I remember how quickly Iraq seemed to collapse in 2003. From Karachi, I watched American tanks enter Baghdad and Saddam Hussein’s government disappear. Television cameras gathered around his falling statue. Washington had removed a state in weeks.

Building another one took rather longer.

Twenty-three years later, American forces are leaving Iraq again.

U.S. forces are scheduled to leave their remaining positions in Iraq by September 30, completing a withdrawal negotiated under President Joe Biden and implemented under President Donald Trump. About 4,500 American service members died during more than two decades of war and intervention there. American troops first withdrew in 2011. They returned less than three years later after Islamic State captured Mosul and swept across large parts of Iraq.

The obvious headline almost writes itself: America leaves, Iran wins.

Iraq does not fit that headline very well.

The harder question begins at home. Can the Iraqi government establish something every functioning state eventually needs, the authority to decide who carries heavy weapons and who can use them?

The answer will tell us more about Iraqi sovereignty than the departure of the last American soldiers.

America Has Left Before

The September withdrawal feels familiar because Washington has already closed this chapter once.

American forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and removed Saddam Hussein’s government. An insurgency followed. Sectarian violence tore through Iraqi communities while the United States tried to construct new political institutions around a constitutional order.

U.S. forces withdrew at the end of 2011.

For a while, Washington could describe that departure as the end of its military mission. Then Mosul fell in June 2014.

Islamic State exploited weaknesses inside the Iraqi state and captured roughly a third of the country at its height. It declared a caliphate across territory in Iraq and Syria. American forces returned as part of an international coalition supporting Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

Iraq announced the territorial defeat of Islamic State in 2017.

Washington and Baghdad eventually negotiated another transition. Their September 2024 agreement provided for the coalition’s military mission inside Iraq to end, while operations supporting the campaign against Islamic State in Syria from Iraqi territory could continue through September 2026, subject to consultations and conditions.

Both governments described the longer-term objective differently from the occupation years: a bilateral security relationship rather than an open-ended coalition deployment.

That timetable has now run its course. The problem that brought American forces back in 2014 has changed considerably. It has not completely disappeared.

ISIS No Longer Has Mosul. It Still Has Cells.

Islamic State no longer administers cities or controls the vast territory it once called its caliphate. That is a major military achievement.

An insurgent organisation does not need a capital city to remain dangerous.

Iraqi and Kurdish security officials told Reuters that Islamic State retains sleeper-cell networks. Kurdish commander Sirwan Barzani said in September that his forces had observed increased movement by suspected cells as the coalition withdrawal approached. Iraqi officials also reported disrupting a suspected cell allegedly preparing suicide attacks around the withdrawal period.

A repeat of 2014 is not the most useful way to think about the threat. Iraq’s armed forces have accumulated years of combat experience since Mosul collapsed. Counterterrorism capabilities improved during the war. Islamic State, meanwhile, lost territory and commanders.

The concern lies in the gaps.

American forces supplied intelligence and surveillance capabilities that Iraq may find difficult to replace immediately. They also provided logistical support. Small militant networks can survive by finding poorly governed territory or seams between competing security authorities.

The post-withdrawal test is therefore quite specific. Iraqi institutions must suppress those networks without depending on the American military infrastructure that helped them for years. Another security problem sits much closer to the centre of Iraqi politics.

Baghdad’s Militia Problem

Iranian influence will not suddenly arrive in Iraq after the Americans leave. Tehran has spent decades cultivating relationships with Iraqi Shiite political organisations and armed factions.

The war against Islamic State strengthened several of them.

Militia fighters helped defend Iraqi territory when the country’s conventional security institutions were under enormous pressure. Battlefield success brought legitimacy to some groups. Political influence followed, and certain factions developed substantial economic interests.

Several hardline Iran-aligned factions identify with the umbrella known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. Iraqi security officials cited by Reuters estimate that roughly ten such factions collectively command around 50,000 fighters. Some possess long-range missiles and anti-aircraft weapons. Their interests also reach into parts of the civilian economy.

The problem is not difficult to state. Who gets to decide when Iraq fights?

An elected government normally claims that authority. Yet armed organisations operating from Iraqi territory have attacked American and Israeli targets while maintaining close relationships with Iran. Baghdad has then had to deal with the consequences of actions it did not necessarily order.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi pledged to disarm powerful Iran-aligned groups by September 30, the same date as the coalition withdrawal. Five factions rejected the deadline, according to political and security sources interviewed by Reuters. Previous attempts to arrest militia figures have generated threats and political intervention.

The shared deadline matters. Some militia leaders have justified retaining their weapons partly by pointing to the presence of foreign American troops. Their departure weakens that argument.

It does not make the weapons disappear.

Armed organisations build constituencies around themselves. Commanders acquire political connections. Money moves through businesses and patronage networks. After years of accumulation, military power becomes embedded in ordinary political bargaining.

Baghdad may therefore discover that persuading a foreign army to leave is simpler than persuading Iraqi armed factions to surrender power.

