U.S. Completes Iraq Withdrawal After 12-Year Anti-ISIS Mission
The Pentagon confirmed on September 30, 2026 that the final U.S. troops deployed to Iraq as part of the anti-ISIL mission have left the country. Al Jazeera
The announcement ends the U.S. military presence in Iraq built for the 12-year mission to fight the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL or ISIS. The Guardian It also closes a two-decade American presence, completed more than 20 years after the United States invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. CNN
The last departures took place at Erbil Airbase in the Kurdistan region. Remaining U.S. troops and other international coalition forces and equipment conducted an "orderly departure" from the base. The base is now empty.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. operations across the Middle East, said Erbil hosted 1,500 U.S. and other coalition forces prior to the departure. CENTCOM said the task force overseeing anti-ISIL operations has been relocated to Jordan, with hundreds of U.S. troops still stationed in Syria. The mission has moved.
Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell said the withdrawal marks a transition from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort. The final withdrawal plan was agreed in 2024 by former U.S. President Joe Biden and former Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. That two-phase schedule called for U.S. forces to pull out from federal Iraq by September 2025 and from the Kurdistan region by September 2026, according to a Pentagon press briefing in September 2024. Iraqi security forces marked the withdrawal of the U.S.-led coalition with a military parade in Baghdad on September 30, 2026. NPR
For context on the wording, U.S. officials had stated that the U.S.-Iraq Higher Military Commission meeting, a forum for military talks between the two countries, is not a negotiation about the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. An administration official discussing the transition of the Inherent Resolve mission, the official name for the anti-ISIL campaign, said, "To be clear, the United States is not withdrawing from Iraq." The September 30 announcement uses different terms. It describes a formal completion.
To put the numbers in perspective, the scale of this departure is small compared with earlier phases of the U.S. posture. The United States at one time had more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and more than 160,000 troops in Iraq. In February 2009, President Obama announced that all U.S. combat troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by August 31. Acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller said the United States would draw down forces in Afghanistan and Iraq by Jan. 15, 2021. President Joe Biden later announced full U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, with a drawdown of 2,500 troops beginning May 1.
The broader context here is a shift in command geography rather than an end to the counter-ISIL structure. Think of it less as closing a business and more as moving its main office across the border. With the task force relocated to Jordan and a residual force in Syria, Washington retains regional nodes for intelligence, targeting and partner support while Baghdad assumes formal responsibility inside Iraq. The question for those tracking coalition burden-sharing is how Iraqi command structures absorb functions previously embedded with coalition advisers, from air support coordination to logistics and intelligence fusion.
Looking at what this means for diplomacy, the 2024 Biden-al-Sudani agreement provides the political framework both governments will cite. Baghdad can present the parade and the Erbil handover as sovereignty restored. Washington can present continuity through Jordan and Syria as commitment maintained. Friction will likely center on interpretation. Each side will define what Iraqi-led means in practice when threats re-emerge or when coalition access, overflight and assistance requests are tested.
