The U.S. military announced Wednesday it has completed its withdrawal from Iraq – ending a 12-year mission to fight the Daesh terrorist group – after The last troops departed a northern air base under an agreement between Baghdad and Washington.
The withdrawal, agreed on two years ago, comes against the backdrop of the ongoing war between the United States and Iran that has also sometimes spilled over into Iraq, with Iran-backed militias firing on U.S. troops and the U.S. striking the groups' strongholds.
Baghdad touted the end of the U.S. mission as a sign of the country's increasing strength and sovereignty.
The withdrawal was also celebrated by Iran-backed groups but raised concerns among some other Iraqis, particularly in the northern semi-autonomous region. Meanwhile, questions loom around the future of the Iraqi militias, which the Baghdad government has sought – with little success so far – to disarm.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement that U.S. troops and equipment had completed an "orderly departure" from the air base in Erbil, in northern Iraq's Kurdish-majority region.
"This milestone reflects the success of a 12-year campaign that defeated ISIS (Daesh) as an organized 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 U.S. 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."
He said Iraqi security forces will continue the fight against Daesh and the government will ensure that non-state groups no longer hold weapons.
U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein. They departed in 2011, but three years later, Iraqi authorities invited a smaller U.S.-led mission to fight Daesh, which had rampaged across Iraq, seizing large swaths of territory.
With the terrorist group reduced to scattered sleeper cells, Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind the mission down.
U.S. troops pulled out of bases in most areas of Iraq last year but maintained a small presence of hundreds of troops in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region.
Bases there have regularly come under attack since the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran on Feb. 28. Iran-backed Iraqi militias also have coordinated with Yemen’s Houthi rebels to attack Saudi Arabia.
The Iraqi government initially linked the Sept. 30 deadline for U.S. withdrawal to the disarmament of non-state armed groups by that date.
While a handful of less-influential militias have agreed to turn over their weapons, powerful groups close to Iran rejected the prospect or set conditions for disarming that the government would be unlikely to meet.
Al-Zaidi has since walked back the deadline. He told The New York Times earlier this month that the deadline for militia disarmament has been pushed to June 2027.
The effects of the U.S. withdrawal may not be immediately visible, particularly since the U.S. military presence had already been scaled down. But officials in northern Iraq have expressed anxiety about the departure and particularly about the removal of U.S. air defense systems.
The Kurdish authorities said that the region had faced more than 1,000 drone and ballistic-missile attacks during the recent U.S.-Iran conflict.
"The departure of the United States from the ... 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, meanwhile, have celebrated the U.S. withdrawal.
"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 powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia, said in a statement.
He added a warning to al-Zaidi and his government not to carry out American plans, threatening that "any government that does not work for the benefit of the people will be overthrown by all means."
