Nachricht Nummer : 332 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 33 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.comlink.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary 10 December, 1993 Kopienempfänger : /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN Erstellungsdatum : 16.12.1993 00:13:00 W+1 Realname: Wam Kat Zagreb Diary 10 December, 1993 Dobar dan, So, my dear diary, I promised you to tell what happened yesterday with the soldiers of ArgBat. Robert and I drove back in the dark, less dark than it use to be, since in most villages north of Okucani they have electricity now and light comes out the houses. We passed by the NepBat checkpoint a little North of Okucani, where the line of responsibility in the southern part of sector west (behind the front-line on the Krajina part) between ArgBat around the front-line and NepBat in the south is situated, and which is always a funny point, not only since now with the snow it looks like the middle of the Himalayas, the only thing which is missing at this small hill is a yak. But the Nepalese soldiers in their special winter uniform give the whole thing an oriental feeling. Mostly however it is strange since it lays between two parts controlled by UNPROFOR on one part of the cease-fire line, you nearly expect to have ten meters further an ArgBat checkpoint and between no-mans land or so. We drove down the road, waved to the militia men at the Serbian checkpoint and went over at the checkpoint near Lipik, since the sand road to the Serbian part of Pakrac is difficult to take in the dark, especially with all that water on the track. And the only asphalt road means that you have to turn straight right after the ArgBat cease-fire line checkpoint and pass a few hundred meters further again an ArgBat cease-fire line checkpoint to go back into Krajina part on the road to the Serbian part of Pakrac, in order to go over their at another ArgBat cease-fire line checkpoint (to drive about 5 kilometer you have to pass 3 times the front- line). The way over Lipik is a bit longer, but a lot faster. At the checkpoint, where you thing you are somewhere on the sloops of the Andes the checkpoint commander push us two forms in our hands and a pen and made clear that we had to sign that paper, before they would let us through. The text on the paper was rather funny, more or less their stood that the signer declared that the soldiers at the checkpoint had clearly informed him about the "mine-fields and bobbytraps (literally quote, not my mistake)" in the area of the sector controlled by ArgBat. I don't know what clearly informing means in army terms, neither does I know if he maybe did his whole clearful informing in Spanish, but besides the text on the paper and my own knowledge they didn't make anything clear, except that we had to sign. Robert told me that they had started this campaign a few days ago and showed me the earlier copies from the last few days, if you go over a few times a day you have to sign a lot of times. Nice, nice, but still I don't know, at least not from them, where those mines are laying. I believe that they are laying where people showed me months ago, but who knows, nobody has been into that area's for nearly two years and how can I recognise a bobbytrap, probably when it is too late. We should ask their commander one of these days to get some training on that one, since who knows, those things can be every where and I have been just luckily in the last 6 months. Today I spend basically with writing a loud of faxes, which has to be written, to come to the conclusion that our printer ran out of ink, just at the moment that I wanted to print them. In a war zone like this you are not able to go just around the corner to buy a nice cartridge and so I had to find another way. I knew that at UNOV they have the same printer, but they had used up their last one. Sophy went this afternoon to Daruvar so I asked her to look around. But when I came at the place of the Austrian volunteers, it shows that they had the same printer and a spare cartridge, so I lent it from them. No big problem they said, we anyway found out that UNPROFOR is using the same printers and so we stole it there. When I was ready with the printing, Sophy came back from Daruvar, she also has been shopping at UNPROFOR. I am lucky that Goran brought this printer from Switzerland since it seems to be a real popular one. After that I met Manfred in the UNOV office in the opcina, he is the new project leader from CARE and I like him a lot. He is a real Austrian, with his nice round beer belly and his, sometimes hard to understand accent in English and dialect in German. He likes to talk with me about my talk yesterday in Okucani about the watermills there. In the south part of the sector their is no working mill that grain wheat's, so they have to drive to Bosnia to let it done. Since there is hardly no petrol they loose that way more money than the could earn, especially since nobody wants to buy flour, that is a typical product you get from Humanitarian aid. This watermills are laying around Okucani and hasn't been used for at least 10 years. So put one and one together and you have a nice income generating project. Manfred had a whole list of other ideas as well, most ideas we have been talking about together at his earlier visits to the sector. Since he is now in charge of CARE here in the sector this can become maybe all reality, or at least we can start with them. We decided to work as closely as possible together and order another beer. Bok I Mir from Zagreb, Wam ------------------------------------------------------ Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different electronic networks, it is copyright free and can be ported to any network or other means of communication you like, but please drop my a line, you can reach by sending a message to wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de or wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org. Zagreb Diary is dedicated to Tyche, Pjort and Rik, so that they found out what there father have been doing all that time in Zagreb. Financial support for Grassroot relief work in Croatia or BiH can be send to Kollektief Rampenplan (atn. Lylette, Postbox 780, 6130 AN Sittard, Netherlands, tel:. +31-46-524803 and fax: +31-46-516460 or to Zagrebacka Banka, Zagreb, accountnr.: 2440291594, to Kat, Pieter Jan Herman Fredrik, Brace Domany 6 6fl nr3, 41000 Zagreb. Please notify me if you send or have send any donations. ## CrossPoint v2.92 ##