Ara Joseph Sarian

Ara Joseph Sarian, JD, LL.M, is an attorney and institutional reform architect with more than three decades of litigation and governance experience. Due to his deep knowledge and over twenty years of regional engagement in Middle Eastern affairs, he was tapped to serve in senior advisory roles where law, security, and governance intersected. He served as a Senior Rule of Law Advisor with the United States Department of State in Iraq, where he led US military officers and advisors in Anbar Province to embed rule‑of‑law frameworks during counterinsurgency operations. He later served as Justice Advisor in Afghanistan with the State Department’s INL Bureau, mentoring judges and prosecutors to strengthen governance resilience. Earlier, under the Department of Defense and Coalition Provisional Authority, he supervised a team of lawyers and linguists gathering evidence of atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, supporting war crimes prosecutions and regime crimes investigations. He has also served as Senior Jurist Expert for the European Commission in Iraq, advising on counterterrorism, governance, and institutional resilience. Throughout, he has maintained a full‑service law practice while deploying in elite advisory roles for US and EU institutions, embedding ethics, prosecutorial integrity, and rule‑of‑law principles in fragile environments.