for years? Stuck in horrific camps in Greece, or at the Lipa camp in Bosnia, near Bihać, where they don’t have enough food or drinking water, and where the migrants are exposed to daily violence, all under close watch of the EU.

And finally, who can come and who cannot, and who decides?

It all looks very much like Srebrenica in 1995 when the UN and the West decided they would do nothing and just let people be murdered. A lucky few were evacuated with international organisations, based on a list some people wrote up at some desk. The others were just left to die or try to escape through the forested mountains. Even today, nobody has really taken responsibility for their deaths.

Idris is crying while we are speaking. His family has no way out of Kabul.

Nobody will ever take responsibility for what is happening now in Afghanistan either. Over the years, Western militaries and aid organizations were ruling the country, promising prosperity and democracy. And one day, they just decided they had enough and left everything and everybody.

I wrote to Idris on the day Kabul fell. He is safe in Germany, but his family is still in Kabul. He sent me photos his family members took near their house. I see dead bodies, some covered with plastic-like grey sheets, some children, just lying on the ground. They look like they were shot while running.

Idris is crying while we are speaking. I cannot really understand what is happening with his family, but I can understand they have no way out. They cannot afford to leave. All the money they ever had, they used to get him out. None of them ever worked for an international organisation or embassy. They are just ordinary people. No western bureaucrat is going to put his family’s name on the right list.

Idris had hoped that once he was in the EU he would be able to send money and help his family, but it took him so long to reach the EU, and then to get legal residency, that he cannot do anything for them yet. He just watches from the distance, like we all do, at the horror that is unfolding in Afghanistan. But for him, and for the many other people trapped in the Balkans or who left before and are now in Europe, what is happening is the worst nightmare they could ever imagine.

And the nightmare has no end. While Western leaders are refusing to take responsibility for 20 years of war and devastation, they also find time to try to keep people from Afghanistan as far away from their borders as possible. Instead of respecting the human rights and refugee laws that the West has set for itself and accepting the desperate refugees fleeing the Taliban, or those who fled Afghanistan years ago like Idris, they are redirecting the refugees to try to make them someone else’s responsibility.

In terror, I keep following the news from Afghanistan. And the only thing I can think to say is to repeat the words of Seraj Mahbouba, an Afghan women’s rights leader: “I’m going to say to the whole world — shame on you.” What else is there to say?

To protect their privacy and safety, the two young men in the story from Afghanistan have been given pseudonyms.