US troops have been in Iraq since , when around , American soldiers arrived in March of that year, ostensibly to destroy "weapons of mass destruction. After President Barack Obama took office in with promises to pull out of Iraq, numbers began to fall steadily. And US troops have supposedly been "transitioning to an advisory role" for years now, as foreign policy observers have pointed out on Twitter.
The same sort of language was being used as far back as and Unable to mount a significant defense at first, the Iraqi army and Iraqi Kurdish forces were heavily dependent on US aerial strikes to fend off the extremists. Around 5, US soldiers were in the country at that stage. The IS extremists have since been more or less defeated, so this number has steadily reduced. Late last year President Trump decreased the total to 2, As for ordinary Iraqis themselves, Monday's purely political agreement is unlikely to change much for them.
Once-ubiquitous American checkpoints have long gone. Now, city checkpoints are mostly manned by Iraqis, soldiers or members of the PMF. And other than hearing about US drone or aerial strikes, most ordinary Iraqis haven't seen an American soldier in the flesh for years. Drone attacks are causing a crisis in the Mideast and experts are calling for a better regulatory regime.
But would more rules even have an impact in the region? The Pentagon refused to say where the technology is being relocated. Visit the new DW website Take a look at the beta version of dw. Flooding in India. At least people have died in India following a weekend of catastrophic flooding and landslides after heavy monsoon rains. More than , people have been rescued from villages across Maharashtra state while at least people are still missing.
Sherman in China. Ahead of the trip, a senior U. COVID cases. Despite vast stockpiles and wide availability, roughly 30 percent of U.
Petersburg on Sunday. Despite the wing pins seen on billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson following their recent private space flights, the two men cannot officially call themselves astronauts after recent rule changes at the U. Those wishing for U.
The FAA said it was not currently reviewing any submissions. Colm Quinn is the newsletter writer at Foreign Policy. Twitter: colmfquinn. Iraq and the United States have agreed on the withdrawal of all remaining US and coalition combat troops deployed to fight ISIL ISIS in the Middle Eastern country — but they did not provide a timeline and said the foreign forces would still provide training to the Iraqi army.
John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the statement did not represent an agreement to begin a further withdrawal of US forces. The announcement comes as US targets in Iraq have come under frequent rocket attacks attributed to paramilitary groups linked to Iran, which led Biden to order air raids on affiliated camps in Syria.
So, something proportional from the U. Now that there are a lot of moving pieces here, and it does ultimately come back to this question of whether the announcement from President Biden and Prime Minister Kadhimi in Washington will be enough to convince Iran and its allies to, I would say, either end their rocket attacks on U.
Kadhimi is also dealing with a lot of his own political dynamics, being not standardly a politician. And Prime Minister Kadhimi came into office with two objectives really, with two expectations being in place: the first is to hold early elections, and the hope is that the elections will enable some political reforms and bring into office, bring into state institutions moderate actors who do want to push Iraq towards recovery, who do want to install, implement a culture of accountability; and secondly, to address the economic crisis in the country.
Now, the economic crisis, in particular, has been devastating and could become an existential crisis as a result of the decline in oil prices, because of the pandemic. And this is a country, bear in mind, that lacks infrastructure, sustainable governance, and most certainly lacks a private sector that can meet the demands and needs of its population.
Although there are some genuine efforts, I would say, to be fair to the government, to actually address that. There is a blueprint of sorts, known as the White Paper. Well, it came into place actually almost months after Kadhimi came into office. So in a way, Prime Minister Kadhimi, as somebody who is a transitional prime minister, is something of a compromise candidate, has some breathing room amongst the wider Iraqi public, and for them, I would go as far as saying he could be the least worst option as it stands.
Because the alternative could be far worse.
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