Iraq’s Hidden Scars: Unearthing Mass Graves and Searching for Closure

Iraq faces the grim reality of up to one million missing persons after decades of war and violence. Forensic teams confront immense challenges to recover remains and bring closure to families.

When Dhorgham Abdelmajid arrived at a 20-meter-deep pit in Tal Afar, northern Iraq, in June, he encountered something extraordinary in his 15 years of working on mass graves.

“It was unlike other mass graves where bodies are buried underground. Here the corpses, piled eight meters high, were clearly visible and also well preserved because it’s very dry.”

Excavating victims of the Islamic State (IS) required building a stairway and employing a reptile expert to avoid snake bites.

“This site is different from any other I’ve been working on: from the point of view of the team’s effort, for the depth, the difficulties of going up and down, the human remains one over another, the stones falling, the insects, and the mass of the soil we moved to retrieve these victims,” Abdelmajid shared.

The site, known as Alo Antar hole, was once a water reservoir. Now, it is one of many grim crime scenes where Abdelmajid and his team work to uncover Iraq’s violent past.

For over 45 years, Iraq has been haunted by conflicts, from the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) to civil wars and IS’s brutal reign (2014-2017). Saddam Hussein’s regime also left countless victims buried in unmarked graves. The International Red Cross estimates Iraq has the highest number of missing persons globally, ranging from 250,000 to one million.

Since 2008, forensic teams under the Iraqi health ministry and the Martyrs Foundation have been excavating mass graves. Their mission: identify victims through DNA analysis and return them to families searching for their mafqoodeen, or missing loved ones.

Though over 200 IS-era mass graves are known, the number from Saddam’s rule remains elusive.

The Alo Antar grave holds more than 100 victims of IS atrocities, committed when the militant group seized northern Iraq and declared Mosul its capital. The grave lies about 60 kilometers west of the city.

From January to June this year, IS launched over 150 attacks in Iraq and Syria, with activity escalating.

The Alo Antar forensic team continues its work, aided by testimony from a Yazidi survivor of the massacre. Abdelmajid suspects some remains might even predate IS, possibly from the 1990s or al-Qaida-linked violence post-2003.

UN experts, with experience in Rwanda, Bosnia, Argentina, and Cambodia, are assisting Iraqi teams to gather evidence for IS prosecutions. Meanwhile, DNA collection is underway to help identify remains, but it’s especially challenging for Yazidi families, many of whom were killed or displaced abroad.

In Sinjar, the Yazidi homeland, Shiren Ibrahim Ahmed joined her community in August to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the IS genocide at a memorial built by Nadia’s Initiative, founded by Nobel laureate Nadia Murad.

Shiren’s mother and grandmother remain missing, their bodies unrecognized despite excavations. Her father and brother are also gone. Only two sisters survived, now living in Dohuk, Kurdistan.

“When I was kidnapped by IS, I was with my sister and two cousins. But each was taken by a different family and I was left alone. I came back thanks to a cousin in Iraq, called by the Daeshi (IS member). A smuggler came to pick me up: they sold me for $10,000,” Shiren recounts.

The mass graves team knows their mission will span years as they seek justice for victims and answers for families. They carry one hope: that the next mass grave will be the last.