** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  29  of  67
** Written 11:39 AM  May 20, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary
20-05-1992
Dear Friends,

Let me tell first some results from a meeting Nina organized in app. 1 day, since we planned it Thursday just before she left to Berlin to do some explaining work there. On that day we in the evening the possibility to organize workcamps with refugees in July and August. Just simple workcamps to do some simple activities with children and youth in the huge refugees camps which the UN will build up in this country in the coming months. We guess that by half July the first camps will be ready by the speed things are going and that the return from the refugees to their homelands and cities will take a while. And that's not only here in Croatia but all over the different republics. Due to the fact that the surrounding countries have closed their borders more and more the problem concentrated itself around BiH, all have their own refugees problems. 

I ask Nina to contact her friends with whom she did already voluntary work in the smaller centra with up 700 people around Zagreb. In that one day that she had she rounded up 10 people, and a whole list of people who didn't came but surely would love to come if they didn't had anything else to do. I thought that it was a problem to find teamleaders for workcamps, forget it we have enough people to cover that, we already had the right contacts for Osijek, Split and Rijeka, since that are also obvious places were camps will be build. 

Furthermore there was also somebody from Vinkovci, a city which is now like Osijek in the firing line and from which a big part is destroyed. Both are in the sector East from UNPROFOR and we start to believe that one of these days maybe UNPROFOR take over the command and secure this area from fighting. And than people will be send back to their destroyed place, maybe Croats and Serbs are possible to return. And than... the will find no hospital, no schools, no townhall, no houses, no a lot of things, and there is no insurance company in the world paying for any damage here, this is outside every polis you can make (look it up if you have one, war damages are always excluded). Most people lost their works, since their work is also destroyed, a part of the pollution is still missing and will stay away, those who died or are fighting on the front.

In those situation people will come back in their destroyed villages and start to build up what is left over from their houses. There will be no schools, no meeting centra for the youth, so they will fool around in an area which is full of all kind of left over ammunition and land mines. Just try to imagine the picture you are back your house is gone and you start to put plastic on the roof with somebody and you see your child playing in the garden and a moment later..... The picture is clear I hope and had nothing to do whose house, who child we are talking about and whose bloody fault it was that that mine was laying there.

But people are returning long before the area is for one hundred procent safe, they are already returning to Osijek, since the problems with the BiH refugees is given a higher priority. And UNPROFOR is taking control in the eastern zone. That are the problems they are facing at home, maybe most people can round up some how money to make their place livable again and with some improvisation they will managed.

But as long as this country is under war and even long after that the war machinery will consume a lot of money, also to support all the wounded soldiers. There would be such enough money left to rebuild the all the necessary facilities, even with western help. All other things like communities centra, youth clubs, cultural centra are at the bottom of the list. There is no money for that for a long time, that are problems which every small community have to solve for themselfs. I was thinking that it must be possible that cities around the globe adopt now villages and cities in the war zone and if they are clever they adopt three or more places for all different nationality to avoid fights about who is right and who is wrong. 

In Mainz f.e. which is sister town from Zagreb the Greens ask for 10.000 Dm for the peace movement for of Zagreb, our center and the city accepted (only the burocraty is a little slow). And now we have ask them if they can't organize a help from f.e. the boyscouts these summer in the refugeescamps. 

Lots of people around the world we have notice like to do something constructive, this can be constructive, push your local town council to adopt village in the warzones. They can give a curtain amount of money to be spend to build up community life again in those villages, but you could also mobilize the local population around this topic and organize support from local producers, do-it-yourself-shops and buildingcompanies for gift in natural, get local volunteer teams together from building and construction specialists etc. It is smaller then those huge unknown operation via huge support action, people get more close related. And you can do information work around it more easier, there is a short of emotional link.

I am willing to lay the contacts as far as I can go from Zagreb, but I have already nearly connections with towncouncils all around eastern Slavonia, but it is not much work to expand it. And when Joel comes he maybe can help me with it. And maybe some students in any specialist job can spare some time. 

It looks like that slowly we make a web all over the country and I have the feeling I am in the middle of it. Lots of information about were could be done what is coming to me. If there are people out there who see something in this plan and/or see a possibility to build up similar lines in parts of former Yugoslavia which I can't cover get please in contact with me and we can start to plan.

