US forces leave their last Iraqi bases as Baghdad prepares four days of celebration

Reuters filed from Baghdad with a 30 September dateline reporting that US forces withdrew from their remaining bases in Iraq on Wednesday, “raising fears they will leave behind a security vacuum, further embolden Iranian-backed militias and give the resurgent Islamic State group an opening to regroup”. Earlier in the wire cycle the same story ran in the future tense — the Times of Israel and Al Arabiya carried “US forces are set to pull out from their last bases in Iraq by Wednesday” — so the completion is established by the later take, not the first. Reuters puts the human cost at 4,500 Americans dead over more than two decades of war; The National dates the end of Operation Inherent Resolve to 12 years after it began. Al Jazeera describes the departing element as “a few hundred remaining US soldiers” in advisory roles. Reuters notes the withdrawal was agreed in 2024 under Joe Biden and carried out by Donald Trump’s administration “even as it wages war against Iran”.

Al Jazeera reported on 29 September that Iraq is set to hold four “Sovereignty Days”, a national holiday marking the complete withdrawal, and that the exit plan predates Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi but fits his wider vision of reasserting state authority. The Files has not seen the Council of Ministers decree setting the four days. Against that framing, The National reports Kurdish and Sunni leaders warning the pullout is premature, citing ISIS sleeper cells, regional instability and the loss of US air support and intelligence. Abdulrahman al-Zobaie, a Sunni tribal leader in Fallujah described by Reuters as once a bastion of anti-American resistance, told the agency: “We believe Iraq is still not fully ready to take over the security file at this time.” Jassim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi analyst who advises the security forces, told Reuters: “The lesson from the past two decades is that security vacuums can be extremely dangerous.”

The Islamic State element of Wednesday’s coverage is a claim rather than an event. Reuters, carried by Military Times, reported that Iraqi security forces said a suspected Islamic State cell was preparing suicide attacks to coincide with the pullout, with the assessment that the group can still exploit security gaps attributed to four Iraqi security and army officials, none named. No arrests, locations, dates or casualty figures accompanied the claim in what The Files retrieved. On the record, Colonel Khalid al-Bayati, a senior security official in the oil town of Kirkuk, told Reuters that ISIS “is seeking to send a message that the group is still powerful and capable of launching bloody attacks”. Mohammed Salih of the Foreign Policy Research Institute told Al Jazeera that official rhetoric signals Iraq “can take care of itself”, but that “in reality, there is a great deal of concern that Iraq could be the next theatre of some major regional development”.

Assessment: Two things are being contested today and neither is the fact of the departure. The first is credit: The National carries an unnamed Iraqi official insisting the date was set by al-Zaidi in Washington in July, while Reuters traces it to a 2024 agreement under Biden. That is a sovereignty-prestige argument, not a factual dispute, and both sides gain from winning it. The second is risk, and here the warnings come overwhelmingly from institutions that benefit from being thought indispensable — anonymous security officers, an adviser to the security forces. Treat the plot claim as unverified. The unresolved practical question nobody has answered is what residual American military presence remains at the Baghdad embassy, and at what size.