Rania Abouzeid

Workers exhume the remains of bodies from a mass grave, presumably where Turkmens from Tal Afar were killed between 2014 and 2017 when ISIS controlled the region, Tal Afar district, Iraq, July 2024Image by picture alliance / Anadolu / Ali Makram Ghareeb © Summary   UNITAD, the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh/ISIL, explored mass graves in Iraq between 2018 and 2024. Its mandate, supported by European governments, was cut short after relations with the Iraqi government soured, leaving many survivors and their loved ones without the hoped-for findings. This saga provides lessons for Europeans about how to back useful efforts towards justice and reconciliation in their war-ravaged neighborhood—including in post-regime Syria. Such stabilization efforts should work with local power, sensibilities, and civil society. In search of the disappeared   Iraq is so strewn with mass graves—from the most recent Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ones to Saddam-era pits—that it has a specialized mass graves directorate. It even has a Mass Graves Day. The United Nations estimates