In the recent years much was written about the civil war in the former Yugoslavia and the television showed some of the atrocities committed during this conflict.  In any war, acts of extreme violence are practiced by all belligerent sides. The politicians, the high ranking military people and the press who incites and fuels the conflict, are the guilty ones, but the common people are paying the price.
      The purpose of this article is not to analyze the circumstances that created this civil war, or to place blame on those who committed criminal acts, but to show just a small aspect affecting the radio amateur, part of a much greater human tragedy produced by this conflict.
    The hams of Bosnia-Herzegovina, when they were part of Yugoslavia, used the YU4 prefix.  Now in the independent Bosnia they are using the T9 prefix.  The Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina is not recognized as a separate and independent country, therefore it was not assigned an official amateur radio prefix.  The government of this land, advised by a consulting firm, took the “X5” prefix to use it by the local amateurs, knowing well that this was not officially assigned to them, and it is not recognized internationally.  Why exactly “X5”?  Because it was available as an unassigned prefix.
    My short visit to the “Serb Republic” occurred during a six week tour of Hungary and Yugoslavia, where I met and photographed amateurs for a series of articles.  I was attending a large gathering of Yugoslav hams in the city of Kraljevo when I met Dusan, a science teacher from Bijeljina, located on the Serbian side of the now divided Bosnia-Herzegovina.
      Dusan, nicknamed Dule, is the president of the Radio Amateur Association of the Serb Republic (the Bosnian Serbs), and was using the X5AA call.   He invited me to visit the hams of his land, and we left Kraljevo in the evening by car.  At 2:00 in the morning we arrived to the border between Yugoslavia and the Serb Republic.  Traveling with an American passport I had to get a visa that costs 45 German marks.  While the official currency both in Yugoslavia and in the Serb Republic is the dinar, because of the inflation, many transactions are done in German marks.  The officer giving the visa took a 50 German mark banknote but did not have change to give rest; not even in dinars.  Shortly after, we arrived to Dusan’s town; Bijeljina.  According to Dusan, before the war, this city had a population of about 35,000; at the time of my visit, with the refugees and the military, almost doubled its size
        I saw lots of military, both their own and of various nations.  While at the subject, I heard of an officer who asked his sergeant about one of their men:
       There were 94 hams using the “X5” prefix; some of them were long time residents of these places, others were refugees from the Muslim side of Bosnia.  There was even a foreign amateur:  Andy, X5/LA2HFA, working there temporary as a kind of observer.  The amateurs who moved out of this area to Yugoslavia, and wanted to continue their activities, received YU1, YT1, YZ1 or 4N1 prefixes in Serbia; YU6 or YT6 in Montenegro; YU7, YT7, or 4N7 in Voivodina;  YU8 or YT8 in Kosovo. The radio station of the Amateur Radio Association of the Serb Republic used the X5S callsign.  There were a couple of radio clubs, such as X5BYZ in Banja Luka, established in 1947 as YU4BYZ; X5EBL in the same city; X5ABD in Doboj; X5ATB in Trebinje; X5DOP in Bijeljina; X5EBP in Petrovac; X5ECI in Celinac; X5EIF in Modricca; X5ELO in Lopare; X5EPA in Pale; X5EPV in Prnjavor; X5ESR in Srebrenica; X5EVG in Visegrad; X5ACL in Gradiska; X5EYG in Srbac; X5EZK in Zvornik; and X5FTU in Derventa.  There were active hams in many cities; using modest equipment they could be heard occsionally, however,their QSLs are not accepted for DXCC. I have identified amateurs in the following localities: in BANJA LUKA, the largest city (Zoran X5DIP, Milorad X5DWW, Zeljko X5RC, Ljubivoj X5RB); VLASENICA (Slobodan X5EOL), PETROVAC (Drago X5SDR), VISEGRAD (Zoran X5ZR); SOKOLAC (Zoran X5KZ, Dragan X5DV, Radomir X5DRK); JAJCE (Jovica X5XF); PALE (Dragoje X5DTZ, Ilija X5PI); SRPSKO SARAJEVO (Milan X5OMB, Momcilo X5MB, Stojan X5RSS, Branislav X5NS, Nada X5PNB, Predrag X5RSP, Strahinja X5RSB); GRBAVICA-SARAJEVO (Zoran X5RZZ); BIJELINA (Dusan X5AA, Kosta X5KR, Djordje X5MT); SRBAC (Miodrag X5QQA); PRNJAVOR (Milan X5MS, Vojin X5CR, Zeljko X5IZ); NOVIGRAD (Ljubisa X5SG); ILIDZA (Petar X5DBL); OBUDOVAC (Simo X5DLS); CELINAC (Rade X5ECI); BRCKO (Sandra X5QNS); and LOPARE (Dragomir X5DK).
      Dusan X5AA, took me to the city of Zvornik, near the Drina river, about 25 miles south of Bijeljina, to see the club station using the X5EZK call.  There we found Miodrag X5MK, the club president, and a couple of amateurs: Milan X5MS, ex YU4MS and ex 4N4MS; Dragan X5DQ; and Nedeljko X5II.  One of the ham I met there did have QSL cards; another said that he just ran out of them; a third one admitted that he did not print any, not knowing what will be their official callsigns.  The club however does has its own QSL card.
