Political analysts: US troops won't leave Iraq any time soon

Shafaq News / For the second time in days, the Iraqi prime minster today voiced his call for US troops to leave the country, this time urging a “quick” exit — though analysts told Breaking Defense the demand is likely a hollow one and that American troops won’t be heading for the door any time soon.

“I see no chance that US forces will leave Iraq in the near future,” Norman Ricklefs, Dubai-based analyst who worked with the US government in Iraq and was previously advisor to Iraq’s Minister of Interior, told Breaking Defense. “These are military advisors, who are there at the direct invitation of the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government could ask them to leave tomorrow if they wished to. But the US and coalition forces are needed to support the Iraqi armed forces in their fight against the Islamic State.”

Leaving now, Ricklefs said, could lead to a surge in terrorism in the Middle Eastern nation that no one, including the Iraqi government, wants to see.

On Jan. 5, a day after the US struck a purported militant leader in Baghdad, the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the Iraqi government was taking the first steps towards removing US and coalition troops “permanently,” beginning with setting a date for a committee discussion about how to do so.

In an interview with Reuters today, al-Sudani went further, calling for a “quick” exit.

“Let’s agree on a time frame (for the coalition’s exit) that is, honestly, quick, so that they don’t remain long and the attacks keep happening,” he said, according to Reuters, referring to attacks on US forces by Iran-aligned militant groups that prompted the US strike.

Just prior to those comments, however, US officials were likely sanguine about the possibility of a forced exit, as Politico reported that, according to a US State Department cable, al-Sudani told American officials privately he wants US troops to stay and had called for their removal to calm domestic pressure.

Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East Program at CSIS, told Breaking Defense that there is no question the Iraqis can fight extremists without US support, “but they’d be less effective and their costs would be higher. That’s a point of leverage for the United States to negotiate the conditions of our continued engagement.”

“It serves US needs and Iraqi government needs, even though there continue to be voices in Iraq — as there have been for many years — calling for a US withdrawal. I’m not sure there are many publics that are enthusiastic about having foreign troops on their soil. [But] among security leaders in Iraq, though, fighting ISIS alone is a daunting prospect,” he said.

When announcing the “self-defense” strike in Baghdad, Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder suggested it was the US-led mission that helped keep ISIS out of the Iraqi capital city a decade ago.

“It was 10 years ago this coming summer that ISIS was approximately 24 kilometers outside of Baghdad, when we kicked off the counter-ISIS mission after they had subsumed large swaths of Syria and Iraq,” Ryder said. “No one wants to see a return of ISIS … our focus is going to continue to remain on the defeat-ISIS mission. But again, we’re not going to hesitate to protect our forces if they’re threatened.”

From his point of view, Iraq-based defense analyst Ahmad Al Sherifi agreed it was unlikely US troops are going anywhere, also for broader geopolitical reasons.

“The United States and the international coalition will not leave Iraq, and the reason is that the mandate is a UN mandate, and whoever enters with a UN resolution will not leave except with another resolution. As for the United States, it sees Iraq as an integral part of security guarantees to the national interests, and not to leave an expansion opportunity for China and Russia,” Al Sherifi said.

As for how and when American troops will eventually leave, Ricklefs essentially said that it depends.

“It will be conditions based. So based on the ability of Iraqi forces to operate independently. This will likely be several years in the future,” he said.

(Breaking Defense)