Navigating Army laws to do right by locals

LSA Anaconda, Iraq-

A farmer claims Army mortars burned his crop field and killed one of his cows. Major Harold Johnston, of Terre Haute, IN, listens patiently. He’s heard this story before. The Major is chief of claims and operational law at the Civilian Military Operations Center.

According to the farmer, last week insurgents unknown to him used his field to launch mortars at LSA Anaconda, a major supply base north of Baghdad. U.S. forces returned fire and destroyed part of the farmer’s field.

Now it’s up to Maj. Johnston to decide whether the man deserves a payment for accidental damages. To do so he must wade through archaic Iraqi civil law and a collection of phone-book-thick U.S. military codes on engagements and foreign claims.

In this valley of the Tigris river humans have been farming since 10,000 B.C., but to decide any land disputes, Johnston must navigate Iraqi Civil Code dating from 1953 and an ancient system in which Sheiks weigh in on most disputes.

Still, Johnston seems to almost enjoy the complexity of it. He says he gets to work with real Iraqis and says the process is integral to COIN (counter-insurgency). “Everyone will come away with an impression of Americans,” Johnston said, whether good or bad.


Maj. Johnston, who’s a state prosecutor back in Indiana and arbitrated civilian claims for the Judge Advocate General Corps during his last deployment to Afghanistan, can also draw funds from the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP).

The seed money for CERP came from the billions Sadaam had squirreled away. In 2003 3rd Infantry Division seized $650 million in cash that helped fund initial reconstruction efforts.

Today a Commander’s Emergency Response Payment helps cover some of the gray areas where the military won’t pay for civilian recompense because of foreign claims laws. But the case must cross a JAG advocate’s office like Maj. Johnston’s to be distributed.

Out of the 22 Iraqis who made claims at the CMOC last Thursday, from damages of U.S. forces raiding the wrong house to mothers looking for missing sons, the majority claimed crop damage, which is not that unusual considering LSA is a major airfield surrounded by farmland and many of the cases involved flares from aircraft.

“We really need to take a look at them,” Maj. Johnston said. One of the problems is that crop damage is harder to prove or discredit, where as accidental combat damage is almost always recorded on the spot by U.S. forces and a claims card is issued. Many locals are aware of this.

By the end of the claimant’s interview, the farmer asked the Major if he should bring in his dead cow for additional proof of damages. Everyone laughed. Later a powerful local sheik entered to make more crop damage claims.

Maj. Johnston admits to the sheik that he has not been long at the job, but that he will carefully review the sheiks claims.

It might take Johnston up to 90-days to investigate even the farmer’s simple claim, but he says it’s an important component to counter-insurgency. “This is the center of gravity with the population,” Johnston said.

As for dealing with local V.I.P.s he said with a smile, “You can’t blow sheiks off, it’s like politics back home.”