A spokesman for the government of Iraq confirmed on Monday that the U.S. military and its coalition partners are on schedule to withdraw from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the country by September 30, a deadline Baghdad imposed on both the U.S. to withdraw and on Iranian proxy terror organizations to disarm.
The American military has been active in Iraq since the response to the Al Qaeda jihadist attacks on September 11, 2001, toppling the government of dictator Saddam Hussein before leading the effort against the Islamic State (ISIS) in the past decade. The ISIS coalition is a separate program that Washington is reportedly reframing as a “security partnership” with the Iraqi government and other partners rather than a unilateral military mission in the country. Alongside the KRG’s Peshmerga forces, the U.S. military helped liberate the country’s second-largest city, Mosul, from Islamic State rule and continues to operate to prevent a resurgence of the jihadist terror organization, but the collapse of the Islamic State “caliphate” occurred almost a decade ago.
While avoiding each other during the fight against mutual enemy ISIS, the U.S. military coalition and a coalition of jihadist, Iran-backed terrorist groups known as the “Popular Mobilization Forces” (PMF) have increasingly seen each other as threats in the aftermath of the fall of the ISIS “caliphate.” The Iraqi government formalized the PMF as a wing of its armed forces during the “caliphate” war, but never asserted federal control over them, leaving them to serve as terror proxies for Iran in the country following the end of the “caliphate” in 2017.
The United States and the government of Iraq agreed to a deal in which the Pentagon would withdraw its forces from the KRG by September 30 in 2024. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has since also implemented a program to disarm the various factions in the PMF and integrate their forces into one coherent military structure, giving the terror gangs the same deadline to hand over their weapons and accept the sovereignty of the Iraqi state over them. Many PMF factions, including those most closely associated with Tehran, are refusing to accept the deadline, using the U.S. military’s presence in the country as an excuse.
The administration of President Donald Trump is reportedly abiding by the deadline, the Emirati newspaper The National reported government spokesman Haider Al Aboudi as saying on Monday.
“Coordination is ongoing with the international coalition and work is underway to inventory the sites and hand them over to the competent Iraqi forces,” Al Aboudi explained to reporters. “The work is proceeding at an organised pace towards completing this file on September 30, and these sites will be in the custody of Iraqi security agencies.”
The National observed that Al Aboudi’s comments are the first time Washington or Baghdad confirm that the plan to withdraw by the end of September was advancing on schedule. The plan does not appear to mean that the United States will not operate any military assets whatsoever in the country, but merely that the parameters of the operations will shift to reflect Iraq’s growing stability as a country and participation in its own defense. The newspaper noted that “Iraqi forces will assume responsibility for bases previously used by coalition trainers” following the deadline.
A major challenge for the transition will be ensuring that the absence of U.S. and coalition forces does not create power vacuums between the KRG, which acts largely autonomously out of the city of Erbil, and the Iraqi military led by Baghdad, which could allow for the resurgence of ISIS. The Iraqi military continues to announce operations to neutralize ISIS terrorists within its territory, most recently revealing on Monday that it had identified and destroyed eight ISIS sleeper cell hideouts in Kirkuk. The Kurdish Peshmerga took over Kirkuk after the Iraqi military abandoned it to an ISIS attack in 2014 and forcibly withdrew in 2017, leaving it vulnerable to attack.
“Several concentrated airstrikes were carried out against the terrorists’ locations using Cessna Caravan aircraft,” the Iraqi Security Media Cell (SMC) announced on Monday, claiming “complete destruction” of the targets, according to the Kurdish news outlet Rudaw. Rudaw observed that “disputed areas between Erbil and Baghdad” continue to pose a security threat as ISIS takes advantage of them, citing Diyala, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Salahaddin as especially problematic.
Despite security concerns, the KRG has gone out of its way to claim that the relationship between Erbil and Baghdad has improved significantly. Former KRG President Masoud Barzani, who still runs the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), recently declared their mutual relationship “very good, with a high level of understanding and coordination.” Similarly, on August 6, KRG President Nechirvan Barzani celebrated “productive” talks with Prime Minister al-Zaidi and offered his support for Baghdad’s program to disarm and integrate the PMF.
“We affirmed the Region’s support and joint efforts to ensure the successful implementation of the government program,” Nechirvan Barzani announced in a social media statement, adding that they had discussed “confining weapons to the state and accelerating the achievement of national priorities — foremost among them consolidating security and stability, advancing the development process, and improving the level of services.”
The PMF disarmament process appears to be going less smoothly than the withdrawal of the U.S. coalition. Multiple PMF leaders have refused to participate outright, while others state that disarming when the United States remains active in the country remains impossible.
“The state must possess a capable defense system that ensures full sovereignty over its waters, land, and airspace,” Ali al-Daffayi, spokesperson for the Shiite-led Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), told Rudaw. “There must be a genuine departure of foreign forces, American troops, and Coalition forces.”
The Iraqi government claimed on Monday that it had shut down 71 “ghost” bases run by PMF terror groups and so far registered 500,000 weapons in PMF fighters’ possession.
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