After more than two decades, U.S. forces prepare to leave Iraq
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The U.S. military formally ends a more than two-decade-long presence in Iraq this week.
A historic milestone in Iraq this week - U.S. forces are withdrawing after a two-decade-long military presence that began with the invasion of Iraq that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. It's a very different Iraq than the country the U.S. entered and a different America. NPR's Jane Arraf has been reporting from Iraq since the 1990s and joins us from Amman. Hi, Jane. First, tell us what's happening this week.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Well, by Wednesday, the U.S. will have pulled out all the forces that have been operating under the anti-ISIS coalition that had formed in 2014. That's when the militant group ISIS took over roughly a third of Iraqi territory, and it's also when Iraqi army divisions that were hollowed out by corruption and sectarianism just collapsed. So the U.S. had left in 2011. They thought they were done. They had a ceremony. They got on military planes. This time, as they're leaving, there will be no fanfare. Central Command says there's no ceremony that will be open to the press. It will be a quiet withdrawal.
There are only a few hundred of the roughly 2,500 troops that have been here this year left anyway. And we have to compare that to the height of the war when there were something like 170,000. So this is a turning point for Iraq. It's under pressure from Iran-backed political parties and militias who have demanded that the U.S. military leave. And President Trump has pledged no more what he calls endless wars, including the one in Iraq.
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