War, Law, and the Paths We Take
I first met Sufyan Abbas in Tikrit, Iraq in the spring of 2004, when I was a first-tour Captain in the U.S. Army JAG Corps assigned to First Infantry Division. Iraq, in that moment, was unstable and smouldering. The detrital effects of war and the coalition’s “shock and awe” campaign were visible everywhere: imploded structures; burned out buildings; concertainers; and concertina wire. We were stationed in Tikrit and living in a complex of lavish, fortified palaces along the Tigris that had once served as Saddam Hussein’s personal sanctuary but were now occupied by the U.S. military and fashioned into a forward operating base (named “FOB Danger”). In the middle of the compound stood a collapsed, ruinous structure we called the “broke down palace” that was partially destroyed after being hit by a Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). The complex of palaces was a surreal place, a cluster of militarized Middle Eastern castles reflecting both the once-lavish lifestyle of a despot and the brutality of war. It was at once a military outpost, an element of Iraqi history, and a monument to the transience of political power.
By the time First Infantry Division rolled into Tikrit, Saddam Hussein had been captured, the conventional war against Iraqi armed forces was largely over, and the United States had abandoned the pretence of looking for the initially phantasmal—and ultimately mythical—weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi Army had been (unwisely) disbanded by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the State-on-State conflict between the United States and Iraq was in the process of transmuting into something more complex and less understandable—something we were loath to name: a lethal morass of militias; the Mahdi Army; sundry armed groups; and an ascendant Al-Qaeda in Iraq. On that day in 2004 when I first met Sufyan, the situation on the ground in Iraq was as precarious as it was confusing. And we were struggling to find a way forward.
Finding Common Ground
My role as a JAG in Tikrit was as amorphous as most things during that strange era, but it mainly involved working with the CPA, local Iraqi lawyers, and Iraqi judges. Terms like “stability operations” and “rule of law” had not yet penetrated the military vocabulary in 2004, but my instructions were to go and work with local Iraqi courts, make efforts to ensure they were functioning appropriately, and take on various related tasks that required interaction with the Iraqi legal community. This sort of mission was something relatively new for military lawyers and, on that particular spring day in 2004, my duties required me to walk down to the civil-military operations center (CMOC) to link up with a few local Iraqis to discuss legal matters. Among them was a thin, well-dressed young man in glasses. He approached me through the murmuring babel of the crowd and introduced himself. “I am told you are a lawyer. My name is Sufyan, and I am a lawyer too.”
Sufyan and I were very different, but there were things that connected us. We were both from smaller towns, both lawyers in the early phases of our respective legal careers, and neither of us had really expected to be spending the formative stages of our professional lives in the middle of war zone. I am from a relatively small city and graduated from Louisiana State University Law School in 2000. I became a lawyer before the September 11 attacks and the “long wars” that would come to shape my career. Sufyan was, of course, educated and formally trained in Iraq. He graduated in 2003 from the college of law at Al-Hadaba’ University College in Mosul around the time that his entire world in Iraq—his country’s laws, politics, society—were on the verge of being radically transformed. As Sufyan was becoming a lawyer, the only leader his generation had ever known was being forcibly dethroned and the transitional government created by the U.S.-led coalition was taking shape.
While the places where we studied law (Mosul and Baton Rouge) are distant and dissimilar, there were commonalities between our respective legal traditions that bridged the interspace. One important connection was due to our respective civil codes. The civil laws of Iraq and Louisiana are both heavily influenced by the French legal tradition, though both are tinctured by legal influences specific to their respective histories and cultures. These similarities meant that Sufyan and I were familiar with many of the same legal concepts, studied many of the same jurists, and, though we sometimes struggled to communicate, we spoke the same legal language. We, therefore, shared a reverence for our respective legal traditions and what each of us did not know about the other’s legal system, we were both eager to learn.
