Identifying teh Lost: The Weight of Syria‘s Mass Graves
The landscape around recently liberated areas of Syria remains scarred by conflict, a haunting tableau of destruction and death. Teams are now working too identify remains from mass graves, a grim task made more challenging by the sheer scale of the loss and ongoing dangers. In one area,locals described a chilling fear: “The dead bodies walk at night,” recounted Mahir,highlighting the psychological toll of living amongst undiscovered graves.
Despite attempts to seal off these sites, the process of exhumation is ongoing. While the Turkish Red Crescent recently removed some bodies, residents continue to find skeletal remains, presenting them as evidence of the widespread atrocities. One group led reporters to a site marked by a child’s shoe and a pervasive, sickening odor, guarded by a pack of stray dogs.
The devastation is complete. Buildings are riddled with bullet holes and collapsed by airstrikes. Yet,amidst the rubble,unsettling scenes of normalcy persist – a complete sofa and armchairs sit atop debris,and one resident has even constructed a small home with a garden. ”It’s hard to sleep here,” admitted a man arriving with his two children, adding, “I’m sleeping and under the ground are bodies of innocent people.”
At the identification centre, dentists are grappling with the emotional weight of thier work.Hourani explained they had long anticipated this moment. “under the regime, if a body was found, courts had to give permission for us to identify, and mostly they did not.But there was so much talk of mass graves, we knew this was coming, particularly after the Caesar photos were leaked.”
The “Caesar photos” refer to a smuggled archive of over 28,000 images documenting deaths in government custody, revealed in 2014 by an activist known as Caesar. The Assad regime, like the Nazis, meticulously documented its actions. Families often arrive with copies of these photos, desperately seeking identification. Naim stated that undertaking this work under the previous regime would have been a death sentence, “If the regime had known what we were doing we would have ended up among these bodies.”
Now, with the chance to finally begin this work, the dentists are facing immense strain. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has provided guidance from experts with experience in similar situations from Peru, Argentina, and Bosnia, but the dentists feel their own trauma is overlooked. “We’re under enormous psychological pressure,” said Naim. “The families need to know what happened and we work day and night but it will take decades and seeing such horrors up close is hard to take.”
Many of the team members have personally lost relatives and friends,constantly fearing the next body identified will be someone they knew. Sarajiby expressed the jarring contrast between this work and their regular practice: “It’s also not easy to go from all the evil here to gently filling cavities for people in our dental clinics.”
The influx of bodies continues, with 40 recently arriving from Sweida, where over 1,400 people have been killed in recent clashes between the Druze and Bedouin communities, and through actions by government forces.
“It never ends,” Hourani concluded, underscoring the long and arduous road ahead in confronting the scale of loss and seeking accountability for the atrocities committed.
