Iraq: US-led military coalition to fully withdraw forces in 2 years

Iraq says the United States-led military coalition, which stays in the Arab country under the pretext of fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group two decades after the 2003 occupation, will pull out forces in two years from now.

Defense Minister Thabet al-Abbasi made the remarks to the al-Hadath satellite television channel on Sunday.

The coalition would pull out from bases in the capital Baghdad and other parts of federal Iraq, except the northern Iraqi Kurdistan Region, by September 2025, he said, adding that the forces would depart that region by September 2026.

The pullout is “two-phased” and “maybe we will sign the agreement within the next few days,” Abbassi said.

He said his American counterpart Lloyd Austin had said at a meeting that “two years were not enough” to carry out the withdrawal, adding, however, that “we refused his proposal regarding an [extra] third year.”

Also on Sunday, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the country had “taken an important step towards resolving the issue of the coalition’s continued presence.”

He praised the Iraqi security forces, saying they were capable of sustaining the country’s stability and asserting, “We will not hesitate to complete the sovereignty of our country.”

There are nearly 2,500 American troops in Iraq and some 900 in neighboring Syria as part of the US-led coalition.

The coalition has retained its presence, although the Arab countries and their allies defeated Daesh in late 2017.

In 2020, the Iraqi parliament voted in favor of expulsion of the foreign forces after a US drone strike assassinated Iran’s top anti-terror commander, General Qassem Soleimani, and deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) counter-terrorism force, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, outside Baghdad International Airport.