Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1992 04:34:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary 5 November 1992
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 7382    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]


Zagreb Diary
05/11/1992

Dobar Dan,

The boycott on military equipment towards the whole of EX-YU, 
which is now over a year old, can have very strange effects. 
Somehow parts of computers are also under that boycott, at 
least that was the excuse we got when we started to complain 
about the delivery of our computers from abroad. Via a friend 
we could buy 3 desktop machines from a very big company for a 
very special price and they would be delivered within a week, 
that is now about a month ago. First of all the company had to 
arrange all kind of special papers to send them to Croatia and 
when they finally arrived here, the Croatia customer needed to 
have all kind of signatures and papers. The end of the song was 
that we had to go to the highest civil servant in the ministry 
of social work, etc. to get the final signature, before they, 
the customers hand them over to us (tax free, at least that is 
what we hope). Tomorrow they will be delivered to us, finally.

But normally this boycott is against army supplies, what seems 
to be no problem if you look around and see what kind of 
equipment is in the country. Therefore I was surprised by an 
article in Slobodna Dalmacija about pontoon bridges. The road 
from Split to the north goes at this moment via the island of 
Pag, because of the fact that one of the bridge on the main 
land route is destroyed last year. According the article the 
Croatian state wanted to re-open that road again and would like 
to replace the bridge for the time being with a pontoon bridge. 
And those bridges seems to be army material and so it is 
impossible for the Croatian state to import them.

When I read the article the first time I had to laugh, what a 
hypocrites, all kind of heavy army materials are imported, 
boycott or no boycott and now it suddenly is impossible to get 
a pontoon bridge. And that besides the point if it is not 
simple to build one by themselves. Probably it is another try 
to lift the boycott. 

I often have wrote about the enormous amount of humanitarian 
organisations in Zagreb, some days ago we had a visit by a 
group we never heard of, but seems to be rather old. The group 
is called International Rescue Committee, an USAmerican 
organisations which is already around in the world from before 
the second world war (the name, however, remain me on a 
television programme I use to watch when I was young, the 
Thunderbirds). We told them that we had problems finding new 
office space and today we got a short messages that they may 
have found something for us. Since it is impossible for groups 
from Zagreb to reach us by telephone, due to our heavy use and 
our nice double lines (the telephone company already scared us 
to get us of the central, because of complains from the other 
numbers on our double) and since I.R.C. is also not so 
reachable by telephone (the same problem) Marc-Jan and I 
decided to visit them at their office.

When we came in one of their field workers, from the states, 
came down the stairs and he looked happy and very relaxed. We 
introduced ourself and he told us he was in charge of the 
sanatarian supplies in refugee camps and centres. Having Resnik 
in mind, I reacted that his job would be hard. But with a big 
smile he reacted that it was for him a type of holidays, he 
just came back from Somalia.


Besides USAmericans I.R.C. has a huge group of English speaking 
Croatians in their group. Which can be considered as their 
cowboys, persons who more or less know how to get things 
organised around here. They know the way, the persons and the 
back doors. Of course finding a new space was not difficult 
they said, just say how big it has to be and in which part of 
the town. Since we are now working with about 12 people on not 
more then 25 m2 and we are looking in all the newspapers for 
weeks without finding anything what could fit our needs, we 
were a little surprised by this approached.

Just a few hours later, one of the guys phoned us, after trying 
a dozen time, he said, and told us to come tomorrow to the bar 
of theatre Comedia, the owner probably had something for us. In 
the main time also Oggy find something in Ilica, which we are 
willing to take, but the prices are skyhigh at the moment and 
the competition for good office spaces is high.

When Marc-Jan and I returned from our talk with the mother of 
the owner of the place, an old lady, which seems to be less 
happy with the fact that her son decided to rent out the place 
we passed by Hotel Dubrovnik on the main square. Walking pass 
the main entrance we heard a lot of Dutch shouting, when we 
looked we saw a huge group of Dutch UNPROFOR soldiers, who 
freshly arrived. We couldn't resist to have a small talk with 
them, in order to find out how they prepare themself for the 
job. The guy we talked to was a real green beret (commandos), 
he told that they just came back from 3 days field training, 
which was good for other UNPROFOR troops, but they as NATO 
soldiers knew everything already to be prepared to go in the 
regions. When we asked him for his political preparation, he 
told us that they had a briefing in the Netherlands, done by 
the state institute for foreign affairs studies, of 8 hours and 
that they know all what there is to know about former 
Yugoslavia. After 7 months here I often have the feeling that I 
don't know half of what is going on so I must get such a 
training as well soon.

Total other news from Sarajevo, the last animal in the Zoo, a 
brown bear has died last night of starvation. Animals are not 
much mentioned in this war, besides from some reports about the 
terrible situation of the animals in the Zagreb Zoo, made by an 
International organisation who protect the rights of animals, I 
haven't heard much about them. When you hear day after day 
messages and reports of starving people you normally don't 
think about the animals.

Also reported from Sarajevo are heavy fights all over BiH, town 
like Gradacac and Gorazde were under heavy attack again and 
after the stories of Jajce I am deeply afraid of what can 
happen. According to a spokesman of ICRC (International 
Committee of Red Cross) in Sarajevo at least 500.000 people are 
trapped in the city, 350.000 people from Sarajevo itself and 
about 150.000 refugees from other parts of BiH. 

Not so heavy, but still fighting, was reported from Tinj, 
Jankoovica and Stankovci in the area around Zadar. In Slavonski 
Brod it seems to be silent for some weeks already, but from 
Zupanja regular reports are coming about new shellings. Also in 
Sandzak, a mostly with people from Muslim nationality populated 
region in Serbia, reports are coming that the tensions are 
growing. Today they were on Croatian radio, but the sources of 
the reports came from Montenegro.




With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

                            Wam :-)
--------------------------------------------------------
Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different computer 
Networks. If you can port it to another, please do. It has no 
copyright and may be used in all forms of further distribution 
among all types of media. But please if you use something drop 
me a line. You can reach me via wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de. I 
dedicate Zagreb Diary to Tyche, Pjort and Rik in order that 
they will know what their father was doing all that time in 
Zagreb.
Xref: sparky soc.culture.yugoslavia:9436 soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna:476 soc.culture.europe:9440