The U.S.-led anti-jihadist coalition has begun withdrawing from Iraq’s Kurdistan region ahead of a deadline to end their mission in the country, a Kurdish official said Thursday.
They had already completed their withdrawal from other bases in Iraq in January and are now only present in the northern autonomous Kurdistan region.
They are scheduled to complete their withdrawal by Sept. 30, having concluded their mission against the Islamic State group in Iraq, according to a 2024 agreement between Baghdad and Washington.
“Under the existing agreement, these forces must leave by the end of September, and they have in fact already begun doing so,” Kurdistan’s interior minister, Rebar Ahmed, told journalists.
“The process has started also in the Kurdistan region, with those forces transferring daily to other locations outside Iraq,” he added.
Sabah al-Numan, spokesman for the head of Iraq’s armed forces, also said Thursday that foreign forces were accelerating their withdrawals.Β
The coalition forces exited Syria earlier this year.
The U.S.-led troops deployed to Iraq and Syria in 2014 to fight the Islamic State, which had seized large swathes of both countries and committed massacres and other atrocities.
The group was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019.
Although members of the jihadist group remain in desert and mountainous areas, their attacks have massively declined, and Iraqi forces continue to launch operations against them.
The presence of the coalition, especially after the Islamic State’s defeat, has been a persistent point of contention between Iraqi authorities and Tehran-backed armed factions in the country.
For years, the Iran-backed groups have targeted coalition troops, most recently in support of Tehran during the war that began in late February.
CBS/AFP