Believing that foreign troops should leave Iraq, while questioning whether this is the right moment for them to do so and whether the country is ready for what’s next, should not be mutually exclusive.
Iraq has spent years calling for an end to US military presence. The US-led coalition’s mission has changed significantly since ISIS controlled large swathes of the country and of neighbouring Syria, and Baghdad has every right to want to regain control over its own security.
But the departure of foreign forces does not resolve Iraq’s security problems; it merely changes who has to deal with them.
ISIS remains a threat, even if nowhere near the force it was more than a decade ago when the Iraqi government requested foreign assistance to defeat it. The government is still trying to bring armed groups under greater state control. The deadline for this was also supposed to be today, but Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi has said that he instead expects the process to be completed by June next year. Iran has spent the past two decades building political and military influence inside Iraq that will not disappear simply because American troops have left.
The risk is not that Iraq will suddenly once again be handed over to Iranian interests by the US. That is too simplistic for a country where political power is divided among competing parties, armed groups and state institutions.
The real question is whether Baghdad can strengthen the state quickly enough to prevent other centres of power from filling the space left by the departing Americans.
The withdrawal of the US does not mean this is the end of American involvement in Iraq. US officials have already described the next phase as a broader bilateral relationship involving defence and economic co-operation. Mr Al Zaidi enjoys good relations with US President Donald Trump, with the two leaders having already met twice since he became Prime Minister in May. But the Iran war has exposed just how difficult Baghdad’s balancing of relations with Tehran and Washington is.
The war turned Iraq into a proxy battleground, with militia groups launching attacks not only at US assets, but also at neighbouring countries, straining Baghdad’s relations with key Gulf partners.
For years, Iraq’s political elite argued that foreign troops were a violation of sovereignty. But sovereignty requires a government that exerts meaningful control over the country’s security. If foreign forces leave while powerful non-state armed groups retain significant autonomy, Iraq will have achieved one part of that equation without addressing the other.
The Kurdistan Region faces a similar problem.
For the Kurds, the diminishing American role is not just a question of whether Washington is abandoning them again. The more important question is whether Kurdish political leaders have done enough to prepare for a security environment in which they will have to rely more heavily on one another.
Progress has been made on matters such as the unification of the Peshmerga, but the divide between its main governing parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, remains a fundamental weakness. Next month will mark two years since the Kurdistan Region held parliamentary elections yet it still has not formed a new government due to the deadlock caused by disagreements between the two parties. This lack of a unified a stance gives Baghdad the upper hand in any dispute or negotiation with Erbil.
As Baghdad pushes for a greater monopoly over armed power, the distinction between federal and regional security forces could become a more contentious question. Already, some Iran-aligned groups have argued that bringing the Peshmerga under military command should be part of the same process that is forcing other armed factions to come under state control. While constitutionally complicated, it is a symbolic call.
The internal Kurdish divisions matter more when American military involvement is reduced, particularly without defensive systems in place to protect against attacks by Iran or Iraqi militia groups.
The answer cannot simply be to ask the US to stay. On the contrary, the departure of US troops makes Kurdish unity more urgent.
The same applies to Baghdad. The end of foreign military presence should not be measured by how fast the troops leave, but by what the Iraqi state is able to do after they are gone.
Is Iraq equipped to prevent ISIS from regrouping and resurging? Will armed groups be brought under state authority, especially now that their raison d’etre is removed from the equation? Can it manage its relationship with Iran without allowing Iranian influence to expand even further? Those are the questions that will determine what this withdrawal means.
Iraq has spent years asking US forces to leave, but the end of the foreign military presence should not be mistaken for the end of its security problems.
US troops have left before, in 2011, eight years after the invasion that toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein. Four years later, it was Iraq that invited them back to help defeat ISIS.
