ABSTRACT
Agreement (DPA) was a successful tool for preserving peace. In 1995, hardly anyone could have foreseen that a peace process initiated in Dayton, Ohio, heartland of the United States, would survive the dark years of war in Bosnia, since borders here are drawn with blood. According to the DPA, Bosnia is formally composed of two entities: the Republika Srpska (RS) and the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FBiH). But in reality there are still three entities: RS, Bosniak-controlled Federation territory and Croatcontrolled Federation territory, better known as Herzeg-Bosna. This is an outcome of the political composition of the former Yugoslavia. After its collapse, three nationalist parties in Bosnia-the Croat
Democratic Union (HDZ), the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and the Bosniak Muslim Party of Democratic Action (SDA)—became the successors to the communist party (League of Communists of Yugoslavia), taking over its mechanisms of political and economic control. Nationalist leaders still have a strategic interest in maintaining the conditions on which their power depends: lack of democratic accountability, absence of the rule of law, and division of the country through a widespread fear that another ethnic group is the enemy. Unlike the nationalist leaders, the so-called international community had
no strategy. Its steps in Bosnia were mostly taken haphazardly, in response to events on the ground rather than according to some strategic vision. This attitude has to be changed radically, and the change must include new priorities for Bosnia. This political environment negatively affected the media sector, especially
considering that the Dayton peace process was strictly focused on how to stop the war. The consequence was that the DPA simply omitted to deal with the media and related issues. The omission was rectified during the meetings of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), first in Sintra, Portugal in June 1997, and then in Bonn in December 1997. Unfortunately, by 1997 the issue was more one of media control than of media development, and this trend has continued to this day.
