The US Withdrawal from Iraq is Islamic State's Best Chance for a Comeback

On September 30, the long-awaited American withdrawal from Iraq concluded, marking the end not just of over two decades of US involvement in the country, but also the final winding down of the coalition assembled in 2014 to fight Islamic State.

As it left, the remnants of that coalition announced victory in the fight against the jihadists. Victory, however, was likewise announced by Iraqi militias loyal to Tehran, who used the planned American retreat as evidence of the success of the Muqawama - the Axis of Resistance that is headed by Iran.

For a long time, those militias, whose roots go back to the 2003 invasion and the crises that followed, were a thorn in the side of any effort to reform Iraq. At some point they even de facto performed a state capture, forcing successive Iraqi governments to effectively do Tehran’s bidding (even if today Baghdad’s allegiances are harder to ascribe one way or the other).

In short, there were plenty of victory speeches accompanying the withdrawal, made by seemingly everyone. And yet the coalition’s main focus, Islamic State, doesn’t seem as dead as many would like it to be. Just before the US completed its withdrawal, a visible surge of Islamic State activity occurred in several provinces, and then continued for almost two weeks afterwards. Iraq even declared a curfew in Kirkuk, one of the bastions of the jihadists, and a city and region that is a zone of dispute between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Baghdad.  

The clashes, while nothing on the scale of previous eras, are significant enough to acknowledge that a major shift is underway. In recent years, after all, IS in Iraq was largely thought of as the sick man of the Islamic State and a branch at risk of annihilation. That no longer seems so certain.

Just recently, an Iraqi brigadier general was killed in Kirkuk by an IED. A hunt for Islamic State militants is ongoing. Tensions are visible, with more details emerging of Islamic State returning to warfare in the country.

As such, the obvious question to ask is whether Islamic State was ever truly defeated in the first place. But perhaps a more important one revolves around asking whether now is the right time for America to withdraw. After all, haven’t we been here before, watching as a Western force leaves a seemingly pacified Iraq, only for a security vacuum to open in its wake?

Rise of the Warlords

When American troops overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, the toxic mix of external influence, domestic issues, and the American administration’s poor decisions poisoned whatever security structure Iraq had at the time. The country sank into multiple civil wars - of which the most important was between the Sunni minority and the Shia majority.

Saddam Hussein, a Sunni himself, spent his time in power marginalizing the Shia and the Kurds - a polite euphemism for a sustained campaign of slaughter. One that complemented his other campaigns targeting the rest of the region, like the invasion of Kuwait. The 1990-1991 war that followed the latter wound up being a turning point for the region. Since then, American bases have been a permanent feature in the Gulf, one seen as a major threat by Iran. Many commentators have long suspected (rightly or wrongly) that these bases were a deliberate spear aimed at Iran, and part of a long-held plan to overthrow the regime.

While long ago, these events are still highly relevant to the Middle East today. As such, it’s worth recapping some of what followed in the wake of the 2003 US invasion.

The insurgency that sprang up introduced a cast of characters whose existence was detrimental to US plans for stabilization. Shia clerics like Muqtada al-Sadr established groups like the Mahdi Army, fighting against the US for Iraqi independence, but were largely open to diplomatic efforts down the line - Sadr to this day continues to hold a significant chunk of influence in Iraq, despite Iranian pressure.

Other groups’ justifications and motivations varied, but many emerged that were directly loyal to the Iranian regime. They took the brunt of US retaliation at various stages, all the way up to the first US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, and held significant sway in the governments of the time, though still in limited form.

A bigger issue was the brutal organization that rose up from the chaos, and made enemies of both the Americans and the Shia rebels. Before the invasion of Iraq, a relatively unknown Jordanian jihadi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had relocated from Afghanistan to Iraqi Kurdistan, fleeing the US hunt for al-Qaeda operatives. The Americans prepared a side mission exclusively to deal with him, due to his suspected links to al-Qaeda. During the invasion, US operatives carried out Operation “Viking Hammer”, which saw servicemen deployed far behind enemy lines, all just to kill Zarqawi in his sanctuary, where he was hiding with the support of Kurdish jihadists who had established a local mini-emirate.

