鈥淭HE impossible became possible.鈥� That is how Piotr Druiker, a forensic archaeologist, has described the progress of the effort to identify victims of war and genocide in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
So far, the bodies of over 6000 of the 40,000 or so people thought killed during the conflict have been identified. And the figure is increasing by 400 to 500 every month. Most of the missing have been found in mass graves. But identification was hampered because the perpetrators tried to conceal their crimes by excavating the large pits and redistributing the bodies among smaller graves.
Identifying the victims fell to a team of scientists working for the International Commission on Missing Persons (New 杏吧原创, 8 March 2003, p 6). Instead of using traditional archaeological techniques backed up by DNA tests, they set up a database of DNA from relatives of the missing to match against bodies. 鈥淚t turned the whole process upside down,鈥� Druiker told the American Academy of Forensic Sciences conference in Dallas, Texas, on 20 February.
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The spectacular success of the process is having a profound effect. Communities previously divided by hatred are working together to locate mass graves. Team member Ana Milos is determined that her fellow citizens will be better able to deal with the past by identifying all the dead: 鈥淚t will take 20 years or more but it is going to happen.鈥