      Most of the published articles illustrated the sufferings of the Muslims living in Bosnia-Herzegovina, it should be fair to show the other side of the coin; the plight of the Christian Serbs.  As I met only amateur radio operators on the Serbian side of this divided land, I can tell about their situation. As far as the official reports are concerned this war is different from other wars.  While in other armed conflicts each side boasted and exaggerated their own successes, reporting only small loses, something like “We killed thousands of our enemies and we barely lost any of our men, we destroyed hundreds of their tanks and airplanes and our loses are so small that are not even worth mentioning.”  In the Bosnian-Serbian conflict however, each side is reporting that the enemy killed very large numbers of their “innocent men, women and children” while they barely touched anybody on the other side.  As usual, there are three sides of every story: one as told by one side, the other one as told by the opposing side, and finally, the true story. A soldier said: “When I was a little boy I wished for a gun but I did not get it.  When I grew up I wished for a girl but now they gave me the gun.”
    When I took a group photo at the club station, one of the hams seemed a little worried.  Possible having some reasons to feel uneasy, he asked me:
    “Do you send these photographs to the International Tribunal in Hague?”
    “No, I replied trying to calm him down, they probably have yours already!”
    When I asked them to smile for the camera, one of them just could not make it.  Can anyone guess which one?
     We also visited Slobodan X5EOL, in Vlasenica, about 15 miles south-west of  Zvornic.  Slobodan, a refugee from the Muslim side of Bosnia, is an elementary school teacher, as is his wife.  He used to be YU4EOL and was first licensed in 1966.  They live in a small apartment with their daughter.  Slobodan mentioned that when they took refuge, they had to leave almost all their possessions behind and now in their former house lives a Muslim family.  When I asked him who lived in the apartment they use now, Slobodan said that is was a Muslim family who went to the other side and they also became refugees.  There are victims on both sides of this civil war.
    Slobodan, X5EOL, was using a modest station and a wire dipole.  He operated mostly CW on 40 and 80 meters.  As an amateur radio operator he was in a difficult situation because he did not have an officially recognized callsign.  He, and the other hams using the X5 prefix, were often called pirates or unlicensed hams. The X5 amateurs did have licenses issued by their authorities but those licenses were not recognized neither by the International Telecommunication Union, nor by the amateur radio fraternity.  By no fault of their own, these hams were deprived by the basic rights other amateurs residing in most other countries have: to have their own legitimate callsigns.
    Some Bosnian Serb amateurs were trying to solve their problem by using “4O” prefixes, also used occasionally by the Yugoslav hams.  For example the radio club in the city of Doboj was using 4O4D and 4O4FDE calls, and they even had QSL cards printed with those calls.
 The Radio Amateur Association of the Serb Republic, mostly through the efforts of its president Dusan X5AA, publishes every 2-3 months an informative 12-16 page bulletin.  A radio-bulletin, kind of QTC, was transmitted every Wednesday on 3,725 kHz, at 15:00 UTC.
    Dusan, X5AA, drove me to Pale where the local government resides.  I was surprised to see that Pale is a village, east of Sarajevo, the former capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is now, according to the Dayton agreement, part of the Muslim Bosnia.  There we met several members of the government, in special the deputy minister of telecommunications, who was interested in ways of legitimizing their prefixes.  The government gives strong moral support to their amateurs, financially there is very little they can do.  The minister showed me a set of rules and regulations governing the amateur radio activities, ready to be submitted to their parliament for acceptance.  These rules were prepared by a consulting firm and were intended to handle the amateur radio activities and to show the ITU that they are ready to be accepted by the international amateur radio fraternity.  I read a few pages and I noticed that they were copied from the Federal Communications Commission’s rules and regulations, maintaining even the same paragraph numbers.  To start with paragraph 97 did not make too much sense but they wanted an accurate copy of the good book and that what they got.
 The minister invited us to a restaurant and asked me if I like lamb.  I could not say “no” to a high government official, in a country where many people are still armed, so I said “I love it.”  I lied and I was punished for it; I had to eat the lamb.  Not that it had a bad taste; it did not have any at all.  Perhaps of a 3 days old chewing gum.  I kept chewing on it, I knew that there is something there but it did not go easy down.  I promised myself that I would never lie again, at least not in a matter of lambs.  I heard however that at a recent cooking competition, the first prize went to a local chef who of a kilogram of lamb made 100 beefburgers, and with the rest he made a big pot of rabbit stew.
       I don’t know how they will solve their problems which are numerous, difficult, and complicated.  So far, governments of several countries tried to work out equitable solutions but except for stopping the wholesale killings, very little progress can be seen.  As far as legitimizing the prefixes used by the hams,  a minuscule plight among the many large ones in the life of these people, I can see two solutions.  One is if the United Nations and the world community will recognize the Serb Republic as an independent country, then they will receive officially a prefix used for radio communications.  The other one is if the Serb Republic will become one of Yugoslavia’s  provinces, like Serbia, Voivodina, Montenegro and Kosovo, then it can be issued a prefix assigned to Yugoslavia, but presently not in use, such as YU9.  However, both of these solutions are strongly opposed by international interests.
   Nevertheless, one thing is certain, the present situation of the radio amateurs residing in that area is difficult and unfair.

        P.S.  Lately the amateurs of the Republika Srpska (Serb Republic), the Serbian side of Bosnia-Herzegovina, are trying another solution by using again their old callsigns with YU4 and 4N4 prefixes.