The “Bosnian war on terrorism”

This paper explores the changes in the media discourse on granting and revoking Bosnian citizenship of foreigners in the most read Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian quality daily newspapers from the end of the Bosnian war in 1995 until the Commission for the Revision of Decisions on Naturalization of Foreign Citizens finished its work in 2007. Critical discourse analysis of news articles shows that all newspapers recontextualised the discourse on granting and revoking citizenship from a nationalistic war discourse to a “war on terrorism” discourse, joining the anti-terrorism global discursive community. Serbian and Croatian newspapers have not only colonised the “war on terrorism” vocabulary and discourse of difference but they have also appropriated a specific local discourse to the more global “war on terrorism” discourse and have represented military actions against the Muslims in the Bosnian war “as our war on terrorism”. A Bosnian daily newspaper similarly represented the Commission’s activities as the “Bosnian war on terrorism”.