** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  35  of  67
** Written 10:04 AM  May 29, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Cc: gtn
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary
28-05-1992

Dear Friends,

Since I hadn't the time the change my last money the last weeks I have lived from only a few hundred dinars and they are now nearly finished. I am a bit afraid of the next month, because than the telephone bill from this month will come and I still don't know how to pay it, ARK is nearly broke and so am I. I wonder by the way how many people has tried and has managed to live from only 30 Dm (20 Dollar) a week , you will see it is hard and again the prices went up in the weekend.

The morning started with the news that gunfire and explosions were heard on Vis and Vesna J. and Milena are there at this moment I ofcourse was more afraid than normal. But no people were wounded or killed. I hope that those two drunken EC monitors, who arrived on the island together with them are now sober again and taken their task a little more serious. But a lot of their goodwill is already gone now, after their surpriseful arrival.

This afternoon a demonstration took place on the main square with about 750 people as protest against the bloodshed yesterday in Sarajevo, people were sad, crying and calling for international help and military interventions by the world. Lot's of them were refugees from BiH and the planned peaceful demonstration was more a manifestation of  pain and a call up for a fast reaction of the world.

Also Ibrahim and Nada are more and more strongly asking for military intervention by the world. Their peace and powerful faxes from the beginning are now after 48 days becoming more and more desperate call ups for help and more and more strongly asking for military actions against the attackers of the city. During a radio interview of a Italian radio station this morning with peace activists from Zagreb, Beograd and Sarajevo) it was more and more clear that the people in Sarajevo no longer accept nice talks and stories of peace activists and peace keeping forces around the globe  but want to have action. Now the transport of humanitarian aid from Zagreb didn't came through and there seems to be no other coming (after the last robbing of the UNHCR transport by Serbian irregulars in the beginning of this week), the situation is becoming next to unbareable. This evening we had also a pity heavy discussion in our weekly ARK meeting about our joint standpoint on BiH and (military) interventions in BiH and Serbia. Ofcourse the tension are high.  The television newspaper stories from yesterday are fresh in our memory . Everybody was still a little bit in a shock by the pictures. Most of the men are strongly in favour of economic boycotts (at least for petrol and other necessary goods to support a fighting army, food and other boycotts will in our mind have more effect on the people in Serbia and give probably more power to the more hardliners (Arkan en Sjesel seem to have dead or at least seriously wounded during the last days, but there still seem to be more the enough) and wipe out the last opposition which is in Serbia.) Most people also think that it will no longer be possible to visit or past Serbia after a boycott will be starting (I hope that Vladimir will come back next week, he is visiting Beograd at the moment and his return is unsecured).

But the real discussion started when a point was mentioned about military intervention to free Sarajevo. For a long while three or four man were discussing how to do that and what should be down, shooting only the JNA Migs out of the air, strategic bombing of the artillery on the hill around Sarajevo until some of the other (among them me) really felt a big totally confused that a peace group should ask for military intervention. In facto what is the difference to ask for it and take up weapons yourself and go to BiH to fight (for you outside Croatia that may sound a little difficult to do, here it is common practice, if you like to fight as volunteer in BiH, just go to the nearest military barracks and within 24 hours you will dress up in camouflage green on your way somewhere in BiH to the front, nema problema).

I really had a bad feeling from all these talks at a moment, in the warrooms from NATO or any other military combination they probably have to same discussions (besides from the fact that it will take weeks, or rather months before they are able to move). The peacemovement should in my eyes not do the same, at least not as this moment.  

I am more in fever of calling hugely upon all the peace movements around the world to organise a huge international discussion, if not face-to-face then via e-mail and/or faxes, about the way how to free Sarajevo and the rest of BiH from these daily killings (today again around 7 people were killed in Sarajevo and many more in the rest of BiH). If for any reason all those (inter)national groups also come to the conclusion that military intervention is the only way, then I am maybe willing to change my mind (I doubt it, but you never know). I am afraid that the international peace movement never can understand our standpoint if we are just calling up for military intervention, they are in the easy position of reacting on our decision, but if we ask them to think along with us and find other ways, maybe they start to understand how difficult it is.  At this moment however this strong talking is macho talk for me, and the feeling that I am just a western and by not choosing a hard line I am co-responsible for the killings in Sarajevo is bullshit for me.

If people from the peace movement are reading this (and it seems they do), please help me in this and start to send in your ideas, starts to think along the line of alternative conflict resolutions. I need you badly since I ran out of ideas, all my proposals are sounding here so damned stupid and naive, every argument, every discussion can be stopped so easily by saying that it is luxury to discuss this point if people in BiH are dying any moment. For what do we have all those peace university and research centres around the globe, consuming large amount of money and time if we are not able to come up with creative ideas.

And I am agree with most of the people in ARK that the westerners and other peace movements haven't used there energy enough to help to stop the war.  One or two big Peace caravans is not enough to stop the war and visiting this place for 5 days saying peace brothers and go home is not very constructive. Staying out of the discussion and only condemning the violence is an easy position. Also sending via us to Sarajevo nice ideas of organising a huge 100 lorries big humanitarian aid convoy is just an air castle when even a child knows that it wouldn't work if just a small local peace group works on it.

Where are those millions who demonstrated in western Europe for peace in the beginning of the 80'ties? Where are all those people who stopped the Vietnam war in the states? Is this conflict not also important or is it just a tribal war as people in Africa describe this war in their newspapers? Forgive me my reaction, don't feel offended I am just a little inpatient, but as everybody else say here, people are dying in BiH and every day is another day of violence and murder, it has to stop.

Ofcourse I am not the only one in ARK who think this way, most of the women and some men are agree with this opinion, unfortunately a lot didn't say it during the meeting, so that I felt a little bit left alone during the meeting. And often had that feeling, am I just a stupid westerner, not aware of the situation and not willing to make a strong standpoint. 

The end of the discussion was that we couldn't agree upon a general standpoint about this topic and that this things should be discussed more with the other peace groups from former Yugoslavia, during the joint meeting this weekend in Vienna. I am afraid for that discussion, since all of the people here gets day in and day out confronted by one of the most organised war propaganda machines there is. A machinery which is well organised and promotes the idea that nobody wants war, but that the fighting are necessary to liberate our brothers and sisters in blood.

And then the point that international military interventions will first of all come too late for a lot of people (in the coming weeks more and more people will starve in Sarajevo, not from the bombs, but from hunger and bad medical treatment) and secondly it will not lead to a long term solution. You create probably another time bomb. which can explode any moment after the the international troops disappear. If you realise that a lot of the killing at this moment is already a revenge for what happened 45 years ago, who can insure that in the same period of time in the future things would start all over again. And how many people will be killed then.

A fact is that the bombing of Dresden, Dusseldorf, Hanover, Berlin, Hamburg, etc. in the second war world never ever made the people turn against the NAZI, but improved even the position of the NAZI. We have a similar situation here and I can image that people will react similar.

There are however a few military a-like operations which I really can agree at the moment. The first is parachuting food and medicine into Sarajevo (like they did in the Netherlands in the second World War and in Berlin during the airbridge), I am willing to discuss  types of (armed) protection for these planes if they get attack by airplanes or land-air missiles, but I basically think that it is the amount that counts, if hundreds and hundreds of foreign planes are flying I don't think a lot of them will be shoot at. A send action which is possible a could be done fast is jamming the communication between the fighting forces. That would already totally irregulate the fighting forces, eventually maybe using the airwaves for telling the true about what has happened. 

The last idea could be worked out more, I think that it is bloody good possible to produce a television signal strong enough to be recieved all over former Yugoslavia. On that signal programmes should be broadcasted made by the best mass communication specialists from around the world, using all their tricks to make clear that the reality is a lot different from what how been said in media so  far. Eventually you can bring in famous people (rockstars and sportheroes), which are adored by most of the fighting forces or invite people from the different countries who make (under international protection) live programmes out of other republics, to proof that reality is different. Use your fantasy.

With Love and Peace from Zagreb,

Wam:-)

P.s. I have got a bike now, Robert borrowed me one, it is fantastic to drive through the city, but the first evening ofcourse I already was stooped by the police, at last I could break that rule of biking in those streets which are only for cars and there are so many of them. My strange passport and question on my face did ofcourse wonders.

Our newest number from our fax bulletin is ready, it is a small 5 pages big fax letter with gives the latest information about ARK and the Centre for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights and is mainly for those without E-mail. If you like to recieved it or like to ask as a hub in the fax network of distribution please let us know.

I just had a phonecall from Vesna from Vis, they are now monitoring the EC monitors and following them in their habit to go from pub to pub and get drunk. The explosion on the Island were also heard and seen by them, but they were not as big as been describe on Croatian radio. For the rest everything is quiet on Vis and they feel more like tourists on the island than like active peace makers. The propaganda in the papers to send Croatian army to the island continues however, as well as the pressure on the peace movement that they are not good Croats.

Last but not least a good thing, according to the Croatian radio news the orthodox church of Serbia has said openly that they not longer support the Serbian war politics. We don't know if this is just propaganda and ask you strongly if somebody can verify this information in Serbia, since this is maybe the first step to open up talks between people who were now not able to talk, since their churches supported the war propaganda.
** End of text from gn:yugo.antiwar **