Iran Gains Space, But Iraq Is Not an Iranian Possession

The American departure removes a military counterweight that Iran has wanted out of its neighbourhood for years. Iran-aligned Iraqi factions openly describe the withdrawal as a victory.

Tehran therefore gains room to manoeuvre. Calling Iraq an Iranian satellite would still obscure more than it explains.

Baghdad maintains important ties with Washington, particularly through financial and diplomatic channels. A recent sanctions dispute illustrates the uncomfortable balance. Iraq halted Iranian flights under U.S. sanctions pressure while seeking an exemption covering pilgrimage, medical travel and education. Washington subsequently prepared a limited waiver allowing Iraqi Airways flights between Iran and Najaf.

The episode caught my attention because it reveals how power changes form.

American soldiers can leave Iraqi bases while American financial pressure continues to affect decisions at Iraqi airports. Iran has deep political and religious connections next door, but Baghdad sometimes accommodates Washington even when Tehran dislikes the result.

Military withdrawal does not remove foreign influence. It changes the instruments through which governments exercise it.

Nor can Iraqi Shiite politics simply be reduced to Iranian politics. Iraqi nationalism has its own history, including periods of bitter conflict with Iran. Najaf’s religious establishment has sources of authority distinct from the Iranian state. The Kurdish region adds another layer. Its leaders have their own security relationships and political disputes with Baghdad.

Iran can work across these divisions. That does not mean Tehran controls all of them.

Look North and Another Foreign Army Appears

Discussions of Iraqi sovereignty often become conversations about Washington and Tehran. Northern Iraq makes that frame look too narrow.

Turkey has maintained troops and military positions there, principally as part of its campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

On September 23, Ankara and Baghdad agreed on the gradual transfer of the Bashiqa-Zelikan military camp near Mosul to Iraqi control. An Iraqi commander told Reuters that Turkish forces were expected to leave that camp and another smaller position near Mosul by the end of 2026.

Turkey still maintains other military positions in the region.

So Baghdad could soon regain direct control of installations associated with two foreign militaries. On a map, that looks like a recovery of sovereignty.

Maps can flatter governments.

The tougher tests sit outside the abandoned compounds. Baghdad needs authority in places where federal forces, Kurdish forces and armed factions operate alongside one another. It needs enough coordination to prevent Islamic State cells from disappearing into gaps between jurisdictions.

And when the Iraqi government tells an armed faction to surrender heavy weapons, the order must eventually mean something. No flag ceremony at an evacuated military base can settle that question.

Oil Gives Baghdad Money, Not Automatic Authority

Iraq possesses petroleum wealth that many fragile states lack. It remains heavily dependent on that wealth.

The World Bank estimates that oil accounted for about 88 percent of government revenue in 2025 and roughly 91 percent of merchandise exports.

Regional conflict has repeatedly shown the danger hidden inside those numbers. Disruption around the Strait of Hormuz can turn dependence on oil exports from a fiscal strength into an immediate vulnerability.

The World Bank warned in 2026 that prolonged disruption to exports could deepen fiscal pressure, although Iraq entered the crisis with substantial foreign-exchange reserves. Another pressure is quieter. A large young population is entering a labour market that cannot indefinitely depend on public-sector employment.

Security and economics meet here.

An armed organisation becomes harder to dislodge when it offers employment, protection or access to resources that weak public institutions cannot reliably provide. Oil revenue can strengthen the Iraqi state when it builds effective institutions. The same money can sustain patronage.

Whether Baghdad converts petroleum wealth into state capacity will matter long after American troops have gone.

I Still Come Back to 2003

Watching the Americans leave takes me back to those television pictures from Baghdad twenty-three years ago.

The military part looked astonishingly easy then.

Washington possessed overwhelming force. Saddam Hussein’s government collapsed rapidly. What came afterward exposed the difference between defeating a regime and constructing political authority.

The invasion changed Iraq’s internal balance. Shiite political forces acquired power denied to them under Saddam. Kurdish autonomy became more firmly embedded in the post-2003 constitutional system. Iran found openings for influence that Saddam’s government had once violently restricted.

Years later, Islamic State demonstrated what institutional weakness could cost.

American forces returned to help Iraqi forces fight it. Iran-backed militias fought the same enemy and accumulated influence of their own. Kurdish forces defended territory in the north. Baghdad remained in the middle, trying to make one state out of security institutions that did not always answer through the same chain of command.

Now an American soldier can close a gate, hand over a facility and leave. That is tangible. Everyone can photograph it.

What happens beyond the gate will be harder to see.

An Iraqi commander may inherit the buildings and perimeter. Baghdad may raise its flag where an American one once flew. Somewhere else, however, an armed faction may still possess missiles the government cannot easily confiscate. An Islamic State cell may be testing a gap between security jurisdictions. Turkey will still have interests across the northern border, while Iran will continue working through relationships built over decades.

The Americans will be gone from their bases.

Whether the Iraqi state has become more sovereign will take much longer to discover.