U.S. completes troop withdrawal from Iraq, ending 12-year mission

The last American troops have left Iraq. The U.S. military announced Wednesday that the withdrawal was complete, ending a 12-year mission against the Islamic State group.

The final departures came from an air base in Irbil, in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said U.S. troops and equipment had completed an “orderly departure” from the base.

“This milestone reflects the success of a 12-year campaign that defeated ISIS as an organized military threat in Iraq and across the region,” Parnell said in a statement. “It also marks a transition from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort supported by a more normal bilateral security relationship.”

In Baghdad, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi presided over a handover ceremony. He described the departure as the beginning 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.” He said Iraqi security forces would keep fighting the Islamic State and that the government would make sure non-state groups no longer hold weapons.

Al Jazeera reported from Baghdad that American troops also fully withdrew from the Victoriy base in the capital as military jets departed. Iraq’s Defense Ministry said the country’s lands were “completely free of any presence of international coalition forces starting today.”

Twenty-three years, two withdrawals

The United States first invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein. American troops left in 2011, then returned three years later at Baghdad’s invitation to fight the Islamic State, which had seized large areas of northern Iraq and Syria. In recent years, about 2,500 U.S. troops had been stationed in the country.

Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind the mission down. The plan was set under the Biden administration and carried out by the Trump administration.

What comes next

Baghdad called the moment a sign of the country’s growing strength and sovereignty. Iran-backed groups celebrated the departure. But the withdrawal has raised concerns among other Iraqis, particularly in the Kurdish region.

Questions remain about Iraq’s militias, which the government has tried, with little success, to disarm. The departure also comes as an ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran has at times spilled into Iraq.

With the extremist group reduced to scattered sleeper cells, the test now is whether Iraq’s security forces can keep it that way.