Migrants stuck in Serbia want to move on

After traversing several countries en route to the rich West, Najibullah, a former policeman from the Afghan town of Kholm, his pregnant wife and four children, got stuck in Serbia.

Now they spend days of relative normalcy in a drab refugee camp in Krnjaca, an industrial area on the outskirts of the Serbian capital Belgrade, hoping they will ultimately move to Germany where 30-year-old Najibullah has relatives.

If they get their wish, they would join more than a million other migrants who have arrived in Germany since 2015, when Chancellor Angela Merkel offered sanctuary to those fleeing war and poverty.

Although lauded in some quarters, Merkel's actions meant she paid a political price in German elections in 2017, where the far right surged on anti-migrant sentiment. In that light, the challenges of migration remains high on the agenda of western states, not least those gathering at Davos this month, under the banner of "Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World".

The path many took to Germany, the so-called 'Balkan route', was shut in 2016 when Turkey agreed to stem the flow of people in return for EU aid and a promise of visa-free travel for its own citizens.

But migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia continued to arrive in Serbia, mainly from Turkey, via neighboring Bulgaria, attempting to enter the EU through bloc members Hungary and Croatia.

According to officials there are as many as 4,500 migrants in government-operated camps in Serbia. Rights activists say that hundreds of others are scattered in the capital Belgrade and towns along Croatian and Hungarian borders.

In Krnjaca, Najibullah's eight-year-old daughter Sonya, started attending school and soon excelled in Serbian, enough to serve as an interpreter with her father in an interview on Tuesday.

"It is not bad here, I am going to school, I have good friends there, they invite me to parties ... my father wants to go to Germany, he has friends, sister there," Sonya said pointing to Najibullah.