Prime Minister Office Handout EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock
BEIRUT — President Trump may have reacted furiously at the idea of U.S. troops being asked to leave Iraq, but ending America’s 17 year military presence there may be easier for the country’s government than he thinks.
Unlike some other deployments stretching back to 2008, American troops in Iraq are not operating under a conventional Status of Forces agreement approved by the Iraqi parliament, according to experts.
Instead, the current military presence is based on an arrangement dating from 2014 that’s less formal, and ultimately, based on the consent of an executive which yesterday told the troops to get out.
So, with the stroke of a pen, the 5,000-strong force could technically be asked to leave.
“The current U.S. military presence is based of an exchange of letters at the executive level,” said Ramzy Mardini, an Iraq scholar at the US Institute of Peace who previously served in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.
The terms outlined in those letters have not been made public.
“We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build,” Trump said on Air Force One as he returned to Washington from Florida on Sunday.
“We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” he said, apparently in reference to Ain al-Asad, a base originally built under Saddam Hussein’s government, but later extended by the United States.
Susannah George
AP
U.S. Army soldiers speak to families in rural Anbar on a reconnaissance patrol near a coalition outpost in western Iraq, Jan. 27, 2018.
Trump’s decision to order the killing of Iran’s most influential military figure, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, on small road leaving Baghdad airport, has set off a firestorm in Iraq, angering politicians and intensifying militia threats U.S.-led coalition-bases across the country.
The 81-country coalition began its mission in June 2014 as Islamic State fighters coursed through Iraq and Syria, seizing land that they would come to call their caliphate, and beginning a genocide against Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority.
“If the prime minister rescinds the invitation, the U.S. military must leave, unless it wants to maintain what would be an illegal occupation in a hostile environment,” Mardini said.
With the Islamic State largely defeated, coalition troops now serve in a mostly advisory capacity. U.S. commanders say that the mission remains crucial to preventing the group’s resurgence. The coalition said Sunday that it had been forced to suspend training activities and was focusing instead on simply keeping its personnel safe.
Addressing Iraq’s wood-paneled parliament on Sunday, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi urged lawmakers to take “urgent measures” to force the withdrawal of foreign troops. Shortly after, the chamber passed a nonbinding resolution to that effect, and Abdul Mahdi’s office said that legal experts were drawing up a timetable for the pullout.
“At this moment in time [the] government has not yet decided to remove foreign troops but it is probable soon as things stand,” Sajad Jiyad, managing director of the Baghdad-based Bayan Center think tank, wrote on Twitter.
“It is plausible that such action from the Iraqi side will build in a lengthy period but not beyond 2020. The other side may decide to withdraw rather than be pushed out,” he wrote.
While parliamentary approval seems not to be needed, at least technically speaking, their vote Sunday provides political cover for a prime minister who has been operating in a caretaker capacity since mass protests forced his resignation back in November.
“There is no law required to kick the U.S. military out because a law did not establish their presence,” Mardini said. “Baghdad has demonstrated its signal to Washington that the presence of the U.S. military is no longer wanted in Iraq. Since parliament is responsible for determining who is the next prime minister, it’s hard to imagine that individual going against the parliament’s vote.”
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2020-01-06 10:29:00Z
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