** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  10  of  67
** Written  9:39 AM  Apr 29, 1992 by ark in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

 Zagreb Diary 28 April
Laying in my bed I hear the traffic outside, this is a big town with over 1.000.000 people and I come from a small town with only 40.000 people (that about as much as the amount of refugees in Zagreb and they disappair in the city, you in fact only can see a few hunderd of them if you know where to look, most tourist will think that Zagreb is just overfloaded with a bunch of bagging gipsies (which is in fact also true, since all gipsy from Bosnia are also on the run and lots of them came to Zagreb)), so I am not used to the traffic going on all night, the trams in the street at the strangest moments of the day. I loose than the reality of time, since it can be late at night or early in the morning. But there you get used too.
A sound I never get used to and wake me up when I sleep is gunshots in the town, this night I heard automatic rifles a couple of times from different direction. It could be drunken soldiers, who have a party. It can be that some HOS soldiers are killing a political enemy, a normal robbery or even somebody commiting suicide. Especially that is going sky high. The two alarmlines which are functioning are by far not equipted to deal with situation. But it make no sence to open an other line since you need well trained people for running such an alarmline and they are not in Zagreb. Getting them from abroad wouldn't help since you need to speak this languages before you can do something with it.
But it gets through to the press that the rate is getting really alarming, a few suicides per day are normal, for cities like Washington or New York a few suicides more or less wouldn't be alarming (in Washington more people get killed normally per day then here in a week), but here the rates go up in you look at the statistics. For so far available, since suicide is not always registrated. When I did research on in the Netherlands I even found out that it is more or less a gentlemen agreement among paper not to mention it in the papers.
Also you notice that people in the hospitals are loosing hope and in fact kill them self that way, you can't get cured if you don't believe in it. Maybe that also with peace, you only can get peace if you believe in it. If you say you want peace with a riffle in your hand or saying but the other side would allow us to life in peace it in fact keeps itself alive.
Imagine the line there is a war and nobody goes, what would happen if people go on the run in masses, if all the 4.500.000 from Croatia go to Austria and Germany, together with the other millions of former Yugoslavia, at that moment the west have to react.
It is a bit like the these imagine Bosnia had oil, like Kuweit, a joke I came up with on the ARK office in the first week, start the rumour there is oil and diamants under Sarajevo, in fact it was also used in a colom in the Herald Tribune they other day (you can find the text somewhere in this conference, thanks to Joel who does a lot of work and is a big support).
But like in Kurdistan, Bosnia has no oil and people are not running in big masses over the borders, so the problem and the fighting is nicely kept inside the former borders and therefor the war will continue. It is in nobodies real interest to stop it. That is the tragedy, the foreign states are not really willing to find out how complecated this war is. As long as it is inside there is no problem.
Like UNPROFOR, it was a general known fact in former Yugoslavia that the last months in Bosnia and Herzegovina the tentions were raising and that all groups were buying arms all over the place, but still the important guys thought that Sarajevo was a safe place for their HQ.
Now they have to run for their lifes and work from the shelters and drive around in armoured cars. If they just had taken the time to lisen to the normal people, they would have known.
Another thing what I more and more dislike about UNPROFOR is that their soldiers are not prepared to come here, we make jokes about them when we see them in groups going over the city, basically looking for girls and prostitutes (in the street of ARK is this profesion bloseming), like there must be nest of them somewhere, since I never ever see so much of them in the wild, do you think you can feed them, and they are afraid alone, since you always see them in groups. But the reality is sad, especially with this french guys here, lots of them are drafted soldiers, with no experience what so ever how the culture of Croatia and Balkan as a whole works and which are acting in groups, like french tourist on holidays. Talking with people from the Lebanon and others who have been in areas with UNO soldiers there stories confinced me that this is a forgotten part in the UNO army, it really depends from which country they are if they have any type of training for the specialist job they are doing here.
Thinking about jokes, one of the first one I heard was an old one, but still new for me, namely how many countries will Europe have by the end of 1992 (7 is the answer, 1 united europe and 6 former yugoslavian republics). I just heard a bigger explosion outside, but very far away, probably at the front line, since the wind is coming now from the south (nice spring weather, warm like the summer in my country), the last nights I woke up from them a couple of times. Friends here in Zagreb don't hear them anymore, they are used to the sounds and people from Osijek or Mostar would even laugh when I tell them, there the bombs are falling 150 meters away or even on you shelter and you are still going on with your work.
Today I have been cutting sandbags open everywhere where I came, people looked angry on me (but they have no reason since they are now laying everywhere except from where they should be), to let the plants come out, you deny it anymore all the bags have plants and start to live a life on their own, you only have to cut them open once and a while.
I feel a little sorry about my action here, I managed to bring hope, help where I can, send messages over the world, get attention back, but I have brought any big fund or volunteer in yet and that was also a part of my plan coming here. Okay I have could some materials together, but the big stuff is still a dream. Today we had to turn down an offer for a nice new office, it looked ideal, but and quiet enough to deploy more activities without having that tention like on the overcrowded ARK office and the toiletsize Green Action office. It was 1200 marks per month and we said that 1000 marks was our limit (for that amout you can rent something nicely in the west even, but like in Praha the prices are incredible (people need to make money on the sideline otherwise they can't survive).
Money is also becoming a serious problem for me, since I have no further income than what I could lent from people when I left to Zagreb and somewhere in the line I have to pay it back and to work good and effective I need to rent my own living and working space, otherwise I keep running around the city. Hopefully some of the contact with westerners will work out, they were happy to have a collegue from the west in town to act as mediator and promised me to help in the future if I can come up with some nicely described plan and projects. But lisen all the ideas and plans and putting them on paper is two different things. But my idea is clear now I want to build up a network from western groups and individuals which like to help this country and feed them with information, than it is up to them, if they can't take it from there I can't do much more.
I read all the message today, god thanks we get more every day, Joel is really working and his plan seems to be alright, but I advise that if there is coming an other volunteer for communication, especially to get the thing going between APC and Bitnet that person should not be situated here in former Yugoslavia or should have his or her own working place, otherwise forget it, you can't do it from here there is too much other thing which work as noise on the line. 
Last but not least we need badly a good printer since this thing on ARK (a app. 7 year old apple printer with termical paper) drive me nuts, you can't print more then a page at the time, then you have to stop and get the paper in right for the other page and when you forget it you have meters of useless paper, highly poluting by the way, the same as faxpaper.
Love and Peace from Zagreb
Wam :-* don't take it too serious!!! it is just a war!!!
P.s. two more romours which maybe connected, from a guy from Austria I have heard that some months ago some railroad workers in Wien got ill after cleaning a belgium wagon coming empty from Croatia, there was some kind of unknown chemical inside. The last days we hear more and more rumours of the use of small scale biological or chemical weapons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But as said it are just rumours, I don't know what to do with it, but I keep asking around.
P.s. P.s. The Jewish and Islamic international community seems to have there act better together than the rest of the world. The jews flown most of their people out in the early days of the war in Bosnia and the Islam have organize a rapid aidline for food and important medical product from there side. Were are to big campaigns on western medias, for Rumania the Netherlands got millions together in no-time......
** End of text from gn:yugo.antiwar **