Iraq Faces Twin Deadlines as US Withdrawal Nears and Militias Resist Disarmament

Iraq is heading toward the end of September with two intertwined deadlines: the completion of a US military pullout that closes a presence spanning more than two decades, and a government push to disarm non-state armed groups that has so far met firm resistance.

Officials say the hundreds of American troops still stationed in northern Iraq will leave by September 30. The withdrawal follows a 2024 agreement between Washington and Baghdad to wind down the US-led mission against the Islamic State group, which had seized large areas of Iraqi territory before being reduced to scattered sleeper cells. US forces had already vacated bases across most of the country last year, retaining a presence only in the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north.

Saad Maan, head of the Iraqi Security Media Cell, said the coalition's role in fighting the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, is no longer required. He described September 30 as the date for the completion of Iraqi sovereignty and for the country's security forces to assume full responsibility for their duties. Maan added that efforts to regulate weapons are continuing through dialogue with factions that have joined the initiative, with the transition of armed groups into the Popular Mobilization Forces — an official institution under the commander-in-chief of the armed forces — forming the roadmap for the next phase.

The government has tied the American withdrawal to an ultimatum for militias to surrender their weapons. A handful of less-influential groups have agreed to do so. But the most powerful factions, including Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, have either rejected disarmament outright or set conditions the government is unlikely to meet soon, such as bringing Kurdish peshmerga forces under central government control and expelling Iranian Kurdish dissident groups and the Kurdistan Workers' Party from northern Iraq.

Iraqi analyst Sajad Jiyad, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, said categorically that no groups would be disarmed by September 30. Speaking at a panel convened by a Washington think tank, he noted that the government has spoken of integrating factions and encouraging their assimilation into the Popular Mobilization Forces, but that any proposal labelled disarmament faces total rejection. He added that as long as the potential for war between Iran, the US and Israel to escalate again persists, these groups are unlikely to go anywhere, and that Tehran would not surrender its leverage in neighbouring Iraq until some settlement or deal with Washington is reached.

Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have struck US-linked targets inside and outside Iraq since the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, and have coordinated with Yemen's Houthi rebels in attacks on Saudi Arabia. US officials remain concerned about the militias' capacity to carry out attacks, but not enough to postpone the withdrawal.

Iraqi officials have sent mixed signals on whether September 30 is a hard deadline for disarmament or merely the starting point for negotiations. The government's current strategy, according to one official, centres on bringing armed factions under the control of the Iraqi military. Many militias are already formally part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of armed groups that sits within the Iraqi armed forces even as individual factions often operate independently.

With the withdrawal set to conclude and the disarmament question unresolved, Iraq faces uncertainty over what the day after will look like.