Waiting for a Funeral in Srebrenica

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Bosnian woman at mass burial, Gornje Kalesjia

At that excavation, I met Polish émigré anthropologist Eva Klonowski, who has become my guide to crimes against the dead that followed the peace of 1995. She explained that the Vlaslenica site was not a primary grave but a secondary or tertiary grave where bodies that had been bulldozed out of other gravesites were commingled and then dumped into this new grave. As a result, the Serbs who wanted to prevent identification of the dead -- and thus prevent or delay identification of those who perpetrated these crimes -- gained an advantage over the forensic anthropologists like Klonowski who have had to struggle to identify bodies whose parts might lie scattered in several graves or are part of a composite skeleton made from the bones of several bodies.

The odds, however, have shifted in favor of the missing persons. Since 1996, the ICMP (International Commission on Missing Persons) has been responsible for finding and identifying what it currently estimates are more than 25,000 persons missing from the wars of the former Yugoslavia in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Kosovo. In 2002, ICMP introduced DNA testing. The traditional forensic techniques had been painstakingly slow and had yielded limited results. In 2001, for example, there were 52 identifications. In 2002 -- the first year using DNA testing -- ICMP produced 518 matches. It has given those working on the side of the missing a certain sense of satisfaction and confidence in the final outcome. The head of Sarajevo-based ICMP, Kathryne Bomberger, says convincingly, "This is now a good news story in that we can't always end someone's pain but we can now end someone's uncertainty." And ICMP's use of DNA identification has thrown the Serbian war against the Bosnian dead into retreat.

This year, I return to Hatidja Mehmedovic to see if the remains of her husband and sons have been found. I am not her only visitor. She is a regular stop on the tours of journalists, NGOs and diplomats who come to Srebrenica. There is even a photo of her with Paul Wolfowitz on her living room wall, although she doesn't recall who he was.

After this visit with her, I stop at a café in Srebrenica. A few minutes later, a group of Americans with the International Red Cross (ICRC) pulls into the café parking lot. They had stopped to see Hatidja at her house but she was not there. I want to tell them her story, to speak for her, but I can't. In this last visit with Hatidja, I tell her that I won't trouble her to repeat her story again. But she does tell it. Within a few sentences, I realize why she repeats the story and why I have come. As she speaks, her sons are planting a tree in the yard, kicking a battered football, or bringing her a simple gift, and in this shift from the past tense to the present, her sons are alive again.

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