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BAGHDAD — American forces began departing their last military bases in Iraq on Wednesday, formally completing a withdrawal first agreed under the Biden administration and leaving behind a country that spent more than two decades learning how to fight without them. The pullout, which had been widely expected, is unfolding against mounting concern from Iraqi officials and security analysts that the absence of a US presence will open space for Iran-aligned armed groups and remnants of Islamic State to reassert themselves.
The withdrawal marks a moment of grim symmetry. It comes 23 years after US-led forces toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 — an intervention that the article's authors and many Iraqis describe as having triggered years of upheaval and disorder that ultimately gave rise to the Islamic State caliphate. Yet even as the last US aircraft lift off from a transport hub at Camp Victory, near Baghdad International Airport, the departure is broadly popular among Iraqis, who have chafed under two decades of foreign military occupation.
Popular sentiment, however, is not the same as confidence. Some Iraqis worry that Iraqi security forces, while trained and heavily funded by the United States, are still not capable of protecting the country on their own. The scale of the US sacrifice is a reminder of the stakes: roughly 4,500 American service members died during more than 20 years of war in Iraq.
"The lesson from the past two decades is that security vacuums can be extremely dangerous," said Jassim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi analyst who advises the country's security forces. His warning echoes the historical pattern of the past three weeks: the 2003 invasion and the occupation that followed, the installation of a Shi'ite-led government, and a long counterinsurgency fought first against Saddam loyalists and then against al-Qaeda affiliates. US forces withdrew at the end of 2011, and returned less than three years later to help Iraqi forces defeat the Sunni militant group Islamic State in a major war lasting from 2014 to 2017.
The human cost of that cycle remains difficult to put in perspective. Around twice as many Americans died in "Operation Iraqi Freedom" as in the parallel war in Afghanistan — a conflict that ended with an abrupt US withdrawal in 2021. The comparison is instructive, drawing attention to what a hurried exit can mean for a fragile partner's security.
The current context adds another layer of urgency. In this year's conflict with Iran, seven of the 18 US service members listed as killed were in Iraq, the most recent being an army sergeant who died during the controlled detonation of a drone at a base near Erbil in July. Those deaths underscore the fact that US personnel were still in the country, and under threat, long after the 2011 withdrawal.
Tehran is framing the US departure as a strategic victory. Iran, which says its ultimate aim is to force American forces out of the entire Middle East, has cast the Iraq pullout as a triumph for the "axis of resistance" — the network of allied armed groups it backs across the region. Baghdad-based political analyst Ahmed Younis cautioned that the more consequential development may be subtler than direct intervention.
"What is further concerning is not necessarily direct Iranian intervention, but the possibility that Iran's proxies will feel increasingly empowered in the absence of a Western military presence," Younis said. "These groups may attempt to expand their role in shaping state policies and consolidating their presence within key institutions."
That institutional expansion could be gradual and legalistic rather than overtly military — a slow consolidation of influence over ministries, police budgets and local administration that would be far harder to detect and reverse than an armed incursion.
Islamic State is the other concern. Some Iraqi security officials, both in the federal government and in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, say the US pullout risks breathing new life into the group's fighters. Despite the defeat of the self-proclaimed caliphate nearly a decade ago, the organisation retains a dormant network of sleeper cells. At the height of its power, the militants occupied a third of Iraq and slaughtered thousands of people — including hundreds whom they videotaped themselves gunning down inside a former US military base.
Crucially, US troops had been supplying Iraqi forces with capabilities that are difficult to replicate quickly: intelligence on Islamic State movements, aerial surveillance and reconnaissance. Losing that support, analysts say, will not merely reduce firepower; it will reduce situational awareness at precisely the moment Iraqi forces may need it most.
Retired Iraqi Army General Mohammed al-Jubouri, who commanded a brigade in the war against Islamic State, framed the central question as one of preparedness. "The most important question now is whether Iraq's security institutions have prepared a viable Plan B for the post-coalition phase," he said.
His worst-case scenario is specific. "One of the worst-case scenarios would be Islamic State obtaining armed drones or improvised explosive drones at a time when Iraq still lacks sufficient air defence capabilities to counter such threats effectively," al-Jubouri said — a pointed warning given the proliferation of cheap, hard-to-track munitions across the region.
The US exit also arrives as neighbouring Turkey prepares to hand over a military base in northern Iraq to Baghdad, suggesting a broader reordering of foreign military footprints in the country. Meanwhile, separate negotiations involving Iran — including a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and a rejected seven-day truce proposal — show how interconnected regional security remains, and how quickly the situation in Iraq could be reshaped by events elsewhere.
For now, the soldiers are leaving, and the questions they leave behind — about Iraqi air defences, militia ambition and the resilience of a post-caliphate insurgency — are only beginning to be answered.
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