Baghdad marks 'Sovereignty Days' as Iraq confronts a post-US security reality

Iraq is preparing to mark four "Sovereignty Days", a national holiday designed to celebrate the complete withdrawal of US forces from the country more than two decades after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. The holiday carries enormous symbolic weight, formally ending a chapter of foreign military presence that shaped Iraqi politics, security and sovereignty debates for a generation.

The withdrawal deadline falls on Wednesday, confirming the departure of the last few hundred American soldiers still stationed in Iraq. Those remaining troops have served largely in advisory roles with the US-led coalition operation against ISIL (ISIS), which was first launched in 2015 and later known as "Operation Inherent Resolve." Their exit closes a mission that at its peak involved tens of thousands of personnel and defined the US relationship with Baghdad.

Although the withdrawal timetable was set before Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi took office, it dovetails with his broader project of reasserting Iraqi state authority. Central to that vision is an accelerated push to disarm all armed militias in the country by June 2027 — including several powerful pro-Iran factions that have fired across the region during the ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly last week, al-Zaidi said his government is "striving to ensure that the state is the ultimate decision-maker in matters of peace and war, and that weapons and tools of power remain in the hands of its constitutional institutions." He framed the US departure as a natural transition, saying that with the coalition mission ending, Baghdad is shifting its ties with strategic partners "from military cooperation to economic and development cooperation in service of our common interests."

Analysts see deeper political calculations at work. Douglas Silliman, a former US ambassador to Iraq and Kuwait who now leads the Arab Gulf States Institute, said the US exit appears to be part of a deliberate strategy by al-Zaidi to "politically weaken" influential militias, including those linked to Tehran. Removing the American military presence strips those groups of one of their most convenient talking points.

For years, armed factions have justified keeping their own weapons stockpiles and parallel chains of command by pointing to the presence of US forces — and other outside actors such as Turkiye — on Iraqi soil. Some have already signalled that they will refuse to surrender their arms, setting up a direct confrontation with a prime minister who has promised the state will hold a monopoly on coercive force.

Silliman said al-Zaidi "is clearly trying to build a political case to Iraqis that these forces that are more beholden to Iran, and have used weapons without government authorisation, no longer have a political reason to have those weapons." It is a high-stakes gambit, he cautioned, one that leaves room for Iran to assert greater influence over Baghdad and opens the door to a potentially catastrophic domestic standoff further down the road.

There is also risk of renewed external pressure. If Iraq-based groups continue targeting American assets and personnel, Washington would have stronger justification to press Iraqi leaders — through sanctions or, in a more dramatic scenario, military action. Iraq has already experienced the consequences of spillover from the wider regional conflict: last week, Baghdad's Tahrir Square hosted a security gathering marking the second anniversary of Hassan Nasrallah's killing in Israeli strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs.

Still, the broader picture in Iraq has been one of relative stability. Since ISIL's territorial defeat in 2017, the country has remained comparatively calm despite being enveloped by conflict and insecurity along its borders. That stability largely held as Washington began pulling troops out in 2020 under President Donald Trump, with the residual military personnel consolidating at an airbase in Erbil in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region at the end of 2025.

Al-Zaidi has attempted to build in safeguards. Alongside the disarmament drive, he has pushed back on an initial deadline of September 30, 2026, extending it to June 2027 to give factions more time to hand weapons over to state control. The extra runway suggests a degree of political realism about the limits of a purely coercive approach.

Short-term de-escalation is also expected. Al-Zaidi told The New York Times earlier this month that both the United States and Iran-aligned militias have given assurances that they will refrain from launching attacks for 90 days following the US withdrawal — a pause designed to prevent the situation from unraveling immediately.

That truce, however, does not alter the underlying trajectory. Renad Mansour, who directs the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House, said Iran-aligned militias in the "axis of resistance" remain "in full-on war mode," operating alongside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps across the region. In his assessment, they will continue to target US interests, regardless of what is declared in Baghdad or Washington.

Behind official declarations of continued partnership with the United States and other Western allies, Mansour senses growing disquiet. He said the anxiety inside the Iraqi government is that Washington "might not need Iraq any more, or might, in the worst case, view Iraq as a pariah state, too close to Iran, and therefore another target." Such treatment, he warned, could take the form of sanctions or an escalation of US and Israeli strikes on Iraqi territory.

Mohammad Salih, a non-resident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a specialist on Iraq, also sees strong enthusiasm for the American withdrawal — a sentiment he attributes to the deep-rooted resentment of foreign military intervention that runs through Iraqi public life.

The coming months will test whether a symbolic holiday can translate into a durable security order. With the US military footprint reduced to zero, Baghdad inherits responsibility not just for its own territory but for the broader contest between Tehran and Washington playing out on Iraqi soil — a balance that analysts describe as difficult for the militias, the prime minister and his defence team alike.