The Everlasting Presence of the Disappeared in Genocide: War Widows and Fatherless Families in the Bosnian Diaspora

This paper is based on an anthropological study investigating the impact of forced displacement, genocide, and missing persons on the social identities of surviving women, their families and local communities in Bosnia Herzegovina and the Bosnian diaspora. By the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, more than 100,000 had been killed and close to 40,000 individuals reported missing – some 7,000 of whom have still not been found or identified. No knowing where the body of one’s loved one is, makes the grieving process of many surviving families much harder than it would be if they had been able to bury the victims. The issues surrounding the missing and their exhumation, identification and burial are some of the lasting legacies of genocide and war in Bosnia, that still affect many individuals, especially war widows and their families, as well as the respective local communities. The gaps, absences, and open-ended temporality the missing persons left behind also impact on politics, culture and reconciliation within the broader Bosnian society and the diaspora. More than two decades after the war, in many respects, Bosnia can still be seen as an exemplar of a post-conflict society, where the progress towards achieving a just and lasting peace has been halted by unresolved issues from the past, including the issue of the missing. In regard to the missing (presumably dead), what is often depicted as an “unresolved past” is in fact an unresolved present, spread through global connections across time and space and having significant affects and effects even on those who now live at great geographic distances from the original violence. The issue of the missing in Bosnia is predominantly, but not exclusively, affecting the Muslim (Bosniak) community. Mourning the dead in Islam typically takes place in the private domain and those who died in conflict or as innocent victims are regarded as šehidi, martyrs who will be rewarded in the afterlife. However, in the case of the missing,