US Troop Withdrawal from Iraq Leaves Security Questions

For the Iraqi government in Baghdad, 3>’, 30 September 2026 marks the end of an era. “1 October will be a new day in the journey of the Iraqi nation, with a country free from the presence of foreign military and the realisation of full national sovereignty over its territory,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi in a statement.

This moment will be celebrated as an “Independence Day” with four days of official public holidays.

On Wednesday (30/09), the United States will complete the withdrawal of its final 2,500 troops from Iraqi territory in accordance with the 2024 agreement. Their departure ends the 12-year US-led ‘Operation Inherent Resolve’ mission against the Islamic State (ISIS), which was then attacking Iraq and Syria.

This withdrawal also marks the end of more than two decades of US military involvement in Iraq. Following the 2003 US invasion, US forces withdrew in 2011 and returned in 2014 to combat ISIS. This move is also part of a broader US strategy to reduce its military presence in the Middle East.

However, the US withdrawal does not mean the end of all foreign military deployments in Iraq. Turkey still maintains troops in Iraq, although Ankara stated earlier this week that it would gradually hand over a military base in northern Iraq to Baghdad.

“In 2024, Baghdad and Washington agreed on what they called a normalised relationship,” Renad Mansour, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa programme and director of the Iraq Initiative at the Chatham House think tank in London, told DW. “For Baghdad, the political goal now is to make it clear that Iraq wants to remain an ally of the US,” he said.

According to him, Iraqi PM Ali al-Zaidi is concerned that Washington might begin to view Iraq and Iran-backed non-state militias as being too close to Tehran, given that the US and Israel are currently in conflict with Iran.

Baghdad extends disarmament deadline

Initially, Baghdad linked the end of the US military mission to the disarmament of various armed groups and militias in Iraq. The plan also included bringing these paramilitary groups under state control.

Iraqi PM Ali al-Zaidi said last week that the new deadline is 30 June 2027. The revised plan includes a 90-day period during which armed groups will not attack in exchange for guarantees that US forces will not target them, followed by a gradual surrender of weapons to be completed by 30 June 2027.

However, not all armed groups are likely to follow this plan. Several powerful armed groups have rejected disarmament or proposed conditions that could delay the process.

“The most hardline armed groups, Kata’ib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, have so far shown no signs of being ready to surrender weapons to the state and join the Iraqi armed forces,” said Alina L. Romanowski, visiting researcher at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, an Atlantic Council programme.

Renad Mansour told DW that he was not surprised by this extension. Iraq’s political landscape has been highly fragmented since the US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in April 2003. There have been over eight years of war, the rise and fall of ISIS, and the US withdrawal in 2011 and return in 2014.

“Many political movements are linked to armed organisations, so it is difficult to see a revolution in the security sector happening in the near future,” he told DW, predicting that “even next year, many armed groups will remain free from central government control.”

What does this mean for Iraqi minorities?

The US withdrawal also includes the departure of military personnel and the removal of US air defence systems in Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. Kurdistan PM Masrur Barzani has already called for protection from Baghdad against missile and drone attacks from Iran. Since the start of the US-Israel-Iran conflict in February, attacks by Iraqi pro-Iran armed groups on US-related targets in Erbil have increased, while Iranian attacks on infrastructure belonging to Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq have also risen.

On Monday (28/09), Kurdish officials in Erbil stated that three drones targeted a camp affiliated with the Iranian Kurdish opposition. Local officials said the drones were of Iranian manufacture, though responsibility for the attacks has not been independently confirmed.

Yerevan Saeed, a non-resident senior researcher at the Iraq Initiative, Atlantic Council, and director of the Global Kurdish Initiative for Peace at the American University, is concerned that Iraq’s vulnerable ethnic and religious minorities, such as Christians and Yazidis, as well as Kurdish communities, could be more exposed starting 1 October 2026.

“This withdrawal marks the end of an era where the foreign military presence served as a buffer against threats from both within and the region,” she said.

Meanwhile, Mansour from Chatham House noted that US-Iraq relations will not end on 30 September, but will instead shift to “other arenas, including economic relations, rather than a relationship focused on security.”

In July, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stated, after meeting with Iraqi PM al-Zaidi, that they had discussed how a sovereign, stable, and strong Iraq would pave the way for mutually beneficial commercial and defence cooperation.

However, in a statement following the meeting, Hegseth added that “building a normalised US-Iraq bilateral defence relationship requires a safe environment free from terrorist pressure.”