By Agence France-Presse

Iraq wants to put the legacy of murderous dictator Saddam Hussein behind it, but faces a huge need for specialists to excavate mass graves thought to contain at least half a million unidentified victims.

The stakes are high for Iraq, a country seeking reconciliation with itself, where countless families lost all trace of their relatives during the dictator’s 1979-2003 rule or the terrible internecine violence in the years after his overthrow.

Families have not been able to come to terms with the loss, as they have never found the bodies of their loved ones or learned the circumstances of their deaths.

But the process of excavating the mass graves and identifying the victims, which could take decades because of its scope and difficult terrain that includes landmines and unexploded ordinance, requires a highly skilled workforce that does not exist in Iraq.

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Source: The Raw Story