We also shared a deep desire to serve our countries, and I always deeply admired Sufyan’s dedication to service as well as his belief that the law is a positive force that can effect change and mitigate the worst aspects of war. After Sufyan graduated law school, he chose to use his education to provide legal support to the Iraqi people and worked to assist Iraqi civilians in obtaining compensation for the damage and loss they suffered. That is what he was doing when he introduced himself to me that spring day in the CMOC: busily speaking with government authorities; navigating bureaucratic complexity; and advocating for those who had been harmed to find some means of redress.
After we met, Sufyan began working with me to stand up an office in Tikrit that could address property claims from Iraqis from different ethnic and religious backgrounds who were displaced, uprooted, and forced to move from their homes by the Ba`athist regime. This office, the Iraqi Proprietary Claims Commission (IPCC) in Tikrit, helped restore land, homes, and businesses unjustly stolen or destroyed. In this effort, as in others, Sufyan worked devotedly. I recall that when the office was scheduled to open, the building site was in an area of Tikrit that had suffered greatly during war. Windows were shattered and pockmarked with bullet holes. The coalition was unwilling to allow U.S. personnel to travel to the building due to security risks, so Sufyan brought a small group of Iraqi friends to the building to clean it themselves so that the building would be presentable for its opening ceremony.
Our mutual affinity, of course, would be sometimes strained in the sweltering Iraqi heat and the stress of an armed conflict. Frustrations could occasionally bubble to the surface in reaction to inexpert initiatives undertaken by decision-makers in the “Green Zone” who had a habit of disregarding Iraqi legal culture (and Iraqi culture more generally). For instance, at one point during my deployment, the CPA advanced an ill-fated proposal to change the Iraqi flag. On another occasion, the coalition decided to repeal the traffic laws in Baghdad and replace them with the Maryland state traffic code. On such occasions, Sufyan would remind me that I was standing in the cradle of civilization and the land of the Codex Hammurabi. I recall one day when he looked at me with frustration and said, “Don’t forget where you’re standing . . . that we gave the world its first laws.”
During quieter moments, amidst the rubble and detritus of war, Sufyan and I would sit and talk about the future. Of course, we talked about Iraq, international security, and the Middle East, but, as young people do, we also talked about ourselves and what we hoped the future held for our own lives after the war. I remember one evening, after the Iraqi sun retreated and the sky had darkened into a deep purple, Sufyan told me that he hoped one day to become a diplomat. He spoke of travelling and learning about different peoples, customs, and cultures. In that moment, as the acrid odor of war lingered in the night air, his dream seemed distant and elusive. I told him I just hoped I could get home.
I left Iraq on a blisteringly hot day in late July. Earlier that summer, the formal sovereignty of Iraq was handed over from the CPA to an interim Iraqi government in what we colloquially called “the transfer of power.” Amidst the cacophony of continuing conflict, as my helicopter departed Tikrit, it felt like there had been some small progress toward a vague goal of making things better. But the future of the country and all its citizens was still uncertain. Even as old challenges were surmounted, dark new dangers were ascending.
Sufyan remained in Tikrit to continue his work with the IPCC. I left Iraq and moved on to Fort Knox, Kentucky to begin my next military assignment. In time, I lost track of Sufyan and many of the other Iraqis with whom I worked. I continued to serve in uniform for several years, and, after roughly nine years of active-duty service, I transitioned to the civilian world and took a job in Washington D.C. with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). I first began working for DOJ in the Office of International Affairs—a job that I wanted primarily because it allowed me to continue working with Iraq and working on Iraqi legal issues.
For many years, the topic of Iraq remained salient in Washington D.C. and opportunities to work, talk, and think about Iraq were myriad. But foreign policy fashion is ephemeral, and conversations about Iraq grew less frequent, slowly waned, and one day the subject mysteriously vanished. New threats and different problems captured the wonkish imaginations of the foreign policy elite. Nonetheless, like many veterans of the Iraq War, I have continued thinking about that “long war,” my small role in in it, and its uncertain outcomes. My time and experiences at war (the adventure, the friendships, and even the deprivations) are sacred and essential to me. And yet the way the conflict ended—somewhere in the twilight between not losing and not quite winning—left within me a gnawing sense of residual irresolution. Unresolved questions about the conflict, like my memories of that country and its people, linger with me. Throughout my civilian career, I have tried to return to Iraq as often as I could—perhaps out of a sense of obligation: some unspoken promise that I’ve failed to keep. But I have never once returned to Tikrit.
