Iraq has been an effectively occupied country since the illegal invasion by American and British troops in the spring of 2003. Since 2014, when the US launched its military coalition against the terrorist organisation “Islamic State” (ISIS), Washington has tried to sell the occupation as a “security measure”.
The US has thus repeatedly delayed announcing a timetable for their exit. Pentagon officials have tried to point to the danger of ISIS in US-controlled regions of Syria as the reason for their refusal to leave, but Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said at the beginning of September that ISIS no longer posed a threat to his country.
The Iraqi government has therefore agreed with Washington on a gradual withdrawal of American troops. The withdrawal of soldiers will take place in two stages, said Iraqi Defense Minister Thabet al-Abbassi. He hopes that the corresponding agreement will be officially signed “in the next few days”. An exact timetable has not yet been set.
In addition, US troops are to leave the autonomous Kurdish areas in northern Iraq by September 2026. Washington decreed the de facto independence of the Kurdish areas after Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003.
The news of a two-year timetable for the exit of US troops from Iraq coincides with Washington’s significant reinforcement of its occupation bases in neighboring Syria, however.
Washington insider Gary Vogler has accused US troops of stealing Syrian oil to the Iraqi Kurdistan region, where it was mixed with Kurdish oil and transported to Turkiye for further delivery to Israel. Vogler is a West Point graduate, retired army reserve lieutenant colonel, retired ExxonMobil executive with 21 years, five months of Iraq oil planning at the Pentagon followed by 75 months in Iraq, and he served as Oil Minister during the first 10 days in Baghdad in April 2003.
An agreement on the withdrawal of the Americans from Iraq would clearly be Washington’s next strategic defeat. In March the new transitional government in Niger formally ended its partnership with the US and enforced the withdrawal of American troops stationed in the country.
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