Officials say US forces on track to complete Iraq pullout by September 30

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — The US military is on track to pull all of its forces out of Iraq by the end of September, officials said Wednesday, marking the end of a presence that started with the 2003 invasion and beginning of the Iraq War.

Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind down the much smaller US-led operations against the Islamic State jihadist group in the country.

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US troops pulled out of bases in most areas of Iraq last year but maintained a presence in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region. Bases there have regularly come under attack since the US and Israel launched the war with Iran on February 28.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi met with Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads the US Central Command, on Wednesday. Al-Zaidi said in a statement afterward that he had affirmed September 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 US official confirmed that the US expects to complete its pullout by September 30, but declined to say how many 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 a drawdown of US troops and military equipment from Erbil began about three weeks ago.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The US presence in Iraq grew to more than 170,000 troops at the peak of counterinsurgency operations in 2007 during the Iraq War. In December 2011, the final combat troops departed. But in 2014, the rise of ISIS and its capture of a wide swath across Iraq and Syria brought US forces back at the Iraqi government’s invitation.

After ISIS lost its hold on territory it once claimed, coalition military operations ended in 2021. The US maintained about 2,500 troops in Iraq for training and to conduct counter-IS operations with Iraq’s military.

Iraq’s prime minister has also set a September 30 deadline for non-state armed groups in Iraq to give up their weapons, saying they will have no justification to carry arms once the foreign troops withdraw.

Some Iraqi militias have justified their existence by pointing to the US military presence, which they describe as an occupation, although the current US mission came at the invitation of the Iraqi government.

It seems unlikely that the Iraqi government will meet its deadline for disarming non-state groups. Some of the country’s most powerful Iran-backed militias have said they have no intention of giving up their weapons.

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