The Plight of Iraq’s Missing Persons: Victims of Saddam’s Rule and Beyond
The fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 brought much-needed hope to many Iraqis, particularly those who had lost family members due to the dictator’s brutality. Families of tens of thousands of people who were killed or disappeared under Saddam’s rule believed they would soon find out the fate of their lost loved ones. Sadly, twenty years later, this hope has yet to be fulfilled.
Mass graves have been discovered, offering testimony to the atrocities committed under Saddam’s Baath Party. But progress in identifying victims of historic killings has been slow, hampered by the chaos and conflict engulfing Iraq in the past two decades. This has resulted in Iraq having one of the highest numbers of missing persons in the world, with estimates of the total ranging up to hundreds of thousands of people.
The Martyrs Foundation, a governmental body involved in identifying victims and compensating their relatives, has so far unearthed over 260 mass graves. The exhumations, however, are hindered by the limited resources available for such a task. The Foundation has only processed about half of the 1 million documents in its possession, a mere fraction of Iraq’s scattered archive.
The forensic efforts are complemented by archivists studying stacks of documents from Saddam’s Baath Party, searching for the names of missing persons yet to be identified. Each week, the team identifies around 200 new victims, with the names being published on social media.
The highest identification rate for victims was achieved for an incident known as the Camp Speicher massacre, a mass shooting of army recruits committed by Islamic State militants. The Martyrs Foundation has processed the killings, which resulted in about 2,000 martyrs, including 1,200 killed and 757 who remain missing, and has declared them as such.
In Sinjar, where Islamic State committed what U.N. investigators described as genocide against Iraq’s Yazidi minority, about 600 victims have been reburied, with some 150 identified.
Unfortunately, there are still countless disappearances that remain unexplored. In Saqlawiya, a rural area near the Sunni town of Falluja, families are losing hope of discovering the fate of more than 600 men captured when the area was retaken from Islamic State by security forces.
The plight of Iraq’s missing persons is a heartbreaking reminder of the tremendous suffering caused by Saddam’s rule and beyond. It is essential that the Iraqi authorities continue their work in identifying victims and bringing closure to their grieving families. Until these atrocities are addressed, Iraq will never be able to move forward.
