Withdrawal of US troops from Iraq: end of two-decade-old military presence

The remaining American troops present in Iraq are returning by September 30. With this, America's more than two decade old military presence there will end. This presence has had a deep impact on Iraq for a long time.

It began with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which toppled the government of Saddam Hussein. After this the country faced several years of insurgency and violence between different religious communities.

US troops left Iraq in 2011, but returned in 2014 to help defeat the Islamic State group.

This withdrawal of American troops is taking place at a time when the ongoing tension with Iran has once again put American personnel and soldiers present in Iraq at risk of attacks.

However, experts say America's influence in Iraq will not end with the departure of troops.

Officially, this withdrawal of American troops is taking place in 2024 under the agreement between Washington and Baghdad.

In this agreement, it was agreed to end 'Operation Inherent Resolve'. This was a campaign by the US-led coalition against IS.

When the Iraq War was at its peak in 2007, more than 1 lakh 70 thousand American soldiers were deployed in the country. According to the US Central Command, before the agreement on withdrawal of troops, this number had reduced to about 2,400 by December 2023.

"The withdrawal of US troops was agreed to by the previous Iraqi government, as the campaign to defeat ISIS in Iraq had achieved its goal," says Safwan al-Amin, non-resident senior fellow in the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

Douglas Silliman, who was the US ambassador to Iraq from 2016 to 2019, says that successive Iraqi governments have been under pressure to end the presence of US troops.

HA Hellyer, senior associate fellow at British think tank RUSI, says, "This is not a matter of ISIS, but of a threat. America was beginning to feel that its soldiers and personnel left there could easily become targets of attacks."

More than two decades after the US invasion of Iraq, opinion remains divided about America's military legacy there. Al-Amin describes this as "a mixed bag of good and bad results."

Yerevan Saeed, director of the Global Kurdish Initiative for Peace, believes there is more political freedom in Iraq now than before 2003.

Al-Amin does not consider the withdrawal of troops to be the end of American influence in Iraq. "The United States still has a lot of influence over Iraq, because Iraq depends on the US dollar for oil sales," he says.

The biggest uncertainty is regarding Iran-backed fighting groups in Iraq. Experts believe that these groups have deep influence in the political and economic system, due to which it is a big challenge to bring them under government control.