In early 1992 the COMMUNICATIONS AID project for the people in former Yugoslavia was launched by the foreign peace groups together with the Center for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence (Ljubljana), the Anti-War Campaign (Zagreb) and the Center for Anti-war Action (Belgrade). Modems were given to peace and anti-war groups in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo. A Vietnam War-era conscientious objector from rural Pennsylvania, Eric Bachman, came to former Yugoslavia to install those modems and set up the network. Eric was invited in September 1991 by the Antiwar Campaign in Zagreb for a seminar on nonviolent conflict resolution - the field in which he has been working for over 20 years as a peace activist in Bielefeld (near Hannover), Germany.

After spring 1992 and the beginning of the incredibly cruel war in Bosnia, it was not possible to connect directly across borders in the former Yugoslavia, so connections were made indirectly through Austria, Germany or Britain. Because the long-distance lines were not completely destroyed but the remaining ones were overloaded, it was suggested that they could be used at night for communication by computers using electronic mail, which was also cheaper than double long-distance voice calls. Since the servers in the net could not connect directly, they had to exchange their messages via another server as a stepping stone to forward messages to each other. This also enabled a connection with the world-wide networks of BBS's. The new BBS's were called "ZaMir-ZG" (For Peace - Zagreb) and "ZaMir-BG" (For Peace - Belgrade). Letters could be sent from Zagreb to Belgrade and from Belgrade to Zagreb. Within 3-4 days letters would be received. It took me 6 hours to drive that distance in a 17 years old Russian car 6 years ago. But, well...