Joe Biden to declare end of combat operations in Iraq

“The war against Isis and the readiness of our forces requires a special timetable, and this depends on the negotiations that we will conduct in Washington,” he added.

Previous claims of victory and US withdrawal from Iraq had to be swiftly reversed. This time there will be little change to the number of troops stationed in the country — about 2,500 — with a few hundred more from Britain and other allies preserving a longer-term presence in the face of Iranian influence.

President Trump, who declared in his election campaign that he would “end America’s forever wars in the Middle East”, failed to do so but in one of his last acts, in November, he reduced numbers in Iraq by 500, down from 3,000.

Biden’s symbolic announcement is expected to take the form of a written statement unveiled in a White House ceremony after the meeting with Kadhimi later today. The talks are being billed as part of a “US-Iraq strategic dialogue”, a format used to stress the notion that the relationship between the two is of two sovereign, equal states, with shared security interests.

That fits the formal US position that the reason for its troops’ presence in Iraq is solely to help it defeat, and prevent a return of, Isis jihadists. The long-feared “resurgence” of Islamic State after the defeat of the group’s territorial “caliphate” two years ago has not materialised. The group manages sporadic attacks, including a bombing in Baghdad’s largely Shia suburb Sadr City which killed 35 people last week, but maintains a physical presence only in remote patches of the deserts of Anbar and in ungoverned territory between Kurdish and federal government zones of control.

Yesterday the Iraqi authorities released photographs of five men, including three brothers, arrested on suspicion of carrying out the Sadr City attack.

Reports in Washington suggest that the end of the year will be set as the formal deadline for the removal of combat troops. In reality some will leave over the next few weeks and months. Nearly all US military activity is already said to be devoted to training and advising Iraq’s army, particularly its counterterrorism forces.

The US presence has the key longer-term strategic purpose of providing a bulwark against the domination of Iraq, which has been divided since the 2003 invasion, by neighbouring Iran.

Kadhimi, who has close relations with the West but whose coalition government depends on support from pro-Iranian factions, is under pressure to implement a vote by parliament last year for the US presence to end.

It took place in disputed circumstances after General Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the most powerful Iraqi militia commander, were killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport in January last year. The vote has been used by the militias to justify repeated rocket and drone attacks on bases shared by US and Iraqi troops, 50 this year alone.

The militias have been close to Iran in the past but now claim to promote an Iraqi nationalism independent of both Washington and Tehran.

In particular, the veteran militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political faction won more seats than any other in the last Iraqi elections, has fostered relations with US allies such as Saudi Arabia even while keeping up his anti-American rhetoric.

The militias originate in brigades of fighters recruited by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard from Iraq’s Shia community which was exiled under Saddam Hussein. The brigades then fought for Iran in the 1980-88 war between the two countries. Brigade leaders and fighters returned to Iraq after the 2003 invasion to form the core of a pro-Iranian, anti-western “resistance” movement.

Realism returns to US policy
Critics of US foreign policy like to portray it as an unbroken history of neo-imperialism, inflicting American hegemony on unwilling subject nations.

Nowhere is that sense stronger than in, and about, the Middle East.

The reality is that US policy has swung violently over the past two decades. A principle of long-term support for American allies, particularly oil-producing ones, was replaced first by aggressive attempts to reshape the region under George W Bush and then by a proclaimed desire to quit it altogether under President Obama and President Trump.

President Biden has borrowed rhetoric from all his predecessors. He swears loyalty to Israel, he talks of human rights concerns and shows his dislike of Saudi Arabia’s repressive monarchy, as Obama did, while also posturing that he follows the Trump doctrine of not getting bogged down in the “forever wars”.

What all of this means was not obvious at first but is becoming clearer.

He is not hesitant to order action, ordering two sets of air strikes on Syria already.

He has promised that whatever his concerns about human rights the US security umbrella over the Gulf will remain. And, again despite those concerns, there will be no mention of “regime change” anywhere. It looks very much as if the future is a return to the past, the “realism” of the post-Vietnam Kissinger settlement.

The deal to be unveiled in Washington today is a prime exhibit. Enough US troops will remain in Iraq to show it remains a key US interest. However, those US troops will be few enough that no one except the most hardline pro-Iranians can claim they represent an American version of colonialism.

The pull-out from Afghanistan appears to contradict this balancing policy, and to Aghans the resemblance to Iraq in 2011 is striking. It is understandable if liberal, pro-western Afghans feel betrayed.

But for realists, Afghanistan is a different story entirely, with its complex history, so often disastrous to meddling outside powers.