Newspaper front pages for the March 13th, 2024

BAGHDAD-Talks between the United States and Iraq on ending the US-led military coalition in the country may not be concluded until after US presidential elections in November, a senior Iraqi government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Washington and Baghdad in January initiated talks to reassess the U.S-led coalition in Iraq, formed in 2014 to help fight Daesh after the extremist group overran large parts of the country.

The decision came after US forces and Shiite armed groups had engaged in tit-for-tat attacks amid regional conflict linked to Israel’s war in Gaza.

Those attacks have now ceased for over a month to allow breathing space for the negotiations.

Backed by Shiite Muslim parties and armed groups, the government in Baghdad, a rare ally of both Tehran and Washington, is trying to prevent the country again becoming a battlefield for foreign powers.

The technical talks via a joint military commission are seen by politicians as a way to buy time amid differing views over how the countries’ military relationship should evolve.

Hard-line Iraqi Shiite armed groups have called for an immediate exit of US forces while more moderate Shiite factions and Sunni and Kurdish parties are concerned their departure could lead to a power vacuum.

Washington says the coalition’s mission needs to be reassessed in light of Islamic State’s 2017 defeat in Iraq but does not view the talks as necessarily entailing a withdrawal of US military advisers from the country.

The US invaded Iraq in 2003, toppling President Saddam Hussein before exiting the country in 2011.

The US returned in 2014 at the head of an international coalition to fight Daesh and there are currently around 2,500 American troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria on an advise and assist mission.

“I don’t think the Americans want a full withdrawal. That is clear,” former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, a moderate member of Iraq’s ruling Shiite Coordination Framework, told journalists last week.

“Also, I do not thing there is an Iraqi desire among the political forces to dispense entirely with the Americans — even though there is a feeling today that their presence at this time causes more problems than solutions."