Two decades after George W. Bush declared the “end of major combat operations” following the capture of Baghdad, Iraq says it’s ready for American troops to leave.
Around 2,500 American soldiers are still based in the country, part of an international coalition formed in 2014 to combat ISIS, the puritanical Islamist group that shocked the world by posting beheadings online and taking control of large parts of Iraq and Syria.
For Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, ISIS is now largely defeated and his country doesn’t need Americans to take on the remaining fighters.
“Iraq in 2024 is not the same as Iraq of 2014,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Baghdad on Sunday, in which he also spoke about the benefits of being in the OPEC+ oil cartel. “We have moved on from wars to stability.”
Yet the timetable for a drawdown remains unclear. Iraq wants a full withdrawal by 2026. The White House and some US politicians remain wary.
Perhaps aware of the US’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan in 2021, they are concerned that ISIS could regroup if they leave. Moreover, they fear it may allow Iran to increase its influence in Iraq, a neighboring and fellow Shiite-majority country.
Iran already has plenty of sway over several Iraqi political parties and supports militias that have attacked US bases in Jordan, Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza in October. One drone strike in Jordan in January — the US said it came from Iraq — killed three Americans.
Al-Sudani seems intent on making the withdrawal happen and says he can do that without harming relations with Washington. He even says he wants to use Iraq’s deep ties to both the US and Iran to ease the worsening tensions between them.
That’s important, Al-Sudani said, to get the Middle East through the dangerous phase it entered with the war in Gaza.— Joumanna Bercetche and Paul Wallace