Politics

Iraq’s top court denies it issued decision to expel 'foreign' troops

The Iraqi Federal Supreme Court denied on Monday that it had issued a decision regarding the removal of foreign forces from the country.

Kosar Nawzad 2020/01/21 15:40

middle east Iraq Baghdad US

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Iraqi Federal Supreme Court denied on Monday that it had issued a decision regarding the removal of foreign forces from the country.

“The court has not issued… any decision regarding the expulsion or stay of foreign forces from Iraq,” Supreme Court spokesman Aiyas al-Samuk claimed in a statement.

This comes after local media outlets reported that the legal body had backed a recent parliamentary resolution demanding all foreign forces leave Iraq, clearly referencing American troops. The resolution so far passed is non-binding,

The national legislature voted on the issue session in early January after US forces carried out two separate aerial operations that killed at least 25 Iranian-backed militiamen, Iran’s former Quds Force head Qasim Soleimani, and top Iraqi militia commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

The operations came in response to successive attacks on US troops over the past few years amid heightened US-Iran tensions. One missile attack late December killed a US civilian contractor. Days following this, members of Iranian-backed militia groups torched parts of the US embassy as they stormed the compound. Another rocket attack apparently targeting the embassy took place early on Tuesday.

No Kurdish and few Sunni lawmakers attended the parliamentary session where the resolution was passed, appearing to walk across the political tightrope between voting with Tehran-backed Iraqi parties for the US troops' ouster and angering the anti-American factions by voting against them.

The Kurdistan Region’s leading party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said on Saturday that the lawmakers’ decision was “far from the leading principles upon which the Iraqi state was built following the collapse of the regime in 2003,” noting that those principles were “partnership and balance in governance” between different ethnic and religious components of the country.

Kurds see the foreign forces in country, namely those working under the US-led international coalition, as vital to the fight against the so-called Islamic State.

Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi, who attended the parliamentary session, championed the call to remove those troops. He called on the US, the chief component of foreign troops in Iraq, to send a delegation to Iraq to establish a mechanism for the withdrawal of their forces.

In recent remarks carried by local media, the outgoing prime minister reportedly said he would leave the issue to his successor and not press it further.

Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani—who met with Abdul Mahdi on January 11—said in a recent interview with Al-Monitor that Abdul Mahdi hopes US troops will ultimately stay but wants to “reformulate, redefine the future presence of these forces in Iraq.”

“We strongly believe the presence of US and coalition forces is a must for all of Iraq,” Barzani stated.

As the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Peshmerga, Jabar Yawar, recently affirmed, “ISIS is still standing and posing a threat to the Kurdistan Region, Iraq, and the whole world.”

Editing by John J. Catherine