US to end military presence in Iraq after more than two decades

The United States is on track to withdraw all of its remaining forces from Iraq by September 30, U.S. and Iraqi officials said on Wednesday, August 12, bringing to an end a military presence that began with the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, ABC News reports.

Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind down the much smaller U.S.-led military mission against the Islamic State group. American troops withdrew from bases across most of Iraq last year but retained a presence in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in the north.

Those bases have come under repeated attack since the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on February 28.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi met with Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, on Wednesday. In a statement issued afterwards, al-Zaidi said he had reaffirmed Sept. 30 as the “fixed and final date for ending the military mission of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Iraq and completing the departure of its forces.”

A U.S. official confirmed that Washington expects to complete the withdrawal by Sept. 30, but declined to disclose how many American troops remain in Iraq or where they would be redeployed.

“The United States, Iraq and coalition partners have achieved tremendous success in defeating ISIS and now the Iraqi security forces, including the Peshmerga and other Iraqi Kurdistan Region security forces, will lead the fight against terrorists in Iraq,” the official said.

Two Iraqi Kurdish officials said the withdrawal of U.S. troops and military equipment from Erbil began about three weeks ago. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to comment publicly.

The U.S. military presence in Iraq expanded dramatically during the height of counterinsurgency operations, reaching more than 170,000 troops in 2007. The last American combat troops left in December 2011.

U.S. forces returned to Iraq in 2014 after the rise of the Islamic State and its capture of large swaths of territory across Iraq and Syria. They returned at the invitation of the Iraqi government to help fight the militant group.

After the Islamic State lost control of the territory it had seized, coalition combat operations formally ended in 2021. The United States subsequently maintained about 2,500 troops in Iraq, primarily to train Iraqi forces and conduct counter-IS operations alongside the Iraqi military.

The planned U.S. withdrawal is also tied to a separate deadline set by the Iraqi government. Al-Zaidi has called on non-state armed groups in Iraq to surrender their weapons by Sept. 30, arguing that they will have no justification for remaining armed once foreign troops have left.

Some Iraqi militias have cited the presence of U.S. forces as justification for maintaining their weapons, describing the American military presence as an occupation. Washington, however, maintains that its current mission was undertaken at the invitation of the Iraqi government after Islamic State militants swept across the country in 2014 and seized large areas of territory.

The Iraqi government is unlikely to meet its deadline for disarming non-state armed groups. Some of the country’s most powerful Iran-backed militias have already indicated that they have no intention of surrendering their weapons, potentially leaving Baghdad with a major security challenge even after the U.S. military withdrawal is completed.

By Tamilla Hasanova