Acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has arrived in Baghdad on an unannounced visit as anger grows in Iraq over Washington’s continued military presence in the Arab country despite the collapse of the Takfiri Daesh terror group there.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Shanahan said that his trip came at the invitation of the Iraqi government, adding, “Our interests are to build Iraqi security capability.”
“I want to hear first-hand from them about concerns, the political dynamics that they are facing and then based on that we will obviously factor that into our planning,” he pointed out.
The Pentagon chief is scheduled to sit down with Iraqi officials including Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and exchange views with US commanders about the Syria withdrawal plans.
Asked about the possibility of moving American forces in Syria to Iraq, Shanahan said that he would hold conversations on the issue during his visit.
Last December, US President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw all 2,000 American forces from Syria and withdraw up to half of the roughly 14,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan.
Earlier this month, however, Trump said that he wanted to keep US troops in Iraq in order to keep a close eye on Iran.
“All I want to do is be able to watch. We have an unbelievable and expensive military base built in Iraq. It’s perfectly situated for looking at all over different parts of the troubled Middle East rather than pulling up,” he said.
The remarks sparked angry reactions from Iraqi officials.
Iraq’s most senior Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said that his country was opposed to serving as a launching pad to harm other states.
Both Iraqi President Barham Salih and Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi hit back at Trump’s comments.
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Shanahan replaced Jim Mattis, who resigned last December over policy disagreements with Trump, including whether to pull US troops out of Syria.
Shanahan is the third US official to visit Iraq in less than two months after earlier visits by President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The US president in December 2018 prompted a wave of fury and condemnations in Iraq when he paid a surprise visit to the country and visited American troops in the western province of Anbar, with no stop in Baghdad.
The US, backed by the UK, invaded Iraq in 2003 claiming that the former regime of Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
No such weapons, however, were ever found, and the invaders withdrew from Iraq, after nearly nine years of a military campaign that cost tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.
Leading a new coalition of its allies, the US returned to Iraq in 2014, when the Takfiri Daesh terror group unleashed a campaign of destruction in the Arab country.
Widespread reports, however, said the Washington-led operations largely spared the terrorists and led, instead, to civilian deaths and inflicted damage on Iraqi infrastructure.
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