The connection does more than simply bypass the Serb blockade of the Bosnian capital. It also links the six former Yugoslav republics and bridges ethnic hatreds that have plunged the region into more than three years of war. The reporter neglects the fact that most of the work was done under wartime conditions by people in the region itself. Two Bielefeld artists, Rena Tangens and her partner who calls himself Padeluun, tend 2.6 gigabytes of computer mailbox power that provides a gateway to the war zone where rebel Serbs are pitted against Croats and Bosnian Muslims. But with neighbors once less than an hour's drive apart now divided by battle lines and severed telephone cables, it is for many the only way to communicate.
Mail is no alternative.
Not true any more. Mail does go between Croatia and Serbia. Is is just very slow at times. Telephone connections still are broken. Through ZaMir, Bosnian refugees in San Francisco have E-mailed contacts back home and traced lost relatives.