Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 15:42:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary 14 November1992
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 6295    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]

Zagreb Diary
15 November, 1992

Dobar Dan,

When I discussed the things I was talking about with Vladimir last evening 
with Vesna J. she said that she was missing the air raid alarms a bit. It was a 
strange drug, a strange feeling of community feeling during that period.  Even 
when you knew that nothing would happen and that it was only a 
psychological war fare it was still a kind of kick to be in the shelters together. 
Every time when the alarms went of the adrenaline went up. it was a time that 
we worked a lot together, people from all kind of movements and 
organisations. That co-operation is gone.

The town is much more un-social nower days, people are living next to each 
other and don't speak anymore together. The days that people stand on the 
street and listen to the latest radio news are also gone. Normal life returned to 
the city.

It is strange if you are talking about war, when I talk about the war I always 
naturally refer to the second world war, that is the "WAR" in my culture. If 
somebody is from before the war, it means that it is rather old and I have to 
correct it always when I am writing. Here "WAR" is still there and from before 
the war is something which only lays one and half year back. In BiH even not 
more than 8 months. Nearly all expensive things in the shops are from before 
the war. 

Yesterday late in the evening also the pictures of the UN newest armed cars 
on a road in BiH. The mighty "warriors" stucked in a stream of mud, relief 
truck and refugee by foot in the direction of Split. A total chaos in which 
nobody could move a metre. But the drivers were full good spirit, "we will get 
through and we will return all fire on us, no matter from which side it will 
come". I said to Vesna J. "So now we have 4 sides in the fights, Serbian 
troops, Croatians, Muslim and the newest, UNPROFOR, who started their 
own small war against everybody else". At least that how it looks like.

In Sarajevo it is quiet at the moment, but there is a tension between military 
police and army from BiH (former territorial defence). The BiH army says that 
military police is full of former criminals, who were also involved in smuggling 
and black market activities in the last months and give their army a bad name.  
Already some heroes from this war are lost their hero imago. One of the 
commanders, who was very popular some months ago in Sarajevo, but from 
whom everybody knew that he was a criminal before the war has been thrown 
out of the ranks and probably more will follow soon.

"There is no way that the international community will except any metre of 
land which is not on a democratic way .... we don't expected violence as 
solution....... all parties should see that there is no other solution" ...... one of 
the two mediators was given his reaction on BiH, but I couldn't hear it all the 
way, since the radio put a translation over it, so I could only hear what he was 
saying when the translator stopped to keep some air.

A nice French accordion music accompanied a report of Sarajevo on the 
news on HTV today, people on their bikes under trees and an old man which 
was busy to repair his roof with some plastic plates. It is quiet today in 
Sarajevo, it looks if the cease fire is getting real. Of course it is nothing if it 
would hold for some time, but at least the people could leave their houses 
today for a change and repair something before the winter comes. 

In Bonn the big demonstration against violence against foreigners and 
refugees seems the be rather big. The television showed not much of it, but 
what we show was a huge group of people with banners against the raids on 
refugee centres in Germany.

Snow in the mountains and temperature below zero in the whole country, 
sleep well when you are in a nice house, even when you have replaced your 
oil, gas  or coal heather for a wood heather, since it is otherwise too expensive 
or not available. Even when you are living in a high building where your central 
heating system is far from good enough for the whole building and you need 
to have some electric heaters not to freeze. But it is worst if you have nothing 
to heat you, only some blankets, or you have at least a  house , but your 
house has no glass in the windows anymore and a lot of extra ventilation 
holes.

"We like to help, tell us were help is mostly needed" this question is putted to 
me by a nice girl from Germany, "Tell me were are the refugee camps and 
which one is the worst". "Tell me what you can do, what is your strongest 
point, how much can you do" is my counter reaction. Nobody in these 
countries knows everything or can say where help is the mostly needed. If you 
phone the official institutions they will give you a list of addresses from camps 
and places they know of, but the information is changing every day. 

The last days more and more refugees are brought into Croatia by UNHCR 
into their transit centre in Karlovac. They have promised that all those people 
will travel further to countries abroad, but up to now they have found places 
for all the refugees whom they brought into their centre. And daily there will 
come more, big evacuation programmes are started from Sarajevo and other 
besieged cities. Now there is a little bit of quietness busses are rolling to 
Beograd and Split and more and more people will leave the city. It is more 
needed then ever that people starts to make plans how all those people stay 
in contact with each other.

In the evening I took the bus to Umag, in order to get to Savudrija, but I 
missed the connection in Ljubljana and had to spend the night in the train 
station and I can tell you it is cold if you have no place to go.

Mir I Love from Za-Mir-Greb,

							Wam
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