Why US Troops are Pulling Back All Over Iraq – By Katie Bo Williams (Defene One) / March 18 2020
American forces have begun consolidating at better-protected bases as a new Iraqi prime minister-designate tries to form a government.
It is a remarkable series of images: U.S. service members throw debris onto a fire and roll up massive canvas tents, getting ready to hand over a base in al Qaim to Iraqi security forces. And al Qaim is just one of several Iraqi bases that the U.S. is leaving as part of plans to “relocate and consolidate” personnel.
The departures began in a deeply unsettled moment for U.S. forces in Iraq. There have been at least four attacks on U.S.-led coalition locations in Iraq in the past week, including one that killed two Americans and one British medic. And Iraq, deeply divided over whether the United States should be allowed to stay in the country at all, still has not formed a government after almost four months of political wrangling. In the background lurks the threat of coronavirus: Iran, which shares a porous border with Iraq, has seen one of the worst outbreaks on the planet.
But it is the push-and-pull over Iraq’s new prime minister-designate that could determine U.S. actions in Iraq over the coming weeks.
A series of attacks
Two of the recent attacks targeted the Camp Taji, a base north of Baghdad, and are believed to be the work of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed proxy militia group determined to oust the United States from Iraq. The United States responded to the first attack with airstrikes on five locations across Iraq, but it has not responded to the second. That attack, which wounded three coalition troops and two Iraqis, was a far more sophisticated effort, according to a U.S. official.
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