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Missing in action
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Missing in action (MIA) is a status assigned to armed services personnel who are reported missing during active service. They may have been killed or wounded in action, or become a prisoner of war, or may have deserted. If deceased, neither their remains nor grave can be positively identified. Becoming MIA has been an occupational risk for service personnel for as long as there has been warfare.
The United States Department of Defense refers to personnel who have been MIA for ten days or less as duty status - whereabouts unknown (DUSTWUN)
l around 1914, service personnel in most countries were not routinely issued with ID tags.
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Missing in action (MIA) is a status assigned to armed services personnel who are reported missing during active service. They may have been killed or wounded in action, or become a prisoner of war, or may have deserted. If deceased, neither their remains nor grave can be positively identified. Becoming MIA has been an occupational risk for service personnel for as long as there has been warfare.
The United States Department of Defense refers to personnel who have been MIA for ten days or less as duty status - whereabouts unknown (DUSTWUN)
Problems and solutions
Until around 1914, service personnel in most countries were not routinely issued with ID tags. As a result, if someone was killed in action and their body was not recovered until much later, there was little or no chance of identifying the remains. Starting around the time of the First World War, nations began to issue their service personnel with purpose-made ID tags. Usually, these were made of some form of lightweight metal such as aluminum. However, in the case of the British Army the material chosen was compressed fibre, which was not very durable. Although wearing ID tags proved to be highly beneficial, the problem remained that soldiers' bodies could be completely destroyed (or buried) by the type of high explosive munitions routinely used in modern warfare. Additionally, the combat environment itself could increase the likelihood of missing personnel e.g. jungle or submarine warfare, and air-crashes in mountainous terrain or at sea. Finally, since soldiers had no strong incentive to keep detailed records of enemy dead, bodies were frequently buried (sometimes with their ID tags) in temporary graves, the locations of which were often lost or obliterated e.g. the forgotten mass grave at Fromelles. As a result the remains of service personnel might not be found for many years, if ever. When missing service personnel are recovered and cannot be identified after a thorough forensic examination, the remains are interred with a tombstone which indicates their unknown status.
The development of genetic fingerprinting in the late 20th century means that if cell samples from a cheek swab are collected from service personnel prior to deployment to a combat zone, identity can be established using even a small fragment of human remains. Although it is possible to take genetic samples from a close relative of the missing person, it is preferable to collect such samples directly from the subjects themselves. It is a fact of warfare that some service personnel are likely to go missing in action and never be found. However, by wearing ID tags and using modern technology the numbers involved can be considerably reduced. In addition to the obvious military advantages, conclusively identifying the remains of missing service personnel is highly beneficial to the surviving relatives. Having positive identification makes it somewhat easier to come to terms with their loss and move on with their lives. Otherwise some relatives may suspect that the missing person is still alive somewhere and may return someday.
Before the 20th century
It is possible that some of the soldiers who fought at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC went missing in action. Certainly, the numerous wars which followed over successive centuries created many MIAs. The list is long and includes most battles which have ever been fought by any nation. The usual problems of identification caused by rapid decomposition were exacerbated by the fact that it was common practice to loot the remains of the dead for any valuables e.g. personal items and clothing. This made the already difficult task of identification even harder. Thereafter the dead were routinely buried in mass graves and scant official records were retained. Notable examples include such medieval battles as Towton, the Hundred Years' War, the later English Civil Wars and Napoleonic Wars together with any battle taking place until around the middle of the 19th Century. Starting around the time of the Crimean War, American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War, it became more common to make formal efforts to identify individual soldiers. However, since there was no formal system of ID tags at the time, this could be difficult during the process of battlefield clearance. Even so, there had been a notable shift in perceptions e.g. where the remains of a soldier in Confederate uniform were recovered from, say, the Gettysburg battlefield, he would be interred in a single grave with a headstone which stated that he was an unknown Confederate soldier. This change in attitudes coincided with the Geneva Conventions, the first of which was signed in 1864. Although the first Geneva Convention did not specifically address the issue of MIAs, the reasoning behind it (which specified the humane treatment of enemy wounded soldiers) was influential.
World War I
The phenomenon of MIAs became particularly notable during World War I, where the mechanised nature of modern warfare meant that a single battle could cause astounding numbers of casualties. For example, in 1916 over 300,000 Allied and German service personnel were killed in the Battle of the Somme. A total of 19,240 British and Commonwealth troops were killed in action or died of wounds on the first day of that battle alone. It is therefore not surprising that the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme in France bears the names of 72,090 British and Commonwealth soldiers, all of whom went missing in action during the Battle of the Somme, were never found and who have no known grave. Similarly, the Menin Gate memorial in Belgium commemorates 54,896 missing allied soldiers who are known to have been killed during one of the Battles of Ypres. The Douaumont ossuary, meanwhile, contains 130,000 unidentifiable sets of French and German remains from the Battle of Verdun.
