Baghdad says US troops withdrawing from Syria have 4 weeks to leave Iraq

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraqi Defense Minister Najah al-Shammari said on Wednesday that US troops who arrived in Iraq days earlier after withdrawing from northeastern Syria have four weeks to leave the country.

The minister’s comments came following a meeting in Baghdad with his American counterpart Mark Esper, who made a trip to Iraq to outline the details of the troops’ stay with senior officials.

American forces left Syria following an apparent last-minute decision by US President Donald Trump after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who would announce the start of an assault on northern Syria shortly after.

The Turkish operation has largely calmed since the US-brokered a ceasefire between Ankara and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Washington’s longtime ally against the so-called Islamic State. The Turkish military incursion has so far resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and the displacement of close to 300,000 others.

As the American troops arrived in the Kurdistan Region, Esper indicated that they would remain there and move to western parts of Iraq to carry out anti-Islamic State operations. He later seemed to be retracting this statement, saying during a press conference in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday that the US would eventually take the troops home.

Esper met with Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi earlier in the day. The prime minister’s office said in a statement that the US secretary had affirmed that American troops “enter and withdraw from Iraqi territory with the permission and approval of the Iraqi government.”

Following their meeting, Shammari said in a statement that the United States has no plans to leave those forces in Iraq “endlessly,” adding that US troops crossing from Syria “will pass” through Iraq, and then leave within a period of “no more than four weeks.”

The Iraqi defense minister said that planes that would be transporting the US troops out of Iraq have already arrived. 

Editing by John J. Catherine