Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said on Tuesday that ISIS is no longer a threat, demanding a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
During a meeting on this Tuesday with US Major General Kevin C Leahy, commander of the Global Coalition against ISIS in Iraq, and the US ambassador to the Arab country, Alina Romanowski, Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said once again that the ISIS terrorist group no longer poses a threat to Iraq, and that US troops should leave the oil-rich country soon.
“The remnants of terrorism no longer pose a threat to the existence of the Iraqi state. Today, our people enjoy security and stability as a result of the sacrifices of our righteous martyrs,” Sudani said Tuesday.
Explaining that ISIS has been reduced to isolated groups hiding in remote areas, Sudani also noted that Iraq’s armed forces were conducting operations to locate and apprehend the organization’s remaining militants and they can do the job alone.
A statement from Sudani’s office also addressed Tuesday’s meeting and noted that it focused on “the progress of the technical dialogue between Iraq and the US-led international coalition about ending the coalition’s mission in the country and transferring the mission to bilateral relations between Iraq and the coalition member state.”
For years, the US has used ISIS as a pretext for keeping troops in Iraq. But for the past few months, Baghdad and Washington have been in talks to end the US-led coalition’s mission and leave the fighting to ISIS remains in Iraq to Iraqi forces. But as the statement from Sudani’s office emphasized, there would still be cooperation in training and intelligence sharing between Iraq and the United States.
Will US troops leave Iraq eventually?
Sudani’s Tuesday demand from US officials to materialize ending American troops’ presence in Iraq was not new. The same man had made the same demand several times in the past few months.
Back in June, for example, Sudani said that Iraq had won a “civilizational victory” against ISIS, which was achieved through the cohesion of the Iraqi people and sacrifices from all the national components of the country demanding US troops to leave Iraq.
The United States, however, seems quite reluctant to meet Sudani’s demand at least not in the near future. Early last week, the US military claimed that it carried out a “dramatic military raid” in western Iraq that killed at least 14 ISIS fighters and also left seven US troops wounded, a good proof for Washington that ISIS is still a threat despite Sudani’s words.
