Training in Yugoslavia Croatia On invitation from the Antiwar Campaign in Zagreb (Croatia, Yugoslavia), trainers from the German Bund fur Sociale Verteidigung (Federation for Social Defence) have given two seminars on nonviolent action, conflict resolution and mediation in Zagreb between 28 September and 7 October 1991. The information that people in Zagreb were looking for nonviolence trainers reached us in July. By the end of September we managed to find some trainers and enough money (DM 4000 = $A3100]) to pay all expenses. Before our arrival only some general agreement had been made, due to communication problems (faxes that did not work, etc.). At last Kurt Sudmersen (secretary of the BSV) and I decided to travel to Zagreb to find out, on the spot, what was possible. Two trainers, Traude Rebmann and Eric Bachman, waited in Germany for our telephone call if they should come or not. Kurt and I arrived on the 22nd of September in Zagreb and were received by some members of Antiwar Campaign (ARK). Since on that day one of the many ceasefires at last took effect (the days before there had been a lot of air-raid alarms in Zagreb) the people from ARK judged it would be possible to hold trainings. The whole organisation for it then was made in the week between the 22nd and the 28th. Eric and Traude arrived on Wednesday, so that they had time to meet people and to become familiar with the situation. The trainings The trainings took place with two groups and were actually split into different working units: * ARK members and others (about twenty people, mostly women) attended a weekend workshop on the 28th and 29th of September. We dealt with the following topics: introduction to nonviolence; nonviolent action; active listening; mediation. * Some of this group decided to meet the over the next three days in the mornings and evenings to go on in the introduction to mediation. They even translated some material we brought with us and are planning to continue their work as a working group. * The other half of the group met every evening at 8 pm to continue the introduction to nonviolence. Topics were: preparation for an envisioned nonviolent action; nonviolent strategy; dealing with fear. * The next Saturday, eight members of ARK met to prepare an introduction to nonviolence that they planned to give the next day on their own. Due to war circumstances (that weekend the air-raid alarms had started anew) only one new person actually attended the training that Sunday, which then was shortened to one morning. * A second group that we did a training with was a group of psychiatrists and psychologists that one member of ARK had gathered together (without consent of the Campaign, as we found out very soon). With them we had four afternoons, four hours each, in a hospital in Zagreb. The programme was more or less the same as with the other group. Evaluation Some important points from the evaluation: * Trainers who are new to this area should plan some extra days to get familiar with the situation. * Language is no real problem. We did the seminars in English and there were always one or more people who spoke English so fluently that they were able to translate sentence by sentence. Small-group work was done in Croatian, with whispered translation for us. Of course, this method of working needs approximately double the time of working in one language. * War circumstances: As mentioned, we were very lucky in this, seeing almost two weeks of "peace" in Zagreb. Problems that arise are: curfew of the town which forces everybody to go home before nightfall; it would be good to meet in rooms that can be blacked out and, even better, that are so safe that it is not necessary to go to a shelter even if actual attacks on the town take place; psychological problems (nervousness, fear, etc.). * In the group evaluations people said that they found trainings helpful from the point of view of the contents as well as creating a better feeling, giving hope, empowerment, etc. * Next time we propose to have more specific trainings (e.g. only on mediation, on community conflict resolution). What next? Two members of ARK plan to travel around in Croatia to find out if there are other places where trainings would be useful and have asked us, in general, if we would be ready to come again and also to work in other war-stricken regions. In addition to this, there is the idea to find people experienced in the work in Northern Ireland to go to Croatia. Serbia After the end of the trainings Eric and I travelled (via Budapest, Hungary) to Belgrade (= Beograd, Serbia, Yugoslavia) to make contacts with the peace movement there. We were received by a member of IPPNW [International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War] whom Howard Clark [of War Resisters' International] had contacted from London. (It is not possible to call from Zagreb to Belgrade.) He introduced us to other people, mainly from the Centre of Antiwar Action, that can be compared structurally as well as from the kind of people working there with ARK in Zagreb. We met also Sonia Licht (HCA) and the president of GAMA. Our impression was that the movement in Belgrade is less afraid of doing public actions, but that they suffer the same depression and feelings of inadequacy as the people in Zagreb. Another problem is the lack of communication between the two centres. Eric and I have almost been treated like emissaries (and post couriers) from Zagreb as well as vice versa. There are several misunderstandings; in particular, I found that the group in Belgrade could not really imagine how difficult the situation in Zagreb is for the peace movement there. Concerning War Resisters' International (WRI), I would like to propose that we try to work with both groups, supporting them, inviting them to speakers' tours and so on. To finish our travelling story: On the 12th of October Eric and I returned to Zagreb which was almost like coming home, told our friends from ARK what we had learned in Belgrade, then travelled to Ljubljana [Slovenia, Yugoslavia] to meet Marko Hren [a member of WRI Council] (and Dominique) and on Tuesday finally arrived back in a country [Germany] where we found the same hate and violence we hoped we had left in Yugoslavia. Christine Schweitzer