When Fadhil Hamdani first came to Bosnia from Iraq in 1979, he had no idea he would stay so long. But after prolonged studies, marriage to a Bosnian woman, the birth of five children and citizenship, the years turned into decades.

Now he says he feels more Bosnian than Iraqi. But the Bosnian government does not agree. It views him as threat to national security and is putting Hamdani and other foreign fighters, who have lived in Bosnia for many years, on notice of deportation.

Arabs, the largest group among hundreds of foreign fighters, fought alongside the Bosnian Muslim Army during the war, from 1992 to 1995, against Serbs and Croats. In return, they were given Bosnian citizenship. Most left after the war, which tore apart Muslim, Serbian and Croatian communities and cost around 1,00,000 lives. But a number stayed on and settled down.

Bosnian officials say their policies are merely reversing decisions that were illegally made at the war’s end. But Bosnian politicians and international officials also say that the reversals are primarily motivated by a broader concern: that Bosnia should not be seen as a haven for Islamic militants.

Western officials and local politicians, have accused the former fighters of promoting radical Islam and damaging Bosnia’s reputation in the process. While many former fighters who stayed have managed to fit into Bosnian society, others stand out.

Imad al-Hussein, a former medical student from Syria with a thick beard, became the public face of the Muslim fighters, or mujahedeen, after the war. He is one of six former fighters the government wants to expel first. The government has not publicly outlined its case against him.

His views do lie outside the norms of most Muslims here. For instance, he says that suicide bombings are justifiable but only within Israel. He said that he and his former comrades had always acted within the law in Bosnia. But in response to the threat of being removed from his family’s home by force, he said: “I keep asking myself, will I be able to contain my instincts? If you defend yourself on your doorstep, you become a martyr. And that is a great temptation.”

Saudi Arabia and the United States say that Islamic extremists have used Bosnian passports to travel between West Asia and Europe. Some Bosnian government officials say that has been impossible to confirm.
From 1996 to 2001, many of the former fighters occupied Bocinja, which had been a Serbian village in Bosnia. The fighters lived there under Islamic Shariat law until they were evicted by the government, and they dispersed throughout central Bosnia.

“When I first came here, everyone welcomed me,” Jalili, a former Moroccan customs officer, said. “Now we are being kicked out like dogs.”

The government says its grounds for removing citizenship are that at the end of the war, the government was not properly functioning, and therefore, passports issued then were not legitimate.