Even in the 21st Century, the remains of missing service personnel are recovered from the former battlefields of the Western Front every year. These discoveries happen regularly, often during the course of agricultural work or construction projects. Typically, the remains of one or several men are found at a time. However, occasionally the numbers recovered are much larger e.g. the mass grave at Fromelles, which contained hundreds of allied soldiers. Regardless, efforts are made to identify any remains found via a thorough forensic examination. If this is achieved, attempts are made to trace any living relatives. However, it is frequently impossible to identify the remains, other than to establish some basic details of the unit they served with. In the case of British and Commonwealth MIAs, the headstone is inscribed with the maximum amount of information that is known about the person. Typically, such information is deduced from metallic objects such as brass buttons and shoulder flashes bearing regimental/unit insignia found on the body. As a result, headstones are inscribed with such information as "A Soldier of The Cameronians" or "An Australian Corporal" etc. Where nothing is known other than that the person fought on the allied side, the headstone is inscribed "A Soldier of The Great War". The term "Sailor" or "Airman" can be substituted, as appropriate.
World War II
There are many missing service personnel from World War II.
In the United States armed forces, 78,750 missing in action were reported by the conclusion of the war, representing over 19 percent of the total 405,399 killed in the conflict.
The 1991–1993 United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs investigated a few outstanding issues and reports related to the fate of U.S. service personnel still missing from World War II.
As with MIAs from the First World War, it is a routine occurrence for the remains of missing service personnel killed during the Second World war to be periodically discovered. As with the First World War, MIAs are generally found as individuals, or in twos or threes. However, sometimes the numbers in a group are considerably larger e.g. the mass grave at Villeneuve-Loubet, which contained the remains of 14 German soldiers killed in August 1944. Others are located at remote aircraft crash sites in various countries.
In 2008, investigators began to conduct searches on Tarawa atoll in the Pacific Ocean, trying to locate the remains of 139 American marines, missing since the Battle of Tarawa in 1943.
Korean War
There are many missing service personnel from the Korean War. It is thought that 13,000 South Korean soldiers and 2,000 U.S. soldiers are buried in the Korean Demilitarized Zone alone. The U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the equivalent South Korean command are actively involved in trying to locate and identify remains of both countries' personnel.
In the United States armed forces, the 8,177 service members listed as missing in action constituted over 15 percent of the total killed in the conflict.
The 1991–1993 United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs investigated some outstanding issues and reports related to the fate of U.S. service personnel still missing from the Korean War.
Remains of missing service personnel from the Korean conflict are periodically recovered and identified.
Vietnam War
Following the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, 591 U.S. prisoners of war were returned during Operation Homecoming. The U.S. listed about 1,350 Americans as prisoners of war or missing in action and roughly 1,200 Americans reported killed in action and body not recovered. By the early 1990s, this had been reduced to a total of 2,255 unaccounted for from the war, which constituted less than 4 percent of the total 58,152 U.S. service members killed. This was by far the smallest proportion in the nation's history to that point.
About 80 percent of those missing were airmen who were shot down over North Vietnam or Laos, usually over remote mountains, tropical rain forest, or water; the rest typically disappeared in dense, confused fighting in jungles. Investigations of these incidents have involved determining whether the men involved survived their shootdown, and if not efforts to recover their remains. POW/MIA activists played a role in pushing the U.S. government to improve its efforts in resolving the fates of the missing. Progress in doing so was slow until the mid-1980s, when relations between the U.S. and Vietnam began to improve and more cooperative efforts were undertaken. Normalization of U.S. relations with Vietnam in the mid-1990s was a culmination of this process.
Considerable speculation and investigation has gone to a theory that a significant number of these men were captured as prisoners of war by Communist forces in the two countries and kept as live prisoners after the war's conclusion for the United States in 1973. A vocal group of POW/MIA activists maintains that there has been a concerted conspiracy by the Vietnamese government and every American government since then to hide the existence of these prisoners. The U.S. government has steadfastly denied that prisoners were left behind or that any effort has been made to cover up their existence. Popular culture has reflected the "live prisoners" theory, most notably in the 1985 film Rambo: First Blood Part II. Several congressional investigations have looked into the issue, culminating with the largest and most thorough, the United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs of 1991–1993 led by Senators John Kerry, Bob Smith, and John McCain. Its unanimous conclusion found that "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia."
This missing in action issue has been a highly emotional one to those involved, and is often considered the last depressing, divisive aftereffect of the Vietnam War. To skeptics, "live prisoners" is a conspiracy theory unsupported by motivation or evidence, and the foundation for a cottage industry of charlatans who have preyed upon the hopes of the families of the missing. As two skeptics wrote in 1995, "The conspiracy myth surrounding the Americans who remained missing after Operating Homecoming in 1973 had evolved to baroque intricacy. By 1992, there were thousands of zealots—who believed with cultlike fervor that hundreds of American POWs had been deliberately and callously abandoned in Indochina after the war, that there was a vast conspiracy within the armed forces and the executive branch—spanning five administrations—to cover up all evidence of this betrayal, and that the governments of Communist Vietnam and Laos continued to hold an unspecified number of living American POWs, despite their adamant denials of this charge." Believers reject such notions; as one wrote in 1994, "It is not conspiracy theory, not paranoid myth, not Rambo fantasy. It is only hard evidence of a national disgrace: American prisoners were left behind at the end of the Vietnam War. They were abandoned because six presidents and official Washington could not admit their guilty secret. They were forgotten because the press and most Americans turned away from all things that reminded them of Vietnam."
There are also a large number of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong MIAs from the Vietnam war whose remains have yet to be recovered. In 1974, General Võ Nguyên Giáp stated that they had 330,000 missing in action. As of 1999, estimates of those missing were usually around 300,000. This figure does not include those missing from former South Vietnamese armed forces, who are given little consideration under the Vietnamese regime. The Vietnamese government did not have any organized program to search for its own missing, in comparison to what it had established to search for American missing. The discrepancy angered some Vietnamese; as one said, "It's crazy for the Americans to keep asking us to find their men. We lost several times more than the Americans did. In any war there are many people who disappear. They just disappear." In the 2000s, thousands of Vietnamese were hiring psychics in an effort to find the remains of missing family members. The Vietnamese Army organizes what it considers to be the best of the psychics, as part of its parapsychology force trying to find remains. Additionally, remains dating from the earlier French colonial era are sometimes discovered: in January 2009, the remains of at least 50 anti-French resistance fighters dating from circa 1946 to 1947 were discovered in graves located under a former market in central Hanoi.
Gulf War
At the conclusion of the Gulf War of 1991, U.S. forces had suffered 7 missing in action versus 148 killed in action, for a ratio of less than 5 percent. Later, all but one of the MIA cases was resolved: an American pilot named Scott Speicher, who was reported as missing after his F/A-18 was shot down in northern Iraq on the first night of the war. Speicher's case gradually became well known, and over the years his status was changed from missing to killed in action to missing-captured, a move that suggested he was alive and imprisoned in Iraq. In 2002, his possible situation became a more high-profile issue in the build-up to the Iraq War. In March 2002, The Washington Times ran five successive front-page articles about it and on September 12, 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush mentioned Speicher in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly as part of his case for war. However, despite the 2003 invasion of Iraq and U.S. military control of the country, Speicher has not been found and his status is still under debate.
How many Iraqi forces went missing as a result of the war is not readily known, as estimates of Iraqi casualties overall range considerably.
Iraq War
A small number of coalition soldiers went missing in action in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. In one prominent case, a US Marine of Lebanese background, Wassef Ali Hassoun, went missing and claimed to have been captured. He later turned up in Lebanon, and was flown home to the U.S. It was soon discovered Hassoun made the kidnapping story up, and Hassoun is currently a fugitive.
On April 9, 2004, US Army soldier PFC. Keith Matthew Maupin was captured in an ambush near the Baghdad International Airport. On April 16, 2004, Maupin appeared on a videotape that was broadcast by the Arabic-language television network Al Jazeera. On June 28, 2004, Al Jazeera reported that Maupin was executed by a group identifying itself as The Persistent Power Against the Enemies of God and the Prophet. The method of execution in the video was a gunshot to the head. On March 30, 2008, Maupin's father told local newsmedia that the remains of his son had been found. He states that an Army general had told him that DNA was used to identify the remains. According to an Army statement, Maupin's remains "were recovered northwest of Baghdad on March 20, by soldiers from 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry, based out of Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, attached to 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment."
On October 23, 2006, US Army soldier Spc. Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie was captured by insurgents and is listed as missing-captured. He appeared in a proof of life video in February 2007 but he hasn't been seen or heard from since. A $50,000 reward is being offered by the US government for information leading to his recovery. On May 12, 2007 a US Army observation post was overrun by Iraqi insurgents, four American and one Iraqi soldier were killed, three other US Army soldiers were captured. They were Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., Pvt. Byron W. Fouty and Spc. Alex R. Jimenez. Pfc. Anzacks' body was found in the Euphrates River south of Baghdad on May 23, 2007 bearing signs of torture. On June 4, 2007. The ISI claimed that they killed Fouty and Jimenez and also claimed that their bodies are buried and will not be returned to their families.
On Wednesday July 9, 2008, the bodies of the Alex Jimenez and Byron Fouty were found in an area south of Baghdad known as the "triangle of death". The families of the victims were notified Thursday night, and the Defense Department released a statement to the public on July 11, 2008.
Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie is the only American soldier still missing in Iraq from this war.
Colloquial usage
MIA is sometimes used in American English to describe difficulty finding something, particularly a person. "The employee is MIA." It is less often used in this context in UK English, where the equivalent phrase is "gone AWOL".
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