The mission, while dealing a blow to his forces, was unsuccessful. Zarqawi survived and went on to gain worldwide fame, when his beheading videos, the battles of Fallujah and deadly suicide bombings made the world realize what kind of horrible war was going on in Iraq. Zarqawi’s plans, largely scoffed at the time, were all-encompassing. While Sunni jihadists around the world usually cite the restoration of the Caliphate as their goal, it is mostly lip service, since everyone knows how difficult this task would be.

Zarqawi, however, was determined to see it done - at all costs. It is largely thanks to him that the deadly civil war between the Sunni and Shia sides broke out in 2006-2008 and ignited the trouble that would persist for years to come. His brutality was so excessive that even the al-Qaeda leaders he had pledged allegiance to, Bin Laden and Zawahiri, warned him that his actions were damaging the al-Qaeda brand.

In 2006, Zarqawi declared the creation of an Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), merging various Sunni factions. Not long after, a US hunt north of Baghdad succeeded in killing him, in the middle of the new civil war. His replacements, the duo of Emir Abu Umar al-Baghdadi and ISI’s Egyptian minister of war, continued the reign of terror, though their forces visibly waned in 2009-2010. By 2010 the US was even able to announce their deaths - a moment largely considered to have closed the chapter on the post-2003 invasion struggles. With Iraq thought of as pacified and the US slowly shifting its attention to other theatres, the first American withdrawal followed in 2011. This would turn out to be a major mistake.

New Faces, Old Enemies

The third chief of the Islamic State in Iraq, and later its first Caliph, meticulously rebuilt its forces underground. While the organization was deemed defunct, ISI operatives were building influence on the streets of Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Kirkuk and other cities. And when the civil war in Syria came into full force, Baghdadi sent operatives to join the anti-Assad struggle and exploit the collapse of Syria for the organization’s benefit. The Syrians and Iraqis Baghdadi sent were under the command of Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, a man better known today as Ahmad al-Sharaa - the current president of Syria. Not that anyone back then could predict where his career would take him.

The Syrian Civil War was brutal, and a lot of the foreigners who traveled to the country to fight the regime ended up in various jihadist camps, including al-Nusra, led by Joulani, and the Islamic State of Iraq, which at some point realized something was wrong with its operatives in Nusra. In 2013, encouraged by its new strength in Syria and returning power in Iraq, where ISI had started raiding military camps and prisons, Baghdadi declared the merger of ISI and Nusra under the final name, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Sharaa refused, sparking the civil war within the world of jihad between al-Qaeda and Islamic State… which continues today, twelve years after the first clashes, in the Sahel, where the deadliest battles between the two are now being fought.

ISIS started overrunning parts of Syria and Iraq, and when it captured Mosul and knocked at the gates of Baghdad in a quick blitz from Syria, Baghdadi was proclaimed Caliph - the first of five. An international coalition named Inherent Resolve was quickly established to hold the jihadists off, after their spread threatened multiple countries in the vicinity. The Americans were back in Iraq, only this time to fight Zarqawi’s legacy.

Iraqis themselves took up arms to fight IS, loudly called to war by Iraq’s Shia religious authority, Ayatollah Sistani. A largely Shia coalition of militias, Hashd al-Shaabi or the PMU, was established, with many enemies of America inside it. In the end, the IRGC also joined the fight - during the 2014-2017 efforts to dislodge IS from Iraq, it was no surprise to see American warplanes in the air supporting IRGC-commanded troops on the ground.

The problem with this unlikely alliance is how it all got resolved in the end. Islamic State was finally ousted from Iraq, at least from its territorial possessions - it switched to an insurgency that still continues to this day - but in Syria the Caliphate survived as an entity holding land for another two years. Meanwhile, the Shia militias, emboldened by newfound legitimacy and supported by the IRGC, started to have a say in Iraqi politics in a way never available to them during the post-2003 era. They also took part in the Iranian intervention in Syria, and became allies of Hezbollah in Lebanon. It was inevitable, then, that they would once again target US forces in the country, under the guise of fighting occupation - nevermind that, this time, the US had been invited back and was acting in an advisory role, if also sometimes sending Special Forces on missions to hunt IS leaders hiding in the mountains and deserts of Iraq, or to bomb hideouts.

The Islamic State insurgency, stronger in 2018/2019, lost steam after the loss of territory in Syria in 2019. The organization tried to come back multiple times, but was largely contained and unable to stage a significant return. The Shia militias then, owing to the shift across the whole region after October 7th and Hamas’ attack on Israel, joined the IRGC’s plans to make the US withdraw from the region. Drones bombed US bases in both Iraq and Syria, angering the Americans and causing a renewal of clashes between the militias and US forces, troubling the Baghdad administration, which proved itself unable to contain the militias. The high point was the period after the US/Israel vs Iran war, with record quantities of drones and missiles harassing US diplomatic, military and CIA bases, causing Iraq to suffer Israeli and US revenge.

Today, the bizarre situation regarding the Iran War and its unclear on-or-off status makes Iraq a key piece of the regional puzzle. The Iraqi government is visibly trying, for the first time, to limit the Iranian militias: striking deals with the US, with the Prime Minister personally meeting Trump in the White House. The success of those agreements, however, is far from assured. When the US withdrawal finally went ahead under pressure from the Pentagon, which had long wanted to leave Iraq while CENTCOM advised otherwise, the other side of the bargain was supposed to be fulfilled by the militias voluntarily laying down their arms and dissolving themselves by September 30th. That didn’t happen, with some of the armed groups openly scoffing at the agreement, while others declared they would adhere to it… but only in the summer of 2027.

And so, the issues keep on piling up. Iraq is struggling to escape the economic crisis caused by the Iran war, since its only export (and therefore the only thing really funding its budget) is energy, now largely barred from being transported by sea due to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. The country decided to strike a deal with its former foe in Syria, with thousands of tankers travelling across the desert to unload oil at Syrian ports. Something the IRGC will one hundred percent try to not only exploit, by smuggling arms components to its proxies near Israel, but also to damage, therefore holding Iraq hostage to Tehran’s whims.

The problem of Islamic State, then, will soon become critical if countermeasures are not taken. The organization is poised to exploit these crises and gain a foothold, perhaps one that will eventually allow it to once again return to fully fledged insurgency. Nor is it alone. The group is also trying to reestablish itself in Syria in an era of weakened central government control – hence the Inherent Resolve campaign being relocated to Jordan, with its main mission now support for Damascus against IS.

Should one Islamic State affiliate bounce back in either Syria or Iraq, trouble will inevitably arise in the other country. Circumstances are now also very different compared to the first two decades of this century, because Islamic State in this region is no longer fighting alone, but has developed a massive system worldwide. Its powerful African affiliates have been caught sending money and manpower to its legacy motherland in Iraq in recent years, in a quest to revitalize the struggling jihadists there; no doubt the recent clashes may also have something to do with that African support.

The US has been fighting Islamic State all over the world ever since the Caliphate was declared and IS operatives were sent to Asia, Africa, and other continents. Today, the US military is involved in fighting against the most powerful branches, in Somalia and Nigeria. Some IS operatives there are responsible for helping the Iraqi cells to re-emerge, enabled by new technologies such as crypto.

It remains to be seen how the many crises in Iraq and the region might develop. Islamic State yet again has a small chance to return from near-death in its homeland. A chance they will undoubtedly take if the international community does not act soon.