How would you feel if half of your family was in America and the other half was living in a war-torn country thousands of miles away?

Would you try to live with them or try to stay in America?

Children's Express interviewed 15-year-old Nadja Ruzica, who is living in this predicament. Nadja, who is half-Serbian and half- Croatian, has lived on an island near Bosnia-Herzegovina and now lives in Indianapolis. She attends Brebeuf Preparatory School and will be a junior.

It is hard to understand how anyone would want to fight their friends, neighbors and even their own family members.

Nadja states how difficult this is for her personally.

"Since I am half-Croatian, half-Serbian, I couldn't kill someone of my own race or I couldn't kill somebody that I've lived with side by side for a very long time. I consider them just like my own family, because I consider myself Yugoslavian."

It is difficult for Nadja to understand how people who have been so close now fight each other and cause so much hurt and anger over land they used to share.

"It's a tragedy. The two ethnic groups, the Serbs and the Croats, are fighting for the land which both consider theirs in Bosnia. And they're both losing a great deal by splitting up," Nadja states.

She doesn't believe reports that Serb forces are trying to exterminate the Muslims in Bosnia.

"They are not trying to exterminate a race. They are trying to get their land. The Muslims are just caught in the middle."

The United States' involvement in this war has been limited, but Nadja would like it to stay out of the conflict entirely.

"I wasn't very happy because they are not helping all the sides. Not all the sides are guilty. Not just the Serbs are guilty; not just the Croatians are guilty for the war.

"I'd ask them not to help one side or another. . . . Just let it ride."

Nadja compares the war in her country with another one. "In the U.S. (during) . . . the Civil War, nobody helped. I mean no other nation helped the United States, so maybe that's the way it should be in Croatia."

For Nadja, contact through letters gives her an idea of the atmosphere where her family lives.

"It's gloomy. It's depressing. It's hard."

EDITED BY: Michelle Heron, 15. ASSISTANT EDITOR: Andrew Kirch, 14.