Huddled around cooking fires as winter looms in Bosnia, refugees are risking beatings and humiliation from Croatian police in the desperate hope of a new life in the European Union. Largely from Afghanistan, many of them have endured months or years of flight from war and poverty, only to be met by Croatian police clubs and pointed guns at the gates to EU territory. At a ramshackle camp near the northwest Bosnian border town of Velika Kladusa, a group of mostly Afghans is hoping to cross into the EU. Some have been on the road for years and others left as the Taliban overthrew the Western-backed government in August. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES