Page 9 - MEOG Week 07

MEOG PoLICy MEOG
US military offers Iraq a partial withdrawal
Iraq
ThE repercussions of the US air strike that killed Iranian General Soleimani and the others identified by the Americans as behind the many terrorist incidents in the Middle East and the backlash from Iraq’s parliament are playing out.
The US military has offered senior Iraqi security officials plans for a partial pullback of troops from Iraq in response to January’s parlia- mentary vote calling for foreign forces to leave the country.
A meeting between the two sides, held in great secrecy last week, heard that Washing- ton was prepared “in principle” to discuss withdrawal.
A representative of the US military told the Iraqis present that the US was prepared to leave positions in or near Shia-majority areas, such as Balad Airbase, which is located 80km north of Baghdad and houses US trainers and contractors.
“We are prepared to leave some of the Shia-majority areas, like the base in Balad. Maybe we could reduce our presence in Bagh- dad,” the military representative told his Iraqi counterparts, who understood from this that the US presence in the Iraqi capital would be reduced to guarding its embassy and the airport.
however, the US side categorically ruled out
withdrawing from Ain al-Assad, their biggest airbase in Iraq, and indeed the whole Middle East.
The Anbar province base came under ballis- tic missile fire from Iran last month, in response to the US killing of the top Iranian commander, Major-General Qassem Soleimani, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary forces, at Bagh- dad Airport.
For the US side, Ain al-Assad was its “red line”. The representative said: “We cannot even start talking about withdrawing [from that base]. Withdrawal is out of the question.”
Such was the sensitivity of these discussions that they were held well away from Iraq. The meeting took place in the private residence of the Canadian ambassador to Jordan in Amman. The private offer made to the Iraqis in Amman goes well beyond US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s last stated position a month ago.
Reacting to the flare-up between Washington and Tehran in Iraq, then-acting Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said both the US drone strike and retaliation by Iran had violated Iraq’s sov- ereignty. he demanded that Washington send a delegation to discuss the withdrawal of some 5,200 troops stationed in the country.
Week 07 19•February•2020 w w w. N E W S B A S E . c o m P9