** Topic: Zagreb Diary ** 

Response  12  of  67 ** Written  8:37 PM  Apr 30, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar ** Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary 29 April

To keep the war simple I have bought a map on which I try to orientate myself by drawing the new republics and occupied terrotories on it and by using different colours it is a lot easier who belongs a little bit by whom, f.e. the free Serbian republic in the area around Knin has a pink color, the make clear that it has connections with Serbia, which is red on my map. I haven't started to put the different fighting groups on my map, since otherwise it would like to much like a rainbow and due to all the arrows the map would be unreadable.

But in all my simplicity I made some mistakes and soon I can start all over again. This region around Knin has now started to fight against JNA, or more clearly against the representatives of big Serbia in their republic, they are angry that Serbia and Montenegro yesterday declared the third Yugoslavian state without including them and that Serbia is not paying them for there republic.

In Sandzak in Serbia, were a lot of Muslims are living people started to fight against JNA and Serbian extremists, which are using this area for there attacks on Bosnia Herzegovina, so this area should not be red, but somehow red with green stripes (green for Bosnia to show that there are a lot of Moslims). By the way it is obvious that beside a lot of humanitarian aid from Moslims all over the world also some armed aid came along.

And Bosnia was mainly stripped Green for Muslim, Red for Serbs and Blue for Croatians (since it is at the sea) and since everything was living together this republic looked like a nice painting from Appel (a ducht avantgarde painter), nowerdays the strips starts to becomes big paint drops.

All over the place there are nice white drops of UNPROFOR troops which are running like hell to save their ashes. When I read the report of the Secretary General yesterday I couldn't help but I have to laugh.

For weeks people here know about the tentions and UNPROFOR made their HQ in the middle of it, so if UNPROFOR now likes to go to Macadeonia we are sure the war will start there soon.

That were just jokes, the last days we had some heavy discussions at ARK,  mainly about the appeal send to us by the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, which  you can find in this conference. The reason for this is that we are not  sharing the same opinion about how to solve this war. Those who have been  travelling abroad a lot in their lives are basically agree with the theses  of HCA, but those who stayed mostly within Yugoslavia (Croatia) and just are  learning to read and write another languages are strongly disagree.  Especially about the point in which the HCA theses says that more presure on  Serbia will not help, even will contra productive. They say that even the  strongest presure is not strong enough.

This has to do ofcourse with the feeling towards the Serbs. In fact I think  that most of the people in Croatia think that Serbia should be punished for  there crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. And even for me it is sometimes hard  to stay neutral in this problem, who is the aggressor and should aggressors  be punished or not.

On such moments I think back on wath my father teached me (we are jewish)  never ever hate a German (even when he or she was a Nazi in the war). Hate  will lead to more hate and in the end you have another war on your hands. It  is a spiral downwards into nothing. The problem after the war wouldn't be  how to punish the aggressors (from which side they may come) but how to live  together again in this country or countries. 

This wisdom is hard to keep if you read and write about all the warcrimes  which are going on here, about people how are raped, killed and robbed,  without any reason, else than having another believe.  This is a very dirty  war and often I feel this country is seen by the rest of the world as a type  of Safari park, the best solution would be to isolated it and throw some  food over the face once and a while and give them some weapons and let them  fight.

It is also going to be a long war, I don't know how many of you realize that  the areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina are mountain area, perfectly for  geurilla wars, which can last for years. Big military forces can occupy and  destroy cities, but they can't fight against small fighting groups who are  hiding themselves in the mountains. In many ways I am not so afraid anymore  for big USA interventions, or they should flatten the place completely. With  the history of Afganistan, Vietnam and even the partizans here in former  Yugoslavia in mind it is clear that they can't do much against this wild  bunches.

But still try to get more people involved in this mission of mine, we need  more international volunteers as mediators, here and in Beograd, as said the  dialogue is the most important thing and probably the only way to overcome  the hatress which is growing, and please find me some money so I can go on  with my work, the peace forum costs us a lot. And my sources are drying out.

Love and Peace from Zagreb

Wam :-) happy about the growing attention, thank you all outthere. Hope I  would hair the front tonight, since I must say I am not used to it yet, when  I visit friends in Novi Zagreb they other day I could see the explosions on  the horizon and that brings the war a lot closer then the story with Semra  writes me.

When ever you have time write us a note, my friends here can use it. ** End of text from gn:yugo.antiwar **