U.S. President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Kadimi signed an agreement on the 26th to officially end U.S. combat missions in Iraq. By the end of 2021, the U.S. has stationed troops in Iraq for the first time for more than 18 years. time.
In addition, Biden will withdraw the last batch of US troops in Afghanistan at the end of August this year. At this point, the Democratic president will end the combat missions of the two wars initiated by former President Bush Jr. during his tenure.
Biden and Kadimi held their first face-to-face meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, which is also part of the strategic dialogue between the United States and Iraq.
Biden told reporters during a meeting with Kadimi, “Our role in Iraq will be… to continue to train, assist and respond to the rise of ISIS, but by the end of this year, we will no longer participate in combat missions.”
A total of 2,500 US troops are currently stationed in Iraq and are responsible for fighting the remaining forces of ISIS. In the future, the role of the United States in Iraq will be completely transformed into providing training and consulting to assist the Iraqi military in self-defense.
This change is not expected to have a major impact, because the United States has shifted its focus to training the Iraqi army.
In March 2003, an international coalition led by the United States invaded Iraq on the grounds that the Iraqi government led by Saddam Hussein at that time possessed weapons of mass destruction. But after Saddam was ousted from power, such weapons were never discovered.
In recent years, the main task of the United States on the ground has been to help defeat ISIS fighters entrenched in Iraq and Syria.
A senior US government official told reporters before Kadimi’s visit to the United States, “No one will announce that the mission has been completed. Our goal is to fight ISIS for a long time.”
This sentence reminds people of May 1, 2003, when the then US President George W. Bush gave a speech on the USS Lincoln, announcing that the US’s main combat operations in Iraq had ended. Behind him, it said “Mission Completed”. Slogan.
“If you look at our situation, we use Apache helicopters in combat, and when we have American special forces performing regular operations, this will be a major development. Therefore, we think that by the end of this year, we will be in A good position and formally enter the role of consulting and capacity building.”
Kadimi is seen as a person friendly to the United States and is trying to contain the forces of armed groups allied with Iran. However, the Iraqi government condemned the U.S. airstrike against Iran’s allies at the country’s border with Syria at the end of June, calling it an infringement of Iraq’s sovereignty.
The United States plans to provide Iraq with 500,000 doses of Pfizer’s new crown vaccine under the global new crown vaccine sharing plan. Biden said these vaccines will be delivered within a few weeks.
In addition, the United States will provide 5.2 million U.S. dollars to fund the United Nations mission to monitor the Iraqi elections to be held in October this year.
Biden said, “We support the strengthening of democracy in Iraq, and we also want to ensure that the October elections are held as scheduled.”
At the same time, Kadimi is also facing many problems. In addition to the increasing number of attacks against the US military in recent months, there has also been a series of devastating hospital fires that have caused dozens of deaths and a surge in cases of new crown virus infections, which has added a new sense of frustration to the country.
For Kadimi, being able to provide the Iraqi public with a specific date for the withdrawal of US troops from the country may be a major event he will accomplish before this year’s election.
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