US troops pulled from Syria to leave Iraq in four weeks

US troops withdrawing from north-east Syria to Iraq will leave the country within four weeks, Iraq’s defence minister said yesterday.

Najah Al Shammari made the remarks after a meeting in Baghdad with visiting US Defence Secretary Mark Esper, who arrived as Iraqi leaders chafed at reports the US may want to increase the number of troops based in Iraq, at least temporarily.

Iraq’s military said on Tuesday that US soldiers leaving north-east Syria do not have permission to stay in Iraq. This appeared to contradict Mr Esper, who said that all US forces leaving Syria would continue to conduct operations against ISIS from Iraq.

He later said the troops would be there until they are able to go home, but that no time table had been set.

Mr Esper said yesterday that the US has no plan to leave those troops in Iraq indefinitely and that he plans to talk with Iraqi leaders about the matter.

“Our key priority with Iraq is encouraging a continued secure, stable, independent Iraq,” a senior US defence official said.

Mr Esper’s trip came after an agreement on Tuesday between Ankara and Moscow that Syrian and Russian forces will operate in north-east Syria to remove Kurdish fighters and their weapons from the border with Turkey.

Hours after that deal was announced, the Turkish defence ministry said the US had told Ankara the withdrawal of Kurdish militants was complete.

The Russia-Turkey agreement endorses the return of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s forces to the border alongside Russian troops, replacing the US forces who patrolled the region for years with their Kurdish allies.

President Donald Trump decided this month to withdraw all 1,000 US troops from the region, a move widely criticised as a betrayal of Kurdish allies who had fought for years alongside US forces against ISIS.

Since then, the Pentagon has said the Trump administration is considering keeping some personnel in north-east Syria to help ensure ISIS and others do not profit from oilfields in the region.

Any decision to keep additional US troops in Iraq is likely to be heavily scrutinised in a country where Iran has been steadily amassing influence.

Additional US troops would add to about 5,000 publicly acknowledged American soldiers already based in the country, training Iraqi forces and helping to ensure ISIS does not return.

Iraq, meanwhile, is experiencing a political crisis. Protests about high unemployment, poor public services and corruption erupted on October 1, prompting a violent security crackdown.