** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  33  of  67
** Written  2:10 AM  May 27, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary
26/27-05-1992
Dear Friends,

Just back from Osijek, were luckly enough no real alarm was given in the last 3 days, I found a fax from Ibrahim for Sarajevo. I don't know what you have been seeing and thinking of the last 3 days, but my ears where first of all listing to airraid alarm. I thought a lot about Sarajevo, walking along the river and looking at the big Church near the main square, the thousands of houses which were bombed and repaired and the looking at the big hole near the red cross flag on the hospital. In Sarajevo at this moment people are dying and I am not able what the feeling is to life under the threat of snippers and sudden bombing. 

I was lucky nothing happened, but for people in Sarajevo the threat goes on, every day can be the last, in Osijek we were lucky, thanks to the corridor which is the lifeline of the city (food enough in Osijek). Slowly the threat is falling of my back, I was happy to be back in peaceful Zagreb, back ready to go back as soon as I have got good news for my friends in Osijek. I hope to go back soon, praying that it is all over now there. Hoping and asking that I can go to Sarajevo as well. Not that I like to see the city, but I just have to see the people, I want to move in as soon as possible to see what can be done.

You will stop it out there I am sure, this can't go on many longer. I don't know who is doing it, and I don't want to know. I only know it has to be over and soon. Aida talk with Nada in Sarajevo over the phone to check the message from Ibrahim, just to be sure, before we get accused of half information or propaganda. Or Ibrahim and Nada are part of an well organized roll game, with very realistic pictures and film trucks or god may knows what. And I know that Ibrahim and Nada don't see each other often, because despite the war they have their political difference (nothing bad about that, I both respect them a lot). So the war is really on. 

I don't want to know how many church Serbs has destroyed and how many the Croats. Please believe it interest me not one thing. But maybe by publishing all those list people starts to understand the total madness and if that can help to stop a war that please it be so. Building may be important, but living human beings a lot more. I talk with people on the phone, from which I know that they can be gone tomorrow. At her last phonecall with Eric just before we left for Osijek Nada told him that she was pinpointed for 30 minutes by snippers, she could not move an inch. I even can get close to imagine what that means.

Do you know what it is to look with an half eye where the nearest shelter is, because you never know it can happen any minute and the bombs are falling before the alarm goes of, they first want to be sure that there is really falling enough to let the people go in the shelter. Because there may not have been an alarm during my stay in Osijek, bombs were still falling, not so much a few a day, but you could hear them, maybe somebody push a wrong button.

A story which is in my mind is the one from a police cop ate one of the meetings. he told about all those new police cops which were mobilized 9 months ago. They got a gun and learn to kill people, after being in duty for that time they know get regular police training. When they come back they are totally 

A story which is in my mind is the one from a police cop ate one of the meetings. he told about all those new police cops which were mobilized 9 months ago. They got a gun and learn to kill people, after being in duty for that time they know get regular police training. When they come back they are totally confuses, at the police school they told him NOT to shoot people, what to believe. And that is happening all over the place, in a few days people get teached how to kill and afterwards people come and tell them it is wrong to kill people.

We met yesterday the major of Osijek, nothing special, since nearly all foreigners will come and see him, that is a lot more than can be said from most of the officials from Zagreb. I sat on the chair were a week ago (or some day longer) Goulding sat and that is in many ways strange a feeling. He made clear that he is willing to help us in all ways to realize our Osijek project and made clear that he likes that the problems is locally solved, dealing with all the local problems and customs and not centralistic from Zagreb. Especially the return of the refugees should go with the utmost planning and preparation before there is another timebomb ticking and waiting the explode (or one of the over 10.000.000 landmines in that region) Mediation and training in creative ways to deal with conflicts is an utmost important thing and should not be forgotten. 

We are full of plans and like to ask you a lot out there, but those who read this often, please send me all what you can find on your networks, from which you think that it is maybe interesting to know for professors on the Law and on the Economic university in Osijek and was has to to with a hololistic view how to solve the problems they will fase in these countries, that means information about ecology, perma culture, environmental laws, possibility to let student study with use of E-mail (with E-mail professors abroad), send not the information, but tips what kind of information it is, and where and how we can get it. The brothers Lauc will be thankful (One is professor on the Economic faculty and the other Decan from the law faculty)   

One other positive thing today stood in the newspapers that JNA will go from Vis and Vesna J. and Malina just arrived their at saturday, so I am not so afraid that something will happen, they cam on the same boot as two (drunken, they write in their fax) EC-monitors.

Now I am going to sleep since I am feeling that it is going to be a long day tomorrow.

With Love and Peace from Zagreb,

Wam:-)

p.s. for Joe, I think I have been looking at the wrong church or have been reporting about the wrong church in my reply from Osijek. The thing what confused me was the two towers, I was looking for a church, which had obvious two towers. Not the the small tower is gone, don't worry it is still there, but it is a little bit hidding behind the other. I can tell you that indeed most of the windows are gone and that on the right side (if you stand with your face to church and your back to the major square) there have been at least 4 direct hits, the last ones basically destroyed some of the scupltures on top of the pillars. The last big hits were about 2 weeks ago. Furthermore some have scrammed the big tower and in the roof there are some smaller holes. But it is remarkable how quick the area is cleaned up, there is no single piece of stone on the street and living houses get mostly immediately repaired if the damage is not to big. Osijek is alive, on Monday the town was full.

For those, datanet freaks, who like to travel in former Yugoslavia, with the modem, the following tips:- Don't believe in super small high speed modems with error control and more extras, first it cost you a hell of a time to get them working at all on this lines, secondly the lines are often for the half knock out and that means overworked. Things like error control hardly won't work, the only thing is that you comm programme hangs after half a minute. Datacompression means that the half never arrives, due to sudden electric shocks which go over the line and which destroy the newest types of chips (build a filter of 48 ohm/68 , between you line plug and your modem that will insurance burning of your chips, and get them offline in the night when most lines are quiet and the shock more frequent), it cost me two modems to find out. By glad as at least part of the text comes true, and you can recognize between the noise what is returning back (not knowing if that is included in the text or just noise on the return line), things are especially bad in the warzones, your modem is maybe high-tech, the lines are surely not made for it, how many times I have been listing to nice Croatian phonecalls out of my modem is fantastic (another technical tip, use always dial pluse (ATDP), since the change that you meet a digital system is rather small, at start your setup string with ATX1, since otherwise no modem will do anything).
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