U.S. military withdraws from Iraq two decades after invasion

Vehicles drive past a billboard carrying the Arabic slogan 'Reclaiming the decision and building the home', at the Saadoun Square in Baghdad on September 29, 2026. Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images BAGHDAD — The U.S. military has withdrawn its forces from Iraq, 23 years after it invaded the country, sparking an insurgency and civil war and opening the door to Iranian influence in Iraq that it is still trying to combat. After the withdrawal of the U.S. military from the rest of Iraq in January, about 1,500 service members remained in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north. This was not the first U.S. military withdrawal from the country. U.S. forces pulled out in 2011, declaring their mission over amid mounting Iraqi political opposition to the presence of U.S. troops. Three years later, the Iraqi government invited them back again to fight ISIS. The militant group took over roughly one-third of Iraq after key Iraqi army divisions collapsed and retreated in the onslaught. The U.S. military, along with Iraqi forces and Iraqi Kurdish fighters, territorially defeated ISIS in 2017, driving remnants of the gr...