December 2013  |  Written and photographed by Daniel J. Gerstle

Special thanks to the International Center for Missing Persons, Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Jasmin Agović and Hikmet Karčić.

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There is a thick brown box in my closet back in New York containing notes from over seven hundred interviews I carried out as a Refugee Caseworker with survivors of the Bosnian War in the 1990s. In the box there are also stories from the Sarajevo paper Oslobođenje, Belgrade magazines Nin and Serbian Unity, Newsweek, and the New York Times from 1992-1994, some with photos of people killed in Bijeljina, wounded in Sarajevo, or detained in Prijedor.

Remains from Tomašica, in Sanski Most, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Photo: Daniel J Gerstle.

On top of those papers are political campaign fliers, a red poster warning of landmines, yellow landmine warning tape, bullet shell casings, and a rusted and bent nail from the rubble of the Vijećnica library. There is also a postcard from Rovinj with what appears to be a bullet hole through it which I found blown out of someone’s apartment on the frontline in Grbavica. On it, the sender had written, “Dear Vesna, How are things in Sarajevo?”

Many survivors, whose names were removed from the interviews, described how they had escaped mass killing, rape, torture, or detention. Others told stories of flight from the unknown, or explained how close relatives had been taken away and were never seen again. Bosnian war stories still inhabit whole continents in my dreams as I struggle even two decades later not only to figure out how mass killing might be stopped. But I also still seek to clarify which stories were true, and which were not.

This past year as I came back to Bosnia still remembering the stories of those who survived through these physical mementos, I finally had a chance to travel with press relations guru Jasmin Agović and forensic archaeologists from the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP) to Tomašica, location of the country’s largest mass grave, and, in a sense, interview those who did not survive.

On a hill overlooking forest-ringed farmland and villages, there is an enormous crater of mud. The steam shoveliers have dug out so much earth around the large mass grave, in search of others that the expanse now looks like the caldera of an enormous man-made mud volcano. At the center, the lowest point on the hill, is the largest grave. It is only one of hundreds of mass graves across the country.

“Over the past ten years,” the local prosecutor tells me, his eyes showing severe lack of sleep,” we’ve actually had three other exhumations of about thirty remains… But then we had more information passed to us that said we had not got them all, that there were still more here. But until we found this new grave, we didn’t know it would be over a hundred… The Prosecutor of Bosnia and Herzegovina insists on individual responsibility for crimes… Not only commanders and those who acted but also the politicians who urged these actions…”

The informant allegedly suggested there were multiple graves holding as many as 500 people who had been killed en masse while in custody of local armed forces in 1992. So far this current grave has revealed 247. One, an ethnic Croat, and the rest ethnic Muslims. Perhaps three or four women, and the rest men. Others were expected to be found buried nearby.

People still missing since the war, Sanski Most, Bosnia-Hercegovina. Photo: Daniel J Gerstle.

Jasmin and I pull on green boots and follow Esma Alićehajić, one of ICMP’s most visible forensic archaeologists, a Bosnian who had studied in the UK and wanted to come back to be part of the recovery process. We wade through mud, climb over hills, and watch the steam shovels carefully digging to follow leads that there could be yet another grave here, somewhere.

Fighting in Bosnia 1992-1995 killed at least 100,000 people. According to ICMP, about 31,500 were reported missing. Of those, the vast majority were last seen detained, unarmed, in the custody of opposing military forces. Here I want to hold back from talking about which parties were proven guilty in court, or still waiting for trial or not yet accused, to make a point.

Since the war, the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia (MPI) and local police have uncovered hundreds of mass graves, enlisting the help of forensic archaeologists from the ICMP. In the beginning, survivors would bring authorities to locations where they saw killings. Then witnesses would give mostly confidential information about burial sites. Soon ICMP, MPI, and local authorities combined the use of satellite imagery, soil tests, and patterns found at previous sites, to continue to find the remains of the missing.

These teams have already recovered over 20,000 of Bosnia’s 31,500 missing, perhaps one of the highest recovery rates in history. ICMP honed its craft so well that it moved on to work also in Serbia, Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Kenya, and other countries.

While many international prosecutors, governments, survivors, and families of missing persons aim to find evidence of what exactly happened to these missing people, most have already come with conclusions based on the stories of the living. But once they have found remains that may turn out to be those missing since the war, ICMP’s forensic archaeologists must steer well clear from politics and criminal investigation. So what how close to “truth” can we get interviewing the dead?

By midday, Jasmin and I have now moved on to ICMP’s mortuary in Sanski Most where the archaeologists have brought bodies found in Tomašica to be identified. The mortuary is a warehouse the size of a small airplane hangar filled not only with the well-preserved bodies found under the clay at Tomašica, but also the more processed skeletal remains of hundreds of others who have already been identified.

Even if you find yourself absorbed in supporting one political force over another, advocating for one set of victims over another, or debating the righteousness of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, you simply cannot deny that large numbers of civilians and detained and unarmed former fighters were murdered while in the custody of armed forces. Similarly, even if you wish to believe that most of the killings happened with boiling blood in the heat of battle, units gone awry, the pure scope of most of the killings is too much to be anything but pre-meditated.

If there had been a huge battle, and these had been mostly combatants, then debate about what happened would surely be merited. But in this case, the region was securely under local armed forces. Aside from skirmishes in the spring of 1992, it was a peaceful area. And these people found in mass burials had last been seen alive, unarmed, held calmly in the custody of the local armed forces. So what can they tell us from the grave?

Two hundred and forty-seven people buried 15 meters below clay and silt, en masse, they present a math puzzle. Thirty-one thousand five hundred people buried in over three hundred sites all over the country, they present a moral calculus. Many across the country, according to ICMP, had been dug up and reburied again in attempts to hide evidence. Without presuming to know who killed, or was innocent of these crimes, let us first explore questions on the most basic forensic evidence:

How many bulldozers, trucks, and warehouses were needed to bury this many people? Who commissioned the equipment and scheduled staffing, fuel, lunch breaks, maintenance, land surveys, bids, tenders, contract payments? How many meetings would be needed to plan, even as a last resort or heat of battle, how even to conduct a contract bid for the use of all this staffing and equipment? Now, after considering the logistics of mass murder, could it be said that the commanders and trigger-pullers were guilty for acting swiftly in the heat of battle? Or perhaps they took their time, thought long and hard about what to do with thousands of unarmed prisoners who simply waited in warehouses for their fate.

The smell is overwhelming. Looking close at some of the people, twenty-one years dead but preserved to a state that appears only three or four years dead, I am suddenly reminded that these were my peers. Many were the same age and outlook as me, some a bit older like my own father. But just as I begin to feel kindred spirit and let down my guard, I make eye contact with one of the men, just a skull lathered in soapy melted flesh. Couldn’t it have been me?

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