Iraq just kicked America out after twenty three years
2 days ago · 29 September 2026Share
US soldiers conduct base-security drills at Forward Operating Base Grizzly, Iraq. File photo. Spc. William Addison · Public domain
The US is pulling every last soldier out of Iraq by tomorrow.
That's 23 years of American troops on Iraqi soil, over.
Iraq's Prime Minister, Ali al-Zaidi, says the date is fixed. Final. No moving it.
He set it about seven weeks ago, right after meeting Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of US Central Command.
Al-Zaidi says October 1 will mark a new day. Iraq, free of any foreign military presence.
So how did we get here?
Back to 2003. America invades Iraq. Saddam Hussein falls.
By 2007, more than 170,000 US troops are in the country. The last combat troops pull out in 2011.
Then ISIL takes huge chunks of Iraq in 2014, and Baghdad calls America back in.
Coalition combat operations end in 2021. In 2024, under President Joe Biden, Washington and Baghdad agree to wind the smaller anti-ISIL mission down completely.
Then, about eleven weeks ago, Donald Trump sits down with Ali al-Zaidi at the White House. That's the meeting where this all becomes final.
Donald Trump says quote "We don't think we need the military there anymore".
Al-Zaidi's own words at the time: US forces out by 30 September. US companies staying in Iraq.
So here's the shape of it. Soldiers leave. American business does not.
Now, US troops already left most of Iraq last year. The one place they stayed was the Kurdish region up north.
And those bases have been hit again and again since the US and Israel went to war with Iran on 28 February.
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Contains NASA satellite imagery of Iraq. File photo. NASA · Public domain
Masrour Barzani runs the Kurdistan Regional Government. He told Al Jazeera the region has paid a heavy price in that war — more than 1,000 missile and drone attacks.
The regional government says trade in and out has dropped 70 per cent.
And Iraq's Ministry of Oil has declared force majeure on oilfields run by foreign companies, blaming the disruption to crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz.
So the Kurdish region is losing the US bases and the trade at the same time.
Now, how many American troops are actually still there right now? Nobody will say.
A US official told the Associated Press that Washington expects to finish the pullout by 30 September. But the official would not say how many troops remain, or where they're going next.
One outlet says around 2,000, down from roughly 2,500 under the 2024 deal. Another says below 200. No official number exists.
Haider Al Aboudi, Iraq's government spokesperson, says the handover of bases to Iraqi forces is happening at an organised pace.
And here's the other deadline nobody's talking about enough. Al-Zaidi has told armed groups inside Iraq that are not part of the state — mostly Iran-aligned militias — to hand in their weapons by the same 30 September date.
The most powerful of those militias have already said no. They're not disarming.
So that's the gap in this plan. The Americans are leaving on schedule. The militias are not.
And there's another warning sitting underneath all this. Counterterrorism experts say ISIS is quietly rebuilding. Its ranks in Syria have grown from around 2,000 to as many as 10,000 fighters since 2024.
That's the vacuum a full US exit could leave behind.
Both governments are calling what comes next a security partnership, not a clean break.
That phrase is doing a lot of work. It leaves the door open for US troops or equipment to stay behind, just under another name.
So three things are unresolved as this deadline lands. Can Iraqi forces hold the country alone? Will the militias actually give up their weapons? And is America really gone, or just renamed?
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