Counter-militant mission to continue from Jordan, U.S. official says
The United States on Wednesday formally withdrew the last of its forces and equipment from Iraq — 2,500 troops and other military personnel — bringing to a close more than two decades of military involvement. The Pentagon said the United States was handing off to the Iraqis, with spokesman Sean Parnell saying the pullout from bases in the country represented a “transition from a war-time coalition to an Iraqi-led security effort.”
“The primary responsibility for addressing Iraq’s remaining security challenges, including ISIS remnants and Iran-aligned militias that undermine Iraqi sovereignty and regional stability, now rests with the Government of Iraq,” Parnell said.
The withdrawal was the second U.S. attempt to disentangle itself from Iraq. The first came in 2011, after a years-long effort to stabilize the country following the 2003 invasion and occupation by a U.S.-led international coalition that toppled the regime of the dictator Saddam Hussein. That first deployment cost the lives of 4,500 U.S. troops, hundreds of personnel from coalition-partner forces and at least 115,000 Iraqis, many of them civilians.
In 2014, Operation Inherent Resolve brought U.S. forces back into Iraq to confront the Islamic State after the Sunni jihadist group occupied large areas of the country, conducted mass killings of Shiite Muslim Iraqis, posted executions of hostages online and committed atrocities against the country’s Yazidi minority and Yazidi women in particular, in what was later confirmed as a genocide. Violence continued before and during the second deployment, with more Americans killed along with tens of thousands of Iraqis.
A U.S. official told The Washington Post that the mission, for which the Biden administration set an official end date in 2024, would carry on but from across the border in Jordan. Jordan, an ally where the United States already has military bases, enables the U.S. military to mount offensive operations against militants threatening its personnel and U.S. interests, according to the official.
The pullout was being held up in Tehran as the triumph of years of effort to gain ground in Iraq by exploiting the instability of its neighbor, including through pro-Iranian political and paramilitary groups that operate on both sides of the Iran-Iraq border. On the military side, the Popular Mobilization Forces — originally set up to take on the Islamic State — is now a 200,000-strong force effectively operating as Iranian proxies from within the Iraqi military, according to analysts who said the PMF had mounted drone and missile attacks against American troops.
The Iraqi government attempted to impose a similar timeline on the Iranian-backed armed groups as that for U.S. forces, but Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has been forced to push forward the deadline to June after the groups failed to heed calls to demobilize.