Nachricht Nummer : 328 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 44 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.comlink.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary 6 December, 1993 Kopienempfänger : /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN Erstellungsdatum : 13.12.1993 06:01:00 W+1 Realname: Wam Kat Zagreb Diary 6 December, 1993 Dobar dan, I have a little problem at the moment with keeping up my commitment of writing every day my diary. Every time I have been in sector West I am ending up with three or more days behind the real date. The fact that even after having it ordered for 6 months ago from HPT we still don't have a telephone in Pakrac and when I phoned with HPT in Daruvar they said as always "nema problema", but explained me also that the telephone central of Pakrac was destroyed during the war and that the new system is not so easy to extend. That the old system was destroyed I knew, most of the whole bloody telephone building was even still gone when we came here in June this year, nearly one and half year after the fights stopped. And the new system I also know, since it stands in the room next to the UNOV office, so I pass it by almost 15 times a day. Anyway I am now in Zagreb and trying to finish at least some of the hand- written notes into the computer. Today is Sint Nicolaas as we say in Dutch, he is called nearly the same around here, strange when I found out last year that they also have this day in this area, I didn't found it anywhere else in the world, outside Netherlands and Belgium that is. Even some of the songs are simular with our songs, so some how the tradition must come from the same sources. It is any way already funny to find out that a lot of the idioms, especially on the coast are rather simular to the idioms in the Netherlands. I never thought about a kind of historical connection between this country and mine, who knows. Most of the night I spend reading that book from that Dutch military monitor who did his tour between July, last year and January. It is an interesting diary. Total different from mine and still in many ways the same, a never ending search for what makes war a war and what in the hack happened around here. He wrote about a lot of things I know so well, the flights to Sarajevo, with 120 km through the empty street to avoid sniper fire, the stories from the PTT building and how the huge UN has to improvise every little thing down there, how even military order and organisation has cease to exist within the ranks of UNPROFOR as soon as they are outside of Zagreb, within Zagreb they still are discussing if the jack of the camouflage uniform should be worn in or outside the uniform pants and more of those really important discussions which are essential to survive in a warzone. About a year ago I was still living in Grebensica in Mlinovi, in the first Suncokret house. In the basement we had our first Peace hostel, I tell the story since it is precise a year ago that a Spanish-French guy finally took the decision to desert from his foreign unit in the Bosnian army, which he joint somewhere in April of that year, after having been fighting in firstly the Croatian guards and later Croatian Army. The guy was my ages, end thirties, fighting in different wars since he was 18. He never learned a profession he told me. For months he was living more or less in our house, going back to front line for some weeks and than again appears for some days. He also wrote diary, it is the only way to survive this and stay normal he told me ones. You have to write off your mind every day. His diary, I read it was totally different from mine, it was a story from fighting, laying in the snow and waiting. Above all however a story how his little unit was getting smaller and smaller during every action. Jesus he was called, long black hair and a beard. He stayed a few more weeks in our house and went back home he told us. Later in the last summer I met a friend of him in one of the pubs in Zagreb. Jesus is not longer at home, he is fighting again, not in this war, none of those fighters wants to fight here, the friend told me, no Jesus is fighting in Birma, like most of the International paid soldiers. When I read the diary of that Dutch soldiers I was thinking about Jesus, more because of the fact that Jesus has been fighting on the border line of what is now called Sector North, just under the Sisak and Karlovac line, another friend of mine, a Croat, has also been fighting there, so I know most of the stories out of the first hand. The Dutch monitor came half a year later, he only found the piles of stones as we have found them in Pakrac, this area, Gospic and Pakrac are directly after Vukovar the most destroyed parts in the country. Like in the neighbourhood of Pakrac, also here whole village has been burned and blow up to the ground to make the area ethnical clean. But it seems all so long ago (it happen mostly in the fall and winter from '91), it seems to be a generation passed since than. The world is not any longer talking about that war, they forgotten about it, as they forget some times already what is going on just 50 or a little bit more kilometres down side of this place in Bosnia. The war in this area maybe mostly over, the destruction stays behind, not only of the buildings, but more over from the people. Tomorrow back to Pakrac, reconstruction, social reconstruction, economical reconstruction, we will see, maybe it is possible, at least we have tried and god knows what will be happening tomorrow, a thing at the end, the news tells nearly every day that there is shooting in and around Pakrac, we never notice anything down there, when we hear something somebody is getting married for what we thing of it. Vanja's mother reacted the other day that every body in Pakrac must have been married twice in the last months. 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 ##