US troops leave Iraq, ending 12-year anti-ISIS mission
The US military said on Wednesday that it had completed the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq, ending a 12-year mission against the Islamic State group. The last American troops left the air base in Irbil in northern Iraq, in a move Baghdad presented as a sign of the country’s growing strength and sovereignty.
The withdrawal comes amid the ongoing war between the United States and Iran, which has at times spilled into Iraq. While Iran-backed groups welcomed the exit, some Iraqis, especially in the Kurdish region, voiced concern about the security impact of the departure.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement that US troops and equipment had completed an “orderly departure” from the air base in Irbil, in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. “This milestone reflects the success of a 12-year campaign that defeated ISIS as an organised military threat in Iraq and across the region,” he said. “It also marks a transition from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort supported by a more normal bilateral security relationship.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi presided over the handover ceremony and described the US withdrawal as the beginning of “a new phase, one defined by Iraq’s sovereignty, the strength of its institutions, the readiness of its forces, the unity of its decision-making, and balanced partnerships with its friends”. US troops invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein and left in 2011. They returned three years later after Iraqi authorities invited a smaller US-led mission to fight the Islamic State group, which had seized large parts of the country. With the group now reduced to scattered sleeper cells, Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind the mission down.
US troops had already left bases in most parts of Iraq last year, with only a small presence of hundreds of troops remaining in the Kurdish region. Those bases have regularly come under attack since the US and Israel launched their war against Iran on February 28. Iran-backed Iraqi militias have also coordinated with Yemen’s Houthi rebels to attack Saudi Arabia. The Iraqi government had initially linked the September 30 withdrawal deadline to the disarmament of non-state armed groups by that date. But while a few smaller militias agreed to hand over their weapons, powerful groups close to Iran rejected the idea or set conditions the government was unlikely to meet. Al-Zaidi later stepped back from that deadline and told The New York Times earlier this month that the deadline for militia disarmament had been pushed to June 2027.
Officials in Iraq’s Kurdish region have said the effects of the US withdrawal may not be immediately visible because the American military presence had already been reduced, but they remain worried, especially about the removal of US air defence systems. The Kurdistan regional government’s Peshmerga Ministry said the region had faced more than 1,000 drone and ballistic missile attacks during the recent US-Iran conflict. “The departure of the United States from the Kurdistan Region under these complex regional circumstances, without the provision of a defense system, is a matter of concern,” the statement said. Iran-allied groups in Iraq, however, celebrated the move. “The expulsion of the occupation forces, defeated, from the land of Iraq is the beginning of full sovereignty,” Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, a security official with the Kataib Hezbollah militia, said in a statement. He also warned al-Zaidi and his government against carrying out American plans, saying that “any government that does not work for the benefit of the people will be overthrown by all means”.
The withdrawal ends the latest US military mission in Iraq, with Baghdad calling it a step towards sovereignty, Kurdish authorities raising security concerns and Iran-backed militias hailing it as a victory.
