It was the early hours of the morning when I got a call from my brother telling me that they had Radovan Karadzic in custody. Was I dreaming, I thought to myself. Had this most elusive of men finally been snared? It was all very hard to take in, writes Oran Finegan.
There is little doubt as to the importance of Radovan Karadzic's capture, both domestically in Serbia and for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Until this week, with only two years left of the court's mandate, time was running out for the court in The Hague. Both Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic continued to evade capture and I had begun to doubt whether they would ever be found. Putting down the phone, the news I had just heard brought me back to my time working as a forensic anthropologist with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia .
I started working in Bosnia back in 1998, fresh from university, scientifically prepared but emotionally, certainly not. There is not much that can prepare someone for dealing with the results of the worst side of human nature.
I think there are images that forever stay in the mind. For example, an infant who has been killed in an explosion: seeing the contorted corpse on the table, yet being able to hold its hand and see its little fingernails is an image difficult to erase. Standing on the edge of a mass grave with corpses piled up one on top of the other. Once a conflict has ended and the world's attention has moved on, these are quite often the realities that are faced by forensic teams as they proceed with their work. At times there are no words to describe what you see. The array of emotions encountered can be overwhelming. Yet, you have to learn to distance yourself from the daily psychological trauma, to focus the mind scientifically. This is not always easy but essential, and I feel myself fortunate to have been surrounded by colleagues that I could rely on for support.
Following my early work with the tribunal, I became much more aware of the occurrence of enforced disappearances, missing persons and war crimes. As a result of this, I returned to university to undertake a master's degree in human rights and focused on the subject of missing persons.
Since then I have worked on a number of different projects in different countries and, while the background always differs slightly, there is one thing that never changes - the grief of the families. For the relatives of the victim the suffering can go on for years. For example, a wife whose husband has "disappeared" does not know if he is alive or dead, and she may never discover his fate. They are stuck in a world of constant turmoil, unable to try and move on with their lives.
Whether it is five or 50 years, the anguish suffered by the families of the missing never fades. Yet it is these same people that are so often overlooked.
Over the past few years the work I have been involved in has dealt mainly with the identification of missing persons.
In ways this has been more rewarding than my early with the tribunal as you see results, with identified remains being returned to the families. This work has resulted in considerable contact with the families of individuals we have identified. While difficult at times, I feel it gives the anthropologist some form of emotional closure on the cases.
In some projects when an individual has been identified, the family is given the opportunity to come and view the remains. This allows them to ask questions about the process that takes place from the exhumation, through the analysis, to the final identification of the remains. These meetings can be very emotionally charged for both the family and the anthropologist. For the anthropologist it requires treading a very fine line between the scientific nature of the work and the emotional sensitivity essential when dealing with the families. It can be very easy to tell the family what it is they want to hear, but this may not always be the truth, and no matter how hard it may be at the time, a failure to do this undermines your work as an anthropologist and potentially leads to even more distress for the family.
While the work at times can be very challenging emotionally, to be involved in identifying and returning an individual to a family far outweighs the difficulties encountered. For the families it allows them to close a chapter in their lives and move on. A family member once commented to me that "at least now I have somewhere to go and pray, lay flowers, and talk to my son".
The arrest of Radovan Karadzic has been of tremendous importance to me personally. Having working as a forensic anthropologist on the remains of the victims of the wars on the Balkans, I, like many others in the field, have seen at first hand the results of war.
The arrest this week goes much deeper than just the arrest of one man; it has much greater ramifications for the apprehension of suspected war criminals globally.
But it is not the place of a forensic anthropologist to apportion blame to either side. Our role has to be scientific, unbiased, and focused on the mandate under which they work, and as anthropologists we must never lose sight of this.
As anthropologists become more and more involved in working in such environments where human rights is an important aspect of their work, it is no longer sufficient for their educational base to be solely scientific.
A sound basis in human rights is critical if they are to work competently in such environments.
This has yet to become a core aspect of any anthropology course and more and more, there is a consensus that its inclusion is long overdue.
There is no doubt that the arrest of Radovan Karadzic has once again placed the spotlight firmly over the Balkans and while it is there, it is critical that the opportunity is taken once again to highlight the thousands of individuals that remain unidentified.