This brings me to my next topic. This war is like a domino game, one falls all fall. The biggest mistake from UNPROFOR was that they did got their message too late. This peacekeeping force should now do what they should do in the first place and as the hell get to those place where there isn't any fighting yet and secure them, demilitarize all those place who aren't in war yet. You stop a forest fire by burning controlled wood away what lays in the fireline, now these areas which are not yet under war are in the fire line, we should disarm every possible source what can gets fire before it gets there. We stop the falling domino.

Slovenia should no be putted under UNPROFOR protection the whole country should be demilitarized and the whole economy should work to build up the country and not a new bloody war machine called army. Macedonia should be dismantled, JNA should leave, territorial defense demilitarized, strong controls on weapons at the borders and under UNPROFOR, and so on and so on. 

That 150 from 200 Nato officials in Canada have appealed that NATO should move in nerves the hell out of me. What will that means are they going to bulldozer the whole front line away, are they going to do what they forgot to do in the Gulf War and do they want to show that they are going to move all the way now (IRONIC, please don't misunderstand me). What those that means. Does that means that in a few weeks from now I can tell you from nice leopard tanks on the main square and me selling badges "NATO GO HOME" around the corner or don't we even see the guys and are they going to do the job from 6000 feet.

How can we protect these villages from totally falling apart, and my idea was by making them know, give them an identity, give that unknown land frontline a name, give people a spot on the map where they can feel some special relationship with. Something what makes them more closer with what is going on here than what they see on the news.

From one of the traveling free lance journalist, their are a lot here and most of them pass by for a sleeping place at ARK and most of them have just barely enough money to pay their own food, so you feel somehow close to them and help them out, we heard that the bridge at Slavonski Brod still is intact and he was at the other side of the Sava in Derventa. Ofcourse wild stories and a limping leg, was hit by a fragmation bomb in Slavonski Brod and can write a hell of story about the days in the hospital. They are all in a hurry, the pass-by, there are just from the front or on their way to it. I hear enough from them and I am not going to risk my life. Both transports (small ones to try) we sended to Sarajevo over Beograd and over Split didn't arrived at Ibrahim in Sarajevo. 

If you have seen on your local news what happened with the Red Cross convoy know what the risk are. If somebody along the road has a bad day, you are out, don't go and play cowboy on your own, since we even don't know what happens with those people who left the both cities. We will see the coming days what will happen with the convoy from the UN which left Zagreb today. I think more and more that the only way to Sarajevo which may bring people there if they like to help is stick on one of the official convoys (and they seems to start moving, if you like to hop on one you can come to Zagreb or go to Beograd and wait a few days they are coming in and keep on rolling guys, if the border patrols in the north had a little less to do with their weapon and tax controls it would be moving that truck, put the hammers down, I bad it must be fantastic getting into Sarajevo and they other towns that way in convoy full of hope), don't try it on your own, your change to get there is as living in Zagreb for half a year without at least having had one accident in the traffic.  If any small town or group likes to get through to Sarajevo do it please the official way, for the time being at least and with little bit of luck it is getting in by train and hop on the next truck. We can't guarantee that you get a hick, since their are rules and some are strict at the book. And when it is going to happen Zagreb lays on the transport routes from western Europe. Maybe the corridors will be established from wish the people in Sarajevo dream, what goes down must come up you know, they can bring the children and wounded ones out and more people who like to leave.

It is such a strange feeling bring food to a city under war and going back and leaving them alone, will the food buy them the time to survive the war. Why can't we send aid over the telephone line it would go so much faster, it would make life so easy. 

If you are around for the summer in Europe, drop by for a couple of days, it is fun, it is never doll, you never know what is more exciting to look at the news (what I don't understand in Croatia) or the warfilm on the otherside (which I also can't understand, but because of other reason) and when I see the music programs it is like watching a commercial for Rambo 19 (how they killed all the ? (depends what sells better, but if you make to film vague enough you just switch sides, you only change the subtitles), or maybe some old Italian bill he still has to pay and start his private war). What I just want to say :

With Love and Peace from Zagreb,

Wam:-)

and see you around.

p.s. I don't know if the rest of the world already knows that Croatia and BiH have formed a confederation now, which makes it "legal" that Croatian army is fighting in BiH.
** End of text from gn:yugo.antiwar **