The last United States soldiers have left Iraq, formally ending a military presence that began with the 2003 invasion ordered by President George W. Bush. According to Iraq's foreign minister, American troops had already departed three days ahead of the official 30 September deadline, with the final contingent stationed in the country's north. The withdrawal marks a profound turning point: banners across Baghdad proclaimed it the dawn of Iraqi sovereignty, yet the moment arrives freighted with grief, unresolved trauma, and deep uncertainty about what comes next.

The US intervention began in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks, when the Bush administration accused Saddam Hussein's government of harbouring links to al-Qaeda and pursuing weapons of mass destruction — allegations that later proved unfounded. The invasion toppled Hussein, under whose brutal rule hundreds of thousands had died, but unleashed years of sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni factions, killing approximately 4,500 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis. At its peak, more than 160,000 American troops were deployed. The war's total cost has been estimated at up to three trillion dollars. A formal US combat mission ended in 2011, but troops returned in 2014 at Baghdad's request after the Islamic State (IS) swept across large swaths of Iraq and Syria, declaring a so-called caliphate and carrying out mass atrocities. A US-led coalition of more than 80 countries, known as Operation Inherent Resolve, eventually pushed IS back — at a cost that included an estimated 13,000 civilian deaths from coalition air strikes alone, according to the monitoring group Airwars.

The human cost of the entire era is still being lived. In a sparse apartment on the outskirts of Baghdad, Taleb Mejli — detained without charge during a 2003 raid and held for sixteen months in the Abu Ghraib prison, where systematic torture and sexual abuse by US personnel was later extensively documented — breaks down recounting his ordeal. His wrists and ankles carry deep scars from self-inflicted wounds; his marriage collapsed, his sons were bullied, and he has moved home more than a dozen times. He receives no compensation from either the US or the Iraqi government. In Falluja — a Sunni city roughly fifty kilometres west of Baghdad that was devastated in two ferocious battles in 2004, the most intense urban combat the US had seen since Vietnam — a 22-year-old man named Mustafa Ahmed hops into his family's living room on crutches, his left leg gone from the thigh down since an American strike hit him as a toddler.

The withdrawal has been formally welcomed by Iraq's prime minister and by the powerful Iran-aligned militias that have long demanded it. Those same militias were supposed to disarm in parallel with the US departure, but that process has been delayed until June 2027, with uncertain prospects. Analysts warn that Iran, already a dominant political and economic force in Iraq, stands to consolidate its influence further. Kurdish groups, who fought alongside the coalition and relied heavily on Western protection for their autonomous governance project, are seen as especially vulnerable. Kurdish regional prime minister Masrur Barsani has called the situation a disgrace. Lahib Higel of the International Crisis Group cautions that the goal should not be to pit Iraq against Iran — Tehran is too embedded in Iraqi politics and trade for that — but rather to give Iraq space to find its own equilibrium between Washington and Tehran.

For many Americans, the reckoning is equally uncomfortable. Surveys show a majority do not believe the war made the United States safer, and many historians regard the 2003 decision to invade as among the worst in the history of US foreign policy. The drawdown aligns with President Donald Trump's stated aim of ending what he has called America's