Reunion
I met Sufyan again in London, England in May 2023, roughly twenty years after the launch of my country’s invasion of his. He is a diplomat now. The hungry young lawyer that I first met in 2004 greeted me outside a posh Iraqi restaurant in Kensington. He was wearing a nice suit. His mien indicated a level of refinement generally observed among senior diplomatic officials.
Over gourmet Iraqi food, our conversation picked up where it had ended 20 years prior. After I left Iraq, Sufyan joined the Foreign Service Institute, and he was eventually appointed as attaché in the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has had a brilliant career with postings in Iraq, Kenya, and the United Kingdom. Much of his work has dealt with antiquities and making sure that stolen Iraqi artifacts are returned to the people of Iraq.
As we ate, when the moment presented itself, I asked Sufyan for his observations on the war. His answers were more nuanced than I had expected, though perhaps such nuance should always be expected of a diplomat. He began his analysis, logically, at a point in time before we met. The U.S. invasion was a disaster on many levels, but Sufyan reminds me that the Iraqi people were suffering under the Ba`athist regime. The former regime’s policies (and previous wars) had made life under Saddam Hussein painful. Ordinary people were without food and medicine due to the impact of various economic embargoes. Sufyan told me that Iraqis merely want stability, development, and justice. Saddam Hussein did not provide these things, but neither did the U.S. invasion which, despite our utopian aspirations, left a wake of destruction and helped usher in a wave of instability and terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of many innocent Iraqis.
Our conversation, of course, turned to law and comparative legal systems. This happens when two comparative lawyers share a meal. Sufyan waxed eloquently about the role of law and how it is critical to Iraq’s future because it can provide the political, economic, and social stability needed for Iraq to move forward. The U.S. invasion did bring some positive legal developments for Iraq, but the deterioration in the security environment after 2003 created new legal challenges and complex legal questions that Iraqi authorities had to address and must continue to navigate. Iraq must now tend what emerged from the institutional and political seeds sown by foreign hands during the occupation.
Even so, Sufyan let me know that he was proud of the work we did together in Iraq. He tells me how we were able to provide some help to people who had been aggrieved. After 20 years, it was good in that moment to feel some mutual pride in our time working with Iraqi property law and helping those who were robbed of their land, homes, and livelihoods. Perhaps Sufyan was simply being merciful to me. Perhaps seeing the look on my face, he merely offered some slender reed by which, over a meal of skewered meat, I could start to rationalize that the lives, resources, and time expended by my government were somehow not squandered. I grasped the reed nonetheless. I am no longer young enough to reject acts of grace.
The conversation eventually turned again to the waves of suffering Iraq has endured over the past decades: the Hussein regime; the U.S. invasion; and the rise of ISIS. Sufyan reflected on how Iraq has worked with the United States to defeat the latest wave of terrorism and is now beginning to recover, but he emphasized that Iraq still needs more time to realize its potential as a stable and developed country. Sufyan stressed that it would take time for ordinary Iraqis to embrace changes to the Iraqi legal and political systems, to fully understand how to participate in elections, and for “the young Iraqis” to see the fruit of their labor as they work to rebuild their country.
Sufyan’s comment about the work of young Iraqis struck something within me. From our table in London, I am brought immediately back to a vision of two young men sitting in the shadow of a collapsed castle, talking about the future, and trying hard to conceal the fear in their eyes. We were just two young men trying to save the world. We’re still trying.
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Dan E. Stigall is an attorney with the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). He is currently detailed to the Department of Defense where he serves as Director for Counterterrorism Policy within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Policy). He is also a Distinguished Professional Lecturer in National Security Law at the George Washington University Law School where, among other subjects, he teaches Comparative Law and talks to his students about the Iraqi legal system.
Photo credit: Dan E. Stigall
