On Friday the governments of Iraq and the United States reached a landmark agreement for the final exit of all US-coalition troops from the territory of Iraq.
Several sources confirmed to Reuters that hundreds of still remaining American and Western allied troops will pull out of the country by September 2025, with the remainder to exit by the close of 2026.
It will bring to an end an almost quarter-century occupation which began with the 2003 'shock and awe' bombing of Baghdad and full-scale invasion under the Bush-Cheney administration. The US overthrew Saddam Hussein and the country suffered many years of chaos, an anti-US insurgency, and the rise of terror groups like AQI and ISIS. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died, and by some estimates one million perished. Several thousands of US and coalition troops died.
Further, the government that replace Saddam has been, ironically enough, allied with Tehran and dominated by Shia politicians and their interests.
A senior US official told Reuters Friday, "We have an agreement, its now just a question of when to announce it." In recent years, the Pentagon has sought to justify its remaining in Iraq as necessary to combat ISIS.
But for years there have been widespread efforts in Iraqi parliament and among the population to force the foreign troops out. Political leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan (in the north), however, have been the most friendly to the US presence.
More recently, US bases and even the embassy have come under attack by Iran-aligned Shia paramilitary groups. The Iraqi Army has long been accused of giving these paramilitary groups free reign, and even cooperates with them in many cases.
The US withdrawal was supposed to happen earlier this summer but was put on hold amid escalation between Israel and Iran. Reuters reports the following statement of the Iraqi government:
Farhad Alaaldin, foreign affairs adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, said technical talks with Washington on the coalition drawdown had concluded.
"We are now on the brink of transitioning the relationship between Iraq and members of the international coalition to a new level, focusing on bilateral relations in military, security, economic, and cultural areas," he said.
The Pentagon has long been worried that a full pullout from Iraq would leave American troops in Syria more exposed. US troops in Syria have been supported logistically from the Iraq side of the border. However, the Syrian government and its allied groups in Iraq have long charged American forces with looting Syrian oil, ferrying it across the border into Iraq.
Friday's announcement follows Biden's controversial rapid troop exit from Afghanistan in Aug.2021, which left many deaths, including among Marines and other service members, along with hundreds of Afghan civilians...
Currently the US is believed to have some 2,500 US troops still in Iraq, many of them Army intelligence and special forces advisors, and 900 in neighboring Syria. However, the number of contractors and intelligence officers is likely much greater. Even after the final US troops depart Iraq, an entire army of private contractors is expected to remain.