Thomas Gibbons-Neff, right, of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion 6th Marines, on May 16, 2008, in Helmand Province, in a photo he provided.
What is it like to have been a Marine in Afghanistan and returned there as a journalist? That’s a question I get asked a lot.
I never really have an answer.
The 20-year-old and 22-year-old versions of myself who deployed to Helmand Province in 2008 and 2009 as an enlisted Marine infantryman were just that, different versions. A decade later, what’s left of them are two old journals and an entry left behind from my first deployment that I recall quite often.
“I think it’s the end of Day 20 out here,” I wrote in early May 2008. “It’s hard to explain this place, and I feel it’s going to take the rest of my life to figure out what happened here.”
It has been 11 years since I wrote that passage, and it’s still just as true. Granted I figured out what happened in Helmand Province in 2008. It was the first chapter in a misguided counterinsurgency strategy built atop the constellation of outposts that the American military eventually handed to the Afghans in 2014. We watched them collapse under the Taliban in the months that followed.
But this month I walked out the back of a helicopter after it landed at a dusty American Special Forces outpost in eastern Nangarhar Province. The war hadn’t ended, just those earlier chapters from my 20s.
The gravel felt familiar. The drone of the generators sounded familiar. The discarded burning trash on the small base’s periphery smelled like the place I once called home for nearly two years.
I was back in some estranged corner of “my war” to report on the American military’s war against the Islamic State affiliate in the country. At this small base, called Mission Support Site Jones, a Special Forces team and a consortium of other soldiers were trying to keep the extremists relegated to the mountains along the Pakistani border.
It was a strange thing, coming back to a place that seemed stuck in time, ripped from an earlier version of my life. But they had Wi-Fi — we certainly didn’t have that in 2008.
At dusk, I kept expecting to bump into friends from my platoon: Jorge, Ryan and Matt shuffling back from the PVC pipes half buried in the ground that doubled as urinals; their outlines distinctly recognizable after so many days in the field.
But my friends are long gone. Jorge is a police officer outside Houston. Ryan works construction in Northern California. And Matt is dead. In their place were three random soldiers — 20-somethings who eyed me with suspicion. Just as we used to do when a reporter showed up in Helmand with unclear intentions from an outlet we had never heard of or cared to follow: Reuters? BBC? What does NPR stand for?
Early the next morning I climbed up into one of the watchtowers on the southern corner of the base. The sentry had just started his six-hour shift. He didn’t say much and I stared at the mountains in the distance.
A decade ago that would have been me. Easing back on a chair of makeshift sandbags and deciding what I wanted to think about for the next half-dozen hours or so. Sifting through a shelf of memories, my brain then mostly filled with remnants of high school and the 10 days of leave before we deployed.
“You were probably told to avoid talking to me,” I said to the soldier leaning on the tower’s machine gun.
It was a rhetorical assertion, but my nostalgia had been replaced with the slow realization that I was currently employed by The New York Times and not the United States Marine Corps.
The soldier acknowledged the question and said little else, other than that his platoon sergeant had very much reinforced that point before my arrival.
“It’s like every war movie you’ve ever seen but it doesn’t end in 120 minutes,” I wrote in 2008. “It’s on loop.”
Jamal Mustafa to Asharq Al-Awsat: I Couldn’t Provide Bribe Demanded by Judge, So I Was Jailed for Another 10 Yearshttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5085869-jamal-mustafa-asharq-al-awsat-i-couldn%E2%80%99t-provide-bribe-demanded-judge-so-i-was
Jamal Mustafa to Asharq Al-Awsat: I Couldn’t Provide Bribe Demanded by Judge, So I Was Jailed for Another 10 Years
Saddam Hussein and Jamal Mustafa Sultan.
In the final installment of his interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Jamal Mustafa Sultan, a former Iraqi official and Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, delves into his arrest, the collapse of hopes for resistance against US forces, and the turmoil that followed the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Mustafa faced a harsh journey during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. He traveled to rally tribal leaders to defend Baghdad, only to return and find the city occupied. Declared a fugitive, his face appeared on the US “most-wanted” playing cards.
Mustafa fled to Syria but was denied asylum and sent back to Iraq, where he was arrested. Accused of leading resistance and car bombings, the court found no evidence to convict him.
In 2011, a judge offered him release in exchange for a bribe, which Mustafa could not afford. His proposal to sell family land to pay was rejected, leaving him imprisoned for another decade. He was eventually freed over lack of evidence.
A US soldier watches the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad on April 7, 2003. (Reuters)
After his release, Mustafa went to Erbil, where Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani invited him for a meeting. Barzani welcomed him warmly and asked how he could help. Mustafa requested assistance in obtaining a passport, praising Barzani’s generosity.
Mustafa shared that Saddam respected Barzani, once calling him a “tough but honorable opponent.” He also revealed that, before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Barzani had assured Saddam that Kurdish forces would not fight the Iraqi army.
Recalling the lead-up to the war, Mustafa said Saddam tasked him with reconnecting with tribal leaders to encourage them to resist the invasion.
He delivered personal messages from Saddam, along with financial support, to help tribes host Iraqi soldiers stationed nearby. Mustafa later traveled to the Anbar province to rally tribes and bring them to defend Baghdad.
This account offers a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes efforts to resist the US invasion and the complex relationships that shaped Iraq’s history.
As the US invasion loomed, Mustafa met with thousands of tribal leaders to rally support for Baghdad’s defense.
“During the war, I met with over 4,500 tribal sheikhs from across Iraq,” he said. But when he returned to Baghdad after a trip to Anbar, everything had changed. “The city had fallen, and everything was in chaos.”
Mustafa tried to locate his associates but found no one. On April 11, 2003, he sent his driver to search for allies.
By chance, his brother, Lt. Gen. Kamal Mustafa, located him. “He told me we needed to leave Baghdad. I hadn’t planned to leave, but he convinced me it was the logical choice—we had no weapons, no men, and no resources. Staying would only mean capture.”
The brothers fled to Ramadi, where tribal leaders offered them refuge, and from there, they attempted to seek asylum in Syria. After just two days, Syrian authorities sent them back to Iraq.
Back in Baghdad, Mustafa and Khalid Najm, Iraq’s last intelligence chief, stayed with a university friend, Dr. Hafidh Al-Dulaimi. While there, Al-Dulaimi’s nephew suggested surrendering to Ahmed Chalabi’s forces, but Mustafa refused.
Saddam Hussein meets with top members of his regime. (Getty Images)
Shortly after, armed men stormed the house. “They came with tanks and masks,” Mustafa recalled. He and Najm were arrested on April 21, 2003—a day he will never forget.
Mustafa shared his experiences in US detention after his capture. “The interrogations were relentless, often involving psychological and physical pressure,” he added.
“They focused on weapons of mass destruction—’did Iraq have them, and where were they?’ Everyone faced the same questions. They also asked about US pilot Michael Scott Speicher, whose plane was shot down during the Gulf War. Though his remains were later found, the Americans kept questioning us, believing more was being hidden.”
Life in the detention center was highly controlled. Detainees were grouped in blocks of seven and given 30 minutes of outdoor time. Sultan recalled a chilling moment when Ahmed Hussein, Saddam’s office chief, told him during exercise: “The president has been captured.”
“We had clung to hope that Saddam’s freedom could lead to Iraq’s liberation,” Mustafa said. “His arrest shattered that hope and signaled the occupation’s permanence.”
He also described mysterious construction in the prison. “We saw carpenters working constantly. Eventually, they built a wooden barrier, blocking the corridor from view. We could only guess what it was for.”
When asked if Saddam had led the resistance before his capture, Mustafa confirmed: “Yes, the resistance began after the war. It wasn’t planned in advance because, at that time, the focus was purely military—army against army.”
“After the occupation, a new phase started. Battles unfolded in stages, and Saddam was leading the resistance during this one. He was the hope of the resistance, of the Iraqi people, and of Arabs and Muslims,” Mustafa revealed.
His remarks offer a glimpse into the post-invasion dynamics and the symbolic role Saddam played during Iraq’s turbulent transition.
Mustafa also recounted the difficulty of reaching his family after his arrest.
“After my capture, I lost all contact with my family. I didn’t have any phone numbers for my brothers, friends, or colleagues. Even if I had, phone lines had been disrupted—many exchanges had been bombed, and communication in Iraq was severely impacted,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.
Mustafa recalled an encounter with the International Red Cross during his detention.
Saddam Hussein and his daughter Hala. (Courtesy of the family)
“The Red Cross offered me the chance to write a message to my family, as is their usual practice. But I was at a loss—who could I write to? I had no idea where my brothers or family were. I didn’t know anything about their whereabouts.”
Then, Mustafa had an idea. “I thought of Ammo Baba, a well-known football coach in Iraq. I didn’t know his address, but I remembered the address of the Police Club, where I had been president. I decided to write the letter there, addressed to Ammo Baba, asking him to pass it on to my family.”
Mustafa’s story highlights the communication challenges and isolation faced by detainees during the Iraq War.
He then described the prolonged separation from his family following his arrest. “I had no hopes of hearing from my family when I sent my letter through Ammo Baba,” Mustafa said.
“The situation was too difficult. After two and a half to three months, I received a response from Ammo Baba. He sent his regards, inquired about my health, and included a message from Yassin, a coach who worked with me. Along with the letter, they sent me sportswear—a shirt and shorts.”
Mustafa’s communication with his family may have been limited, but the letter served as a lifeline.
“A couple of years later, I received the first message from my wife, Hala, after two years in detention.”
Jamal Mustafa Sultan with his children.
When asked if he had been separated from his family for 18 years, Mustafa confirmed: “Yes, I hadn’t seen them or my children for 18 and a half years.”
“There were no visits or conversations, except for a brief period when we were held by the Americans. During that time, they allowed us five minutes a week to speak with our families. I would split the time—two and a half minutes with my mother and siblings, and the rest with my wife and daughters,” he said.
However, he revealed that after 2010, communication was cut off entirely.
“When we were transferred to Iraqi custody, they stopped allowing any contact. I was careful not to make calls with the Iraqis, as I feared enemies or foreign agents could record them,” explained Mustafa.
Mustafa’s story underscores the isolation he endured and the limited means of contact with his loved ones during years of detention.
