[Travel experiences in Central- and Eastern Europe: Bosnia--the land behind the mirror]

Bosnia-Herzegovina is an artificial state created after four years of gruesome war; it is composed of two countries intertwined like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. An uneasy truce binds the two halves, the Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina together. Under the conditions of the Dayton accord these two have to collaborate and unify their administrative systems under the watching eye of the European Union (EU) and thousands of heavily armed soldiers and policemen. One of these EU-sponsored programmes is the unification of systems of acquisition, registration and distribution of medicines, delegated to the EU reconstruction programme PHARE. Whereas the Serbian half used to buy its drugs from Belgrade, the Muslim-Croatian half was almost fully dependent on international aid. Though some of the local experts have been very helpful, both systems are riddled by corruption and inefficiency and a successful outcome will be little short of a miracle.