US Forces on Track for Iraq Pullout    08/13 06:20

   The U.S. military is on track to pull all of its forces out of Iraq by the 
end of September, officials said Wednesday, marking the end of a presence that 
started with the 2003 invasion against Saddam Hussein.

   BAGHDAD (AP) -- The U.S. military is on track to pull all of its forces out 
of Iraq by the end of September, officials said Wednesday, marking the end of a 
presence that started with the 2003 invasion against Saddam Hussein.

   Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind down the much smaller U.S.-led 
operations against the Islamic State group.

   U.S. troops pulled out of bases in most areas of Iraq last year but 
maintained a presence in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region. Bases 
there have regularly come under attack since the U.S. and Israel launched the 
war on Iran on Feb. 28.

   Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi met with Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads the 
U.S. Central Command, on Wednesday. Al-Zaidi said in a statement afterward that 
he had affirmed Sept. 30 as the "fixed and final date for ending the military 
mission of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Iraq and completing the 
departure of its forces."

   A U.S. official confirmed that the U.S. expects to complete its pullout by 
Sept. 30, but declined to say how many troops remain in Iraq or where they 
would be redeployed.

   "The United States, Iraq and coalition partners have achieved tremendous 
success in defeating ISIS and now the Iraqi security forces, including the 
Peshmerga and other Iraqi Kurdistan Region security forces, will lead the fight 
against terrorists in Iraq," the official said.

   Two Iraqi Kurdish officials said a drawdown of U.S. troops and military 
equipment from Erbil began about three weeks ago.

   The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not 
authorized to comment publicly.

   The U.S. presence in Iraq grew to more than 170,000 troops at the peak of 
counterinsurgency operations in 2007. In December 2011, the final combat troops 
departed. But in 2014, the rise of the Islamic State group and its capture of a 
wide swath across Iraq and Syria brought U.S. forces back at the Iraqi 
government's invitation.

   After IS lost its hold on territory it once claimed, coalition military 
operations ended in 2021. The U.S. maintained about 2,500 troops in Iraq for 
training and to conduct counter-IS operations with Iraq's military.

   Iraq also wants to disarm non-state groups

   Iraq's prime minister has also set a Sept. 30 deadline for non-state armed 
groups in Iraq to give up their weapons, saying they will have no justification 
to carry arms once the foreign troops withdraw.

   Some Iraqi militias have justified their existence by pointing to the U.S. 
military presence, which they describe as an occupation, although the current 
U.S. mission came at the invitation of the Iraqi government after IS militants 
rampaged across the country in 2014, seizing large swaths of territory.

   It seems unlikely that the Iraqi government will meet its deadline for 
disarming non-state groups. Some of the country's most powerful Iran-backed 
militias and have said they have no intention of giving up their weapons.