US troop drawdown seen as boosting Iraq’s Abadi
The US decision to withdraw troops from Iraq could help the Iraqi prime minister’s re-election campaign.
The US military’s decision to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq appears aimed at helping Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s spring re-election campaign, experts told Al-Monitor.
The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq all but confirmed today that US military advisers are beginning to leave the war-torn country. The coalition's announcement, following an early morning Associated Press report, characterized the shift as a change in mission toward “policing, border control and military capacity building” as “invited guests in Iraq” following battlefield victory against IS.
