BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to Iraq on Tuesday for a surprise visit aimed at showing Washington’s commitment to maintaining its military presence there nearly 20 years after the invasion led by the United States that overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Launched under the administration of George Bush in 2003 and carried out by an international coalition under the pretext of the presence of weapons of mass destruction, the invasion of Iraq killed between 185,000 and 208,000 Iraqi civilians and caused instability which ended up paving the way for the rise of the Islamic State (IS) jihadists after the withdrawal of American forces in 2011.
No weapons of mass destruction have ever been found in Iraq.
Lloyd Austin, the most senior official in President Joe Biden’s administration to visit Iraq, took part in the invasion in 2003 and was named commander of US forces in the country in 2010, before overseeing the withdrawal of troops in 2011.
“I am here to reaffirm the strategic partnership between the United States and Iraq as we move toward a more secure, more stable, and more sovereign Iraq,” he said.
The United States currently has 2,500 troops in Iraq – and another 900 in Syria – to advise and assist Iraqi troops in fighting the Islamic State, which in 2014 seized swaths of territory in the two Middle East countries. East.
“What (the Iraqis) are going to hear from him is the commitment to maintain the presence of our forces, but it is not only about the military instrument. The United States is largely interested in a strategic partnership with the Iraqi government,” a senior US defense official said on condition of anonymity.
Islamic State cells resist in parts of northern Iraq and northeastern Syria.
Lloyd Austin’s trip is also intended to support Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Chia al-Soudani in his fight against Iranian influence in the country, according to former officials and experts.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq have occasionally targeted US forces and their embassy in Baghdad with rockets.
Tensions ran high in 2020 between the United States and Iran after US forces killed General Qassem Soleimani, commander of an elite Iranian forces unit.
“I think Iraqi leaders share our interest in ensuring that Iraq does not become a playground for conflict between the United States and Iran,” the US Secretary of Defense said.
He will meet the Iraqi Prime Minister as well as the President of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani, in the context of a long-standing dispute over budgetary transfers and the sharing of oil revenues between the national government and the Kurdish executive.
(Report Idrees Ali in Baghdad; French version Diana Mandiá, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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