WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. announced an agreement with the Iraqi government Friday to wrap up the military mission in Iraq of an American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group by next year, with U.S.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. announced an agreement with the Iraqi government Friday to wrap up the military mission in Iraq of an American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group by next year, with U.S. troops departing some bases that they have long occupied during a two-decade-long military presence in the country.
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 U.S. 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.
Following the November election, American forces will start departing from Ain al-Asad airbase 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 Erbil, in northern Iraq's Kurdistan region.
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 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 U.S. forces in Iraq — said last week.
The U.S. 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.
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