The Missing of Iraq

Rajiha Jihad Jassim long ago lost track of the number of pictures of unidentified remains she was shown at Baghdad's central morgue. Jassim walked the facility's dank chambers every day for months after the disappearance of her husband, Tofan, abducted in the fall of 2006 amid a surge of sectarian violence. The morgue visits became a bleak ritual of dread and longing for Jassim, who pressed into crowds gathered each afternoon in a long hall where five video monitors hung high on a wall, displaying autopsy photos of unidentified corpses — many of them disfigured beyond recognition. Breathing in the stench of bodies resting in adjacent rooms, she watched as images scrolled by, sometimes eliciting a shriek of recognition from someone nearby. Only once did Jassim believe she might have seen Tofan among those images: A headless corpse clad only in underpants. The sight left Jassim so shaken that she had to turn away.

"I was afraid to ask if he was my husband or not," says Jassim, who staggered from the morgue in shock without viewing the body. She shuttered herself at home for days afterward, before resuming the daily vigil.

Tofan, who had supported Jassim and their five children by working as a watchman and laborer, is one of tens of thousands of Iraqis who've simply disappeared during the last five years. No definitive figures exist on the missing in Iraq, although government statistics say at least 140,000 people have disappeared since 2003, with 82,000 documented cases in Baghdad alone. The real figure is likely much higher. Many Iraqis, particularly Sunnis, have been fearful of dealing with the predominately Shi'ite police who are suspected of having ties to sectarian death squads. But even the government's conservative estimate is a staggering sum — the proportional comparison would be more than 800 people vanishing daily in the United States. Although few in Iraq hold out hope of finding their missing loved ones alive, newly discovered gravesites around the country and emerging forensic expertise in Baghdad may offer a chance for some to achieve closure by finding the remains of the disappeared.

Morgue director Dr. Munjid Rezali looks like a physician in a TV commercial for painkillers as he walks along the corridors of the Ministry of Health in a crisp white lab coat over his azure shirt and neatly knotted necktie — except for the four heavily-armed gunmen who escort him everywhere, moving ahead of him around corners with their weapons raised. The ministry, long a haven for followers of Shi'ite firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr, has been something of a battleground in recent years: Two former senior officials have been accused of involvement in numerous sectarian murders, and a number of doctors have dodged bullets and suffered beatings on the premises. Hence the bodyguards for Rezali, and a number of other officials.

"It's not only the dead bodies," says Rezali, who oversees Baghdad's sole DNA lab as well. "We have to examine the live ones."

Inside the lab, unusually cold air hums with the beeping and whirring of boxy machines scattered throughout three rooms. The process of getting a proper DNA sample from an unidentified body brought to the morgue is difficult, requiring delicate procedures using complicated equipment very new to Rezali's small team of doctors and technicians. First, a swab of blood or a mass of tissue, bone or hair must be taken from a victim. The sample then undergoes cleaning and chemical treatments until it is reduced to a speck of concentrate resting at the bottom of a two-inch vial. Then hair-thin coppery probes pluck DNA code from the tubes in the final stage. In the end the nameless person is reduced to a 10-digit number atop a one-page genetic profile showing spiky lines across four horizontal bars, like frozen screens from an electrocardiograph.

Restoring the identities of Iraq's unknown dead is a daunting task. Rezali's small team of 20 has not been able to begin investigating remains uncovered in dozens of mass graves discovered around Iraq in the past year, and indiscriminate killing continues. On Monday, a wave of bombings in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk killed an estimated 50 people.

Jassim, for her part, has given up going to the morgue. With no family income, she cannot afford to pay the public transport fares. She feeds her family off handouts from neighbors, and occasionally bakes bread to sell. Although Jassim has heard nothing to suggest Tofan may have survived, part of her clings to the belief that her husband is alive as she struggles with the daily burden of the Baghdad widow.

"He was a very good man. He treated us very well," Jassim says of Tofan. "I'm still hoping one day he may come."