Iraqi PM to Focus on US Troop Withdrawal in Biden Meeting

Most US soldiers deployed in Iraq in 2014 to lead a coalition against the ISIS group have left. (AFP)
Most US soldiers deployed in Iraq in 2014 to lead a coalition against the ISIS group have left. (AFP)
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Iraqi PM to Focus on US Troop Withdrawal in Biden Meeting

Most US soldiers deployed in Iraq in 2014 to lead a coalition against the ISIS group have left. (AFP)
Most US soldiers deployed in Iraq in 2014 to lead a coalition against the ISIS group have left. (AFP)

Weakened by pro-Iran factions at home, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi will meet with US President Joe Biden on Monday to discuss a possible full US troop withdrawal from his country.

The White House talks between the two allies come just a week after a deadly attack claimed by the ISIS group, despite Baghdad declaring the extremists defeated over three years ago.

Kadhimi finds himself backed into a corner by the influence of Iraq’s other main ally -- neighboring Iran, which has long seen the United States as its arch-nemesis.

Despite shared enmity on the part of the US and Shiite Iran toward a resilient IS, Kadhimi is under intense pressure from pro-Tehran armed factions who demand the withdrawal of 2,500 US troops still deployed in Iraq.

Operating under the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a paramilitary network whose tentacles extend deep into the state, these Shiite factions stand accused of carrying out around 50 rocket and drone attacks this year against US interests in Iraq.

“If there is no significant announcement on the withdrawal of troops, I fear that the pro-Iran groups may... increase attacks on the US forces,” Iraqi researcher Sajad Jiyad told AFP.

Such concerns are given weight by the leader of one such paramilitary group, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, who recently warned that “resistance operations will continue until all American forces have left Iraqi territory”.

Most of the US soldiers, deployed in 2014 to lead an international military coalition against ISIS, left under Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, who hosted Kadhimi at the White House last August.

The troops that remain are officially classed as advisers and trainers for Iraq’s army and counter-terrorism units.

‘Enduring US presence’
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, already in Washington for several days, has assured Iraqi media that “the talks will successfully establish a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces”.

But US media outlets have only pointed to a “redefinition” of the troops’ mission.

Ramzy Mardini, an Iraq specialist at the University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute, believes there will be no “radical change” in the US position.

The Biden-Kadhimi meeting may cosmetically be “shaped” to help the Iraqi premier alleviate domestic pressures, “but the reality on the ground will reflect the status quo and an enduring US presence,” he said.

Just ahead of the meeting, an armed drone -- an increasingly favored form of attack -- targeted a base used by US personnel at Al-Harir in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region on Saturday, but without causing casualties, according to the US-led coalition.

Mardini points to “political costs” for Biden were he to authorize a full withdrawal of US troops, stemming from the catastrophic “legacy” of the 2011 withdrawal, which created a vacuum exploited by ISIS during their lightning 2014 offensive.

It took a three-year military onslaught, heavily supported by a US-led coalition at the invitation of Iraq, to wrest back all the urban centers the extremists seized.

“The last thing that the US would want would be to quit Iraq and find themselves a few years later facing... a return by ISIS,” according to one diplomatic source.

ISIS today operates from mountainous and desert regions, activating cells for attacks including Monday’s suicide bombing of a market in Baghdad’s Sadr City that officially killed 30. The prime minister announced on Saturday that the cell behind that attack had been arrested.

Election calculations
Beyond the ever-present security issues, Kadhimi, in power for little over a year, is grappling with a cocktail of other crises three months ahead of a general election that threatens his tenure.

Severe electricity shortages, endemic corruption, a spate of murders of activists blamed on pro-Iran armed groups, the coronavirus pandemic and diminished oil revenues have all stoked renewed instability.

Kadhimi will therefore also seek to secure a softening of secondary US sanctions relating to Iran when in Washington, to help Iraq honor crucial transactions with its neighbor and tackle the power crisis, according to Jiyad.

Shortages during the stifling summer heat have been exacerbated by Iran suspending crucial gas deliveries in recent weeks, due to payment arrears of $6 billion that Baghdad is unable to settle, in part because of US sanctions on Tehran.

“The prime minister’s visit (to Washington) is inextricably tied with his electoral campaign,” according to Mardini.

“It’s part of an effort to shore up international and regional support” to help him revive a faltering domestic political base, he added.



A Family Digs Through Trash for Bits of Food, Showing Gaza's Growing Desperation

The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news
The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news
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A Family Digs Through Trash for Bits of Food, Showing Gaza's Growing Desperation

The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news
The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news

With flies buzzing all around them, the woman and her daughter picked through the pile of garbage bags for scraps of food at the foot of a destroyed building in Gaza City. She found a small pile of cooked rice, a few scraps of bread, a box with some smears of white cheese still inside.

Islam Abu Taeima picked soggy bits from a piece of bread and put the dry part in her sack. She will take what she found back to the school where she and hundreds of other families live, boil it and serve it to her five children, she said.

“We’re dying of hunger,” she said. “If we don’t eat, we’ll die.”

Her rummaging for food is a new sign of the depths of desperation being reached in Gaza, where the population of some 2.3 million has been pushed toward famine by Israel’s nearly three-month blockade. The entry of a small amount of aid in the past week has done almost nothing to ease the situation, The AP news reported.

Before the war, it was rare to see anyone searching through garbage for anything, despite the widespread poverty in the Gaza Strip.

Since Israel launched its military campaign decimating the strip after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, it has been common to see children searching through growing, stinking piles of uncollected garbage for wood or plastic to burn in their family's cooking fire or for anything worth selling — but not for food. For food, they might search through the rubble of damaged buildings, hoping for abandoned canned goods.

But Abu Taeima says she has no options left. She and her 9-year-old daughter Waed wander around Gaza City, looking for leftovers discarded in the trash.

“This is our life day to day,” she said. “If we don’t gather anything, then we don’t eat.”

It's still not common, but now people picking food from trash are occasionally seen. Some come out after dark because of the shame.

“I feel sorry for myself because I’m educated and despite that I’m eating from the trash,” said Abu Taeima, who has a bachelor’s degree in English from Al-Quds Open University in Gaza.

Her family struggled to get by even before the war, she said. Abu Taeima has worked for a short time in the past as a secretary for UNRWA, the main UN agency for Palestinian refugees and the biggest employer in Gaza. She also worked as a reader for blind people. Her husband worked briefly as a security guard for UNRWA. He was wounded in the 2021 war between Hamas and Israel and has been unable to