Nachricht Nummer : 220
Übertragungszeit : 3 min 42 sec
Nachricht von    : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ZER.sub.org
Betrifft         : Zagreb Diary 6 August, 1993
Erstellungsdatum : 09.08.1993 07:47:00 S+2

Realname: Wam Kat

Zagreb Diary 6 August, 1993

Dobar dan,

It is a little bit passed one in the night and I am sitting at the last bench of a 
bus which is driving me back from Split to Zagreb, we just passed the 
bridge a few kilometer north of Sibenik and for the first time all the 
passengers in the bus were controlled, this bus comes from Dubrovnik, but 
there are surprisingly much Hercegovinians in it, I saw at that at least half of 
my co-passengers showed a paper which I recognised as being stationary 
of HVO. The bus is a lot more expensive than I thought in the past it was 
about 20 DEM from Split to Zagreb, this time I had to pay nearly 35 DEM, in 
HDR of course.

The bus will not pass Maslenica bridge, although technically speaking they 
could have rebuild the damaged in the last days. But yesterday again there 
was heavy shelling on and around the bridge, some cars of journalists (from 
some newspapers and HTV), UNPROFOR (who was inspecting the 
damaged under water)  and HV were hit and the newspapers showed the 
cars this morning, as well as photo's from afraid looking reporters and 
UNPROFOR soldiers sitting in hiding behind one of the destroyed pontoon 
parts. The amounts of grenades and rockets on the bridge yesterday I don't 
know, on Zadar landed at least 16 hits, from which two were ground to 
ground rockets and in about half an hour I will pass the city.

This afternoon we left Brac via the ferry from Sumartin to Makarska, which 
in a normal tourist session goes every hour, at the moment twice a day. 
Waiting for the ferry we were sitting in the shade, since the temperature 
was again far over 30 degrees Celsius, in front of one of the local pubs in 
the harbour. Out the loudspeakers came the music from Leonard Cohen, 
his peaceful and antiwar songs filled the sky, on the table next to us was a 
young soldier telling his friends from his front-line experiences in the 
hinterland of Zadar, on the wall were the ferry boat was laying stood "every 
JNA soldier is a war criminal". Waiting for the ferry besides us some 
German cars from Croats living in Germany, who else in Germany have 
Croatian signs all over the place, a couple from Bihac (probably refugees) 
and surprisingly at least 6 Hercegovinian cars from Ljubuski, Tomislavgrad 
and Mostar, all with new HVO numberplates, besides one Mostar car with 
the old Yugoslav number plate, which obvious was from a Muslim refugee.

It is a pitty to go back home to Zagreb, but I should start working again and 
more over after something more than a week I start to miss my girl friend 
Vesna a lot and hopefully see misses me. And in a couple of weeks I hope 
that I can go with her for some more days to Hvar, the Island next to Brac. 
Ognjen told me that on that Island a lot of soldiers are send to have their 
holidays, so the atmosphere there will be a lot more macho than in Pavja (or 
Pavlja), were you see only refugee women with their children.

Also in most of the newspapers a story about the killing of 3 police agents in 
a village 6 kilometres away from Pakrac. According to the article a car with 8 
police agents was ambushed, most likely by Knin soldiers which illegally 
passed the minefields, 3 of the agents were killed, also 3 heavy wounded 
and 2 had easy shot wounds. According the article the population of 
Pakrac, were most of the dead police agents came from is very angry on 
UNPROFOR that they can't protect the people better. I hope this thing don't 
will produce to much problems for our project their, but I wouldn't be 
surprise if it did.

Also in the newspapers the prediction that the use of NATO bombers is 
closer than ever before, all the newspapers are writing that it can happen 
any moment now. But again those articles we have had before. Very good 
was a cartoon from a Slovenian newspapers, showing an USA jet dropping 
papers off above Chetniks position and on those papers a bomb is printed. 
We will see what will happen. 

The meeting of HSP this weekend in Kutina is declared illegal by Paraga, 
he obvious don't understand some of the principles of democracy, if some 
of the members of his party wants to have a meeting than saying that it is 
illegal won't stop them, at least it wouldn't stop me in such case.  But Djapic 
seems to be really the coming man in HSP. Every newspapers has an 
interview with him in which he explains how bad Paraga is.

Now I will take a break, we enter the Bus station of Zadar and I can smoke a 
cigarette. I had to wait with that cigarette until Zagreb, since the busdriver 
didn't show much enthusiasm to stay for some moments in Zadar, when he 
show that nobody was waiting at the bus station he turned his bus in one 
turn, without stopping and drove further. Although it was the middle of the 
night I could see in the light of the street-lights that the sandbags have 
returned in Zadar, not around all building like in Zagreb when I came, but at 
least around the public buildings I could see. 

At the ferry at Pag it was windy and we nearly couldn't pass at the other 
side of the water, thousands of personal cars and trucks were waiting for 
their drive down south. It is obvious that today the holidays started of the 
Croatian factories and offices, since it looks if the whole of the north of 
Croatia is on it's way down south. In between the busses and cars, also 
some UNHCR convoys on their way to Bosnia and a complete French 
battalion on it's way to ......

Bok I Mir from Zagreb,

							Wam
P.S. If you ever have changed a battery of a laptop in the dark in a driving 
bus, you know what kind of acrobatics I just did.
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