Stunned by the vagueness in the number of casualties reported in Kunduz, two German journalists fill in the gap - By Sumi Somaskanda

Dozens of portraits line the white walls of the Kunstraum gallery in Potsdam: They are the faces of the young, of the old, of the dead and of those who loved them. And collectively, the photos tell the story of what happened one night last year in northern Afghanistan.

In the early hours of Sept. 4, German Colonel Georg Klein called for an American airstrike on two fuel tankers near Kunduz that had been reportedly seized by Taliban insurgents. The bombs ripped apart both trucks, killing dozens of people, Taliban as well as civilians from nearby villages. Soon, the colonel's actions were called into question: Different authorities tried to tally civilian and Taliban deaths.

The Kunduz bombing touched off a fierce public debate in Germany, where military involvement in Afghanistan has long been unpopular. It led to the resignations of then-Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung and the sacking of Bundeswehr's highest-ranking officer, General Wolfgang Schnei­derhan.

Nine months afterward, a parliamentary inquiry into the matter is still mired in partisan infighting, and international investigations have failed to provide concrete answers about what exactly happened.

Christoph Reuter, 42, the Afghanistan correspondent for the German weekly magazine Stern, and Marcel Mettelsiefen, 32, a freelance photographer, recall flipping through the 500 pages of NATO's official report with dismay. "There were so many exact details, including every communication between soldiers and commanders," said Reuter. "But then we saw the numbers, between 17 and 142 casualties. We thought this gap was unacceptable."

"We were astonished," added Mettelsiefen, referring to the debate over the strikes. "Everyone was talking about who did what, and who knew what when. But they had forgotten the victims."

Mettelsiefen and Reuter were initially working on a story about the Kunduz attack for Stern. But after their feature was published in December, they found that they weren't able to let go. Instead, they decided to fill in the gaps.

First they tapped into their network to find a trusted contact in the Chahar Dara district, where the bombing took place. The contact received approval for interviews from the village elders. But getting there was too dangerous so the villagers came to them in Kunduz city. Over the next four months, Reuter and Mettelsiefen met dozens of the victims' grieving relatives and friends in a small spartan building and let them tell their stories.

Sometimes, they were bombarded with a confusing swirl of names, people and accounts from that day. Some shared stories that another relative had already described, while others used different names to refer to the same victim.

It was painstaking work, trying to pin down the exact times and actions of each casualty. When and why did the victim leave the house? Did he come back before the attack? And what remains were found afterward?

Those villagers who had already talked to NATO were wary of retelling their stories. But Reuter and Mettelsiefen were slowly able to build trust. "When they found out that we were searching for every detail, they in a way felt appreciated," said Reuter. "They knew we really cared who died."

They double- and triple-checked the information they received during multiple trips to hospitals, police stations and public offices before putting all the records and pictures together: All told, they documented 91 casualties, the faces of this war.

Their photos and stories add up to an upsetting picture of the faces of war. They are detailed in an exhibition in Potsdam, where Mettelsiefen's portraits are accompanied by ID cards, photos of the victims, a map and video interviews. Fathers, brothers, sons and cousins all describe how their loved ones left that night to siphon fuel from the two tankers that had become stuck in a riverbed.

A young man, staring vacantly into the camera, tells the journalists how his two younger brothers, 13-year-old Ahmed and 12-year-old Mohammed, went to the riverbed after dark. Their bodies were found in the morning.

One father, placed next to photos of his three sons, recalls how he warned them not to go out. After hearing the explosion, he ran to the site and searched through the corpses until he found his sons' bodies.

The lone survivor near the trucks that night, heavily bandaged and missing a hand in his portrait, gave the journalists a first-hand account.

Reuter and Mettelsiefen say their objective was never to condemn the military or to find a scapegoat but to show the German public it is at war and what that war looks like. "We're not accusing anyone," said Mettelsiefen. "We're saying, let's change this discussion and really think about what we're doing in Afghanistan."

Reuter calls the current debate over the war superficial, a debate centered on semantics and troop levels: "It's not just numbers, it is people who are dying."

And in the end, they say they couldn't determine whether those killed and their loved ones were supporters of the Taliban. "That's the huge problem in an asymmetrical war - you can't draw a clear line between combatants and civilians," said Mettelsiefen. "I looked into these people's faces and asked myself, 'is he the enemy, or just a person who has lost a loved one?'"