BAGHDAD, Feb 12, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan
arrived in Baghdad on an unannounced visit Tuesday for talks on the sensitive
issue of a continued troop presence following withdrawal from neighbouring
Syria.
Shanahan is keen to reassure Iraqi leaders after President Donald Trump
angered many by saying he wanted to keep troops at the Al-Asad airbase,
northwest of Baghdad, to keep an eye on Iran.
The acting defence secretary, who flew in from Afghanistan on his foreign
tour since taking office last month, is due to hold talks with Prime
Ministrer Adel Abdel Mahdi and top military advisers and commanders.
Trump’s comments about Iran, in an interview with CBS television aired on
February 3, drew a stern rebuff from President Barham Saleh, who said the use
of Iraq as a base against a third country violated its constitution.
They also sparked renewed calls for a US withdrawal both from pro-Iran
factions within the government and from Iran-trained armed groups whose power
has risen sharply during the fightback against the Islamic State group that
culminated in December 2017.
Those calls are likely to intensify as Washington carries out the full
troop withdrawal from Syria unveiled in a shock announcement by Trump in
December.
The plan, judged precipitate by both US allies and senior figures within
Trump’s own administration, prompted the resignation of Shanahan’s
predecessor, Jim Mattis.
But with US-backed Kurdish-led fighters poised to overrun the Islamic
State group’s last tiny enclave in eastern Syria, perhaps as early as this
week, the withdrawal, which other administration figures had managed to slow,
is now likely to gather pace.
– ‘Incredible base’ –
Trump’s comments about the Al-Assad airbase came after the US president
had already angered Iraqi leaders in December by paying a Christmas visit to
US troops based there without travelling to Baghdad to talk with them.
“We spent a fortune on building this incredible base. We might as well
keep it,” Trump said in the CBS interview.
A draft law that would set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal is now
before the Iraqi parliament.
It is backed by both of Iraq’s most powerful political groupings, the
nationalist alliance led by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, and the pro-
Iran movement of former anti-IS fighters.
At a rare joint news conference on Monday, the two groupings demanded at
the very least a “new agreement” setting tight conditions on any future
foreign troop presence.
Following the US-led invasion that overthrew since-executed dictator
Saddam Hussein in 2003, US troop numbers peaked at some 170,000 before a full
withdrawal was completed in 2011.
Troops returned to Iraq in 2014 as part of an international coalition set
up to fight IS after it swept through much of the north and west as well as
swathes of neighbouring Syria that year.