Wrapping up mission, US troops will leave some longstanding bases in Iraq under new deal

US army soldiers queue to board a plane to begin their journey home out of Iraq from the al-Asad Air Base west the capital Baghdad, on November 1, 2011. (AFP file photo)
US army soldiers queue to board a plane to begin their journey home out of Iraq from the al-Asad Air Base west the capital Baghdad, on November 1, 2011. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 28 September 2024
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Wrapping up mission, US troops will leave some longstanding bases in Iraq under new deal

Wrapping up mission, US troops will leave some longstanding bases in Iraq under new deal
  • Under the plan, all coalition forces would leave the Ain Al-Asad air base in western Anbar province and significantly reduce their presence in Baghdad by September 2025

WASHINGTON: The US announced an agreement with the Iraqi government Friday to wrap up the military mission in Iraq of an American-led coalition fighting the Daesh group by next year, with US troops departing some bases that they have long occupied during a two-decade-long military presence in the country.
But the Biden administration refused to provide details on how many of the approximately 2,500 US troops still serving in Iraq will remain there or acknowledge it will mark a full withdrawal from the country.
“I think it’s fair to say that, you know, our footprint is going to be changing within the country,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Friday without providing specifics.
The announcement comes at a particularly contentious time for the Middle East, with escalating conflict between Israel and two Iranian-backed militant groups — Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza — threatening a broader regional war. Bases housing US forces and contractors have been regularly targeted by Iran-backed militias over the last several years, and those attacks intensified late last year and early this spring after the Israel-Hamas war broke out nearly a year ago.
For years, Iraqi officials have periodically called for a withdrawal of coalition forces, and formal talks to wind down the US presence in the country have been going on for months.
US officials who briefed reporters Friday said the agreement will bring about a two-phase transition in the troops assigned to Iraq that began this month. In the first phase, which runs through September 2025, the coalition mission against Daesh will end and forces will leave some longstanding bases.
Following the November election, American forces will start departing from Ain Al-Asad air base in western Iraq and from Baghdad International Airport, according to Iraqi government officials who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Those forces will be moved to Hareer base in Irbil, in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
In the second phase, the US will continue to operate in some fashion from Iraq through 2026 to support counter-Daesh operations in Syria, a senior Biden administration official and a senior defense official said on the condition of anonymity on a call with reporters to provide details ahead of the announcement.
Ultimately, the US military mission would transition to a bilateral security relationship, the US officials said, but they did not indicate what that might mean for the number of American troops who remain in Iraq in the future.
The Iraqi officials said some American troops may stay at Hareer base after 2026 because the Kurdistan regional government would like them to stay.
“We have taken an important step in resolving the issue of the international coalition to fight Daesh,” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Sudani said in a speech this month. He noted “the government’s belief in the capabilities of our security forces that defeated the remnants of Daesh.”
The continued presence of US troops has been a political vulnerability for Sudani, whose government is under increased influence from Iran. Iraq has long struggled to balance its ties with the US and Iran, both allies of the Iraqi government but regional archenemies.
“We thank the government for its position to expel the international coalition forces,” Qais Khazali, founder of Asaib Ahl Al-Haq — an Iran-backed Iraqi Shia militia that has conducted attacks against US forces in Iraq — said last week.
But critics caution that this year’s surge of Daesh attacks in Syria across the desert border from Iraq suggest the drawdown in Iraq is a “really significant cause for concern,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute research center in Washington.
The US withdrawal from Iraq isn’t because Daesh has disappeared, Lister said. “The withdrawal is because there’s a significant proportion of the policy-making community in Baghdad that doesn’t want American troops on Iraqi soil.”
The agreement marks the third time in the last two decades that the US has announced a formal transition of the military’s role there.
The US invaded Iraq in March 2003 in what it called a massive “shock and awe” bombing campaign that lit up the skies, laid waste to large sections of the country and paved the way for American ground troops to converge on Baghdad. The invasion was based on what turned out to be faulty claims that Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons never materialized.
The US presence grew to more than 170,000 troops at the peak of counterinsurgency operations in 2007. The Obama administration negotiated the drawdown of forces, and in December 2011, the final combat troops departed, leaving only a small number of military personnel behind to staff an office of security assistance and a detachment of Marines to guard the embassy compound.
In 2014, the rise of the Daesh group and its rapid capture of a wide swath across Iraq and Syria brought US and partner nation forces back at the invitation of the Iraqi government to help rebuild and retrain police and military units that had fallen apart and fled.
After Daesh lost its hold on the territory it once claimed, coalition military operations ended in 2021. An enduring US presence of about 2,500 troops stayed in Iraq to maintain training and conduct partnered counter-Daesh operations with Iraq’s military.
In the years since, the US has maintained that presence to pressure Iranian-backed militias active in Iraq and Syria. The presence of American forces in Iraq also makes it more difficult for Iran to move weapons across Iraq and Syria into Lebanon, for use by its proxies, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, against Israel.
 

 


Explosions heard near Damascus, Syrian state news agency says

Explosions heard near Damascus, Syrian state news agency says
Updated 4 sec ago
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Explosions heard near Damascus, Syrian state news agency says

Explosions heard near Damascus, Syrian state news agency says

DAMASCUS: Explosions were heard in the areas surrounding Syria’s capital Damascus and authorities were investigating, the Syrian state news agency said on Sunday.


At least 23 killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon's Almat, ministry says

At least 23 killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon's Almat, ministry says
Updated 10 November 2024
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At least 23 killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon's Almat, ministry says

At least 23 killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon's Almat, ministry says
  • Strike on Sunday occurred in the village of Aalmat, north of Beirut, and far from the areas in the south and east of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a major presence

BEIRUT: At least 20 people, including three children, were killed and six others injured in an Israeli strike on Almat in Lebanon’s Mount Lebanon province, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday.
Three people were also killed and two others wounded in an Israeli strike on Mashghara in the western part of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley late on Saturday, while one person was killed and four others injured in a strike on Sahmar, also in western Bekaa, that occurred the same night, the health ministry added.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which says it is targeting Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.


UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media

UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media
Updated 10 November 2024
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UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media

UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media

TEHRAN: The chief of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, will visit Iran in days for talks with senior officials, Iranian state media reported on Sunday.
“The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency will arrive in Iran on Wednesday ... at the official invitation of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the official IRNA news agency reported.
Grossi will meet Iranian officials on Thursday, the agency added.
The IAEA confirmed Grossi’s visit to Iran this week, without specifying the date in a post on X.
It said the visit would include talks with Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi.
The agency also quoted Grossi as calling for “substantive progress” on a March 2023 deal that had outlined basic cooperation, including on safeguards and monitoring.
In a September interview with AFP, Grossi said Iran was showing “willingness” to re-engage on the nuclear issue, but it was not willing to walk back on a decision it took to ban some of the IAEA’s inspectors.
Iran withdrew the accreditation of several inspectors last year, a move the UN agency described at the time as “extreme and unjustified.”
Tehran had said then its decision was a consequence of “political abuses” by the United States, France, Germany and Britain.
Grossi last visited Iran in May, when he called for “concrete” measures to help bolster cooperation on Iran’s nuclear program at a news conference in Isfahan province, home to the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.
His visit this month will come after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.
During his first term in office, Trump unilaterally withdrew Washington from a pivotal nuclear deal that aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.
Efforts mediated by the European Union have failed to bring Washington back on board and to get Tehran to again comply with the terms of the accord.
Iran has rolled back its commitments to caps on nuclear activities under the deal, and tensions have repeatedly flared between Tehran and the IAEA over its compliance.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, who took office in July, has favored reviving that agreement and called for ending his country’s isolation.
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he was “not looking to do damage to Iran” but noted that Iran “can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
Iran has always denied having ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon, insisting its activities are entirely peaceful.
On Saturday, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Javad Zarif urged Trump to reassess his “maximum pressure” policy which has seen the US impose punishing sanctions on Tehran.
He blamed that policy for leading to the surge in enrichment levels “to reach 60 percent from 3.5 percent.”
Enrichment levels of around 90 percent are required for military use.
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Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum

Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum
Updated 10 November 2024
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Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum

Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum
  • They managed to capture 3D footage of around 50 former Daesh jails and 30 mass graves before they were transformed
  • In total they have documented 100 prison sites, interviewed more than 500 survivors and digitised over 70,000 Daesh documents.

Paris: After jihadists jailed him in 2014, Iraqi religious scholar Muhammad Al-Attar said he would sometimes pull his prison blanket over his head to cry without other detainees noticing.
Daesh group extremists arrested Attar, then 37, at his perfume shop in Mosul in June 2014 after overrunning the Iraqi city, hoping to convince the respected community leader to join them.
But the former preacher refused to pledge allegiance, and they threw him into prison where he was tortured.
In his group cell of at least 148 detainees at Mosul’s Ahdath prison, at times “there was nothing left but to weep,” Attar said.
But “I couldn’t bear the thought of the younger men seeing me cry. They would have broken down.”
So he hid under his blanket.
Daesh, also called Daesh, seized control of large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq and declared a so-called caliphate there in 2014, implementing its brutal interpretation of religion on inhabitants.
The militants banned smoking, mandated beards for men and head-to-toe coverings for women, publicly executed homosexuals and cut off the hands of thieves.
They threw perceived informants or “apostates” into prison or makeshift jails, many of whom never returned.
Attar’s story is one of more than 500 testimonies that dozens of journalists, filmmakers and human rights activists in Syria and Iraq have collected since 2017 as part of an online archive called the Daesh Prisons Museum.
The website, which includes virtual visits of former jihadist detention centers and numerous tales about life inside them, became public this month.
The project is holding its first physical exhibition, including virtual reality tours, at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the UN’s culture and education agency, until November 14.
Syrian journalist Amer Matar, 38, is director of the web-based museum.
“IS abducted my brother in 2013, and we started to look for him,” he told AFP.
After US-backed forces started to expel jihadists from parts of Syria and Iraq in 2017, “I and my team got the chance to go inside certain former IS prisons,” he said.
They found thousands of prison documents from the group whose caliphate was eventually defeated in 2019, but also detainee scratchings on the walls.
Etched inside the football stadium in the Syrian city of Raqqa, for example, the team found prisoner names and Qur’anic verses, as well as lyrics from a 1996 television drama about peace eventually prevailing.
Inside one solitary cell, they discovered exercise instructions to keep fit in English.
Matar says he was detained twice at the start of the Syrian civil war, in a government jail for covering protests against President Bashar Assad.
“I too would write my name on the wall because I didn’t know if I’d get out or if they’d kill me,” he said.
“People usually write their names, cries for help or stories about someone who was killed,” he added.
“They’re messages into the future so that people can find someone.”
Matar and his team decided to film the former prison sites and archive all the material within them before they disappeared.
“Many were homes, clinics, government buildings, schools or shops” that people were returning to and starting to repair, said Matar, who is now based in Germany.
They managed to capture 3D footage of around 50 former Daesh jails and 30 mass graves before they were transformed, he said.
In total they have documented 100 prison sites, interviewed more than 500 survivors and digitised over 70,000 Daesh documents.
Younes Qays, a 30-year-old journalist from Mosul, was in charge of data collection in Iraq.
“To hear and see the crimes inflicted on my people was really tough,” he said, recounting being particularly shocked by the tale of a woman from the Yazidi minority who was raped 11 times in IS captivity.
Robin Yassin-Kassab, the website’s English editor, said the project aimed to “gather information and cross-reference it” so it could be used in court.
“We want legal teams around the world to know that we exist so that they can come and ask us for evidence,” he said.
Matar has not found his brother.
But within the coming year, he hopes to launch a sister website called Jawab, “Answer” in Arabic, to help others find out what happened to their loved ones.


Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say

Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say
Updated 10 November 2024
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Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say

Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say
  • The first strike on a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza killed ‘at least 25’ people

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Dozens of people were killed and wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip at dawn on Sunday, Palestinian medics said.
Footage circulating on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed about a dozen bodies wrapped in blankets and laid to the ground at a hospital. Residents said the building that was hit had housed at least 30 people.
The Palestinian official news agency WAFA and Hamas media put the number of people killed at 32. There was no immediate confirmation of the tally by the territory’s health ministry.
The Civil Emergency Service says its operations have been halted by an ongoing Israeli raid into two towns and a refugee camp in northern Gaza that began on Oct 5. It also could not provide a figure for those killed in the attack.
Israel says it sent forces into Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in the north of the enclave to fight Hamas militants waging attacks from there and to prevent them from regrouping. It says its troops have killed hundreds of militants in those areas since the new offensive began.
In Gaza City, an Israeli airstrike on a house in Sabra neighborhood killed Wael Al-Khour, an official at the Welfare Ministry, and seven other members of his family including his wife and children on Sunday, medics and relatives said.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports on the strike in Jabalia and in the Sabra neighborhood.