New Delhi: Ending a 23-year military presence that began with the 2003 invasion, which removed Saddam Hussein from power, the United States has completed the withdrawal of its military forces from Iraq. The last US troops and equipment left the Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq on September 30. The move ended the US military mission against the Islamic State (ISIS) in the country.
The US military has said its Iraq mission has ended after Iraqi security and Kurdish Peshmerga forces took responsibility for the fight against ISIS. The US-led coalition will continue its counter-ISIS operations in Syria from a headquarters in Jordan.
The United States first entered Iraq in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein’s government. Iraqi Kurdistan has faced more than 1,000 drone and ballistic-missile attacks during the recent US-Iran war, according to officials cited by ABC. He compared the present situation with the period after the 2011 US withdrawal, when political tensions between the Shia-led government and Sunni communities led to conditions that later helped ISIS gain support.
Former US Ambassador to Iraq Douglas Silliman has said that successive Iraqi governments faced pressure to withdraw US troops. “Under pressure from Iran-affiliated groups and elements of the Shia community, some Iraqi governments have tried to make sure that American troops leave the country,” he told BBC. The ISIS argument was over years ago,” he said. “The Shia-led government in Baghdad began arresting Sunni leaders and excluding them from the political process,” he wrote, arguing that this contributed to radicalisation and helped create conditions for the rise of the ISIS. He said Iraqi security forces are much stronger than they were a decade ago and have greater experience in dealing with militant groups.
The invasion was followed by years of insurgency and violence between different religious and political groups. HA Hellyer, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK-based defence and security think tank, has argued that the reason for the withdrawal is not simply the formal end of the anti-ISIS mission. “This is about the threat, not the ISIS. The ongoing regional conflict has also increased the security risks around US positions. American bases in northern Iraq came under repeated attacks during the military confrontation with Iran. Kurdish officials have also expressed worries about the removal of American air-defence systems. Saeed warned about the possibility of an ISIS comeback. Silliman has a different assessment of Iraq’s ability to deal with such a threat.
