The last US troops left Iraq on a date fixed in 2024; the militia law cleared cabinet the day before

CENTCOM announced on Wednesday 30 September that the last American troops had left Iraq, ending the mission begun in 2014. AP’s Qassim Abdul-Zahra reported the final departure from an air base in northern Iraq; no wire named it, and no outlet has confirmed what happened to the US air-defence batteries Kurdish officials have complained about losing. Roughly 2,500 personnel had been in the country in an advise-and-assist role. Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said the milestone “reflects the success of a 12-year campaign that defeated ISIS as an organized military threat in Iraq and across the region” and marked “a transition from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort supported by a more normal bilateral security relationship.” Al-Zaidi, presiding over a handover ceremony, called it the start of “a new phase, one defined by Iraq’s sovereignty, the strength of its institutions, the readiness of its forces, the unity of its decision-making, and balanced partnerships with its friends.” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social of the end of “a very expensive excursion into Hell.” The date itself was not chosen this week: the Biden administration negotiated the drawdown with Baghdad in September 2024 and set 30 September 2026 as the final day. The Trump administration kept the schedule.

The day before the Americans left, Iraq’s Council of Ministers voted to approve the Popular Mobilization Forces draft law and refer it to parliament. The prime minister’s media office announced the vote late on Tuesday 29 September: “The cabinet voted in favor of the Popular Mobilization Forces bill. It approved referring the bill to parliament for a vote, in accordance with constitutional provisions.” Rudaw reports the bill includes a service and retirement law and organises the Popular Mobilization Commission along the lines of other state security agencies — filling the gaps left by the 2016 law, which comprised three provisions recognising the PMF as a legal military entity and said nothing about structure, retirement or compensation. The National frames it as further legitimising the PMF as a permanent national institution. The text has stalled before: a version approved by the previous government in February 2025 was shelved amid intra-Shia disagreement, and whether this draft survived “comprehensive amendments” is unverified. Kataib Hezbollah’s security official Abu Mujahid al-Assaf called the departure “the beginning of full sovereignty.” Al-Zaidi, who told the New York Times this month that his deadline for bringing weapons under state control has moved to June 2027, is legislating the militias into the state while promising to disarm them.

What leaves with the troops is less than it looks, and what stays is less visible. The New York Times notes that through Iraq’s US-based oil-payments account, Washington controls the physical shipment of the dollars Baghdad earns, and has shown itself willing to use that power — it temporarily halted the flow this year. Neither the date nor the duration of that halt has been published. Douglas Silliman, the former US ambassador to Iraq, told Al Jazeera the coming period will involve “a very difficult series of decisions… Both for the militias and for Prime Minister al-Zaidi and his defence team.” Kurdish officials, none of them named in anything the wires carried, have objected to the removal of US air defences from a region that has absorbed drone and rocket fire at Erbil airport and Harir air base. And Tehran, per Reuters, reads the pullout as a victory for its “axis of resistance” and a step towards its aim of driving US forces from the region — in the same week Iranian officials said Washington had answered their Hormuz ceasefire proposal through Qatari mediators, a claim no American official has confirmed on the record.

Assessment: Three things here are being confused with each other. The withdrawal is confirmed — but what is confirmed is the announcement of completion, by the command that carried it out. No independent verification of a zero-troop figure exists, no wire has named the base, and nobody has accounted for residual contractors or a security-cooperation office. The schedule is a 2024 artefact; the victory framing is a 2026 overlay, applied simultaneously by Washington, Baghdad and Tehran for three incompatible reasons. And the PMF vote is a cabinet referral, not a law. Parliament has shelved this text before. Treat The New Region’s line that the bill is “heavily opposed by Washington” as background: the US objection on record is to earlier drafts, and no State Department response to Tuesday’s vote has surfaced. Silence from Foggy Bottom, twenty-four hours after the exit, would itself be a datapoint. Watch the dollar account, not the airfields — that is where the leverage still sits, and it has already been used once this year.