** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  36  of  67
** Written  1:53 AM  May 30, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary
29/30-05-1992

Dear Friends,

Where to start. The biggest problem I have at this moment are the discussions over and over again about yes or no military interventions in Bosnia and Herzegovina or radical sanctions against  Serbia. Somewhere in the line most of the peace activists lost there hope in peaceful solutions for this war and hardliners of violence in the power of there own armies. I am here talking like an absolute fool who can't make up his mind. What would Ghandi have said in this situation, what would he have done. When is the line of exception passed so totally that only armies can save it.

I don't know, but I have got that feeling a peace movement calling up for military intervention is like giving up all their believes, their hopes and their reasons of existences. Why should their be a peace movement if the hardliners of violence thinks the same. Why is it said now and not f.i. at the moment that Vukovar was under attack.

Every bloody day we hear the stories about the fights in Bosnia and Herzegovina and every bloody more people get killed in a war which they didn't want. I only know that this war is fought with weapons, weapons which are produced every second somewhere around the globe, and that as long as those are produced war will take place.  If they are fought for a good or a wrong case is totally beside the point, they are taking place and people get killed.

Those fighters around Sarajevo maybe believe in their case, or somebody made them believe in this case. But what is the role of the peace  movement if we are given up our ideals of pacifism, or are those ideals just luxury you can have in peaceful countries. But when things comes to the worst like here you drop those ideas and forget about them. Maybe I would be a good fighter, I never really tried to kill another person, I never was brought in to the situation that I had to discided his or her live or mine. Up to now I only had to decided about bringing my own life in danger or not.

But forget about it it is just my problem, my thoughts. My impossibility to decided if what happens here is bad enough to call in the help of the heavy arms. The big guys with their guns who just going to show of that no crisis can be solved without them. It could have be solved however a long time ago, without arms, but then the world was sleeping and didn't realise what kind of time bomb was created in this area.

Aida came by this morning and was a little upside, she stood in a the tramstop next to somebody which carried on his civilian clothes the symbol of the so-called black forces, a special group in the second war world, which was know for their cruelty. A group against whom the partisans were fighting, a group for whom most people were afraid, they were much worst than the Nazis. This guy wear this symbols, next to the symbol of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and obvious was proud of wearing it. It is of the world is turned upside down. Those symbols are forbidden by law in my country (but I think a lot of people would like to wear them anyway) and are symbolising the worst war in the history of mankind. Here people wear them openly and fight so-called for freedom. This guy was a soldier, that was obvious, and he was fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we are as peace organisation in nice company suddenly.

I don't believe in arms, as I don't believe in armed intervention. And still day after day I am typing the horror stories and calls for help into this stupid machine. I am not without feeling, in the upper side, I have feelings, and feel close to Nada, Semra and Ibrahim in Sarajevo. I admit that I don't have the solution for their problem at hand. But I believe that that whole institution of peace organisations around the globe is more than just empty words and easy actions. Sorry if somebody feels offended by this words, but remember I have to take the blames every day for what hasn't been done by all those, their selfs peace calling organisation (that's my part of the cake, besides all the good things which are happening here. When I say should I go if you are not agree with my way of thinking they are also honestly saying that I should stay, so it is not that bad).

Earlier today I visit one of the refugees centres in Zagreb, as preparation for the workcamps we will have their hopefully this later this summer. It was the centre known as the Vukovar hotel, where mostly people from Vukovar are living. The side is hard to describe you see little children playing with real guns and other heavy arms from their fathers and older brothers, which are just back for a weekend or some free days from the front. Sixteen years old guys who are fighting at the front in BiH and telling about the amount of Serbs they have killed. One story sticks in my mind about a boy of 17 years who was their when Chetniks killed his father, he was so lucky to survive, now he is Rambo himself, fights in part of BiH controlled by Croatian army and when he comes back he is terrorising the centre, women have to work for him and kiss his shoes.

Aida told me that she saw on television today an interview with an eight years old child in Sarajevo who said that he didn't want to live anymore.  On such moments I think back on my children, my sons and daughter which I haven't seen for months now, but are burned in my mind, I miss them day after day. But I am happy that this is not happening to them. Ofcourse a good father should be at home and play with them (I am obvious not a good father), but at least they are not seeing all this, nobody have to explain to them that this is not normal. If you see the aggressive games children in Osijek are playing you start to understand how many years will be needed to teach those children that violence is not the solution and that it is not normal that adults are trying to solve their different that way.

Zagreb only 14 hours driving from my hometown, I can take a train and be back in the civilised world, in my hometown by tomorrow evening. What in the hell am I doing here. It takes a lot more days from here to Sarajevo or Mostar. And even the G-S from UN is now saying that humanitarian aid transport should be under UNPROFOR protection. After the disaster with happened with the last UNHCR convoy that is not surprising. But the people in Sarajevo are not much helped by it. So please world send in the planes, if you are able to drop precision bomb, why can't we deliver food and medicines the same way. More people will otherwise starve in Sarajevo by hunger than by military activities. Just drop it there and drop enough, at least something will come at the right places.

And on the question of people around the globe what the effect will be of economical sanctions, in facto oil and other boycotts, remember that there are friends of us in Beograd which will feel it. The opposition have to take to first blows.  It is also our task to protect as peace movement their ideas and lives. So those who are considering to come to this region to help please go to Beograd as long as it is possible, since they need all your support to stay doing what they are doing.

This evening we had an other meeting with the volunteers from Zagreb who are going to help us with this camp in the refugees centres, it is crazy that we have to organise it. Imagine we can mobilise (we still have to hope that they come) around 45 volunteers for 3 weeks who come to help us. It is crazy that we have to get to money together to do this, it should be easy to organise it, but I am still about 5000 dm short on my budget for this camps and have not the slidest idea how to get it together. On the other hand it is ridicules that we think that we can help anyway with a few volunteer to make the app. 150.000 children in the camps we are going to work in forgetting the war for some hours. But I believe that we will get the money and the volunteers together, so you know which pressure I put on you.

At the radio this stupid song is playing again: "Come and kill all the Serbs". Rambo is just a child compare with this. The war has created a total new market for music, most of the new war songs are however part of this incredible war machinery. In the main time the songs have change in the stupid translation which is made from "Lili Marlene" (or how this old German song is called), a total rape of the original.

With Love and Peace from Zagreb,

Wam still :-)

P.s. a special thanks for the people working at the supports of the APC networks, they do every thing in their power to help me and indirectly the people in this wars. I don't know if ever before such a situation took place, but I am sure that without them my work was a lot less.

I have an urgent call for you out there on the nets to inform us from any action you are undertaken to help the people here, we know and believe that a lot is happening out there, but we like to know what, since a lot of things never reach us and often we  feel like being on an island all by ourselves. So please tell us what you are doing it help us to oversee the situation more clearly. Not that we like to know everything, but it make discussion much more clear if we know that we here in former Yugoslavia are not alone.  It also gives me the energy to say that they, here in former Yugoslavia are not left alone.

Together with some music groups here in Zagreb I am working on a tape called "Flowers from a warzone" which is ment as a protest against war all over the world and especially in this part of the globe and to collect money for anti war activities. If anybody ot there has any ideas for funds and other help please let me know.

** End of text from gn:yugo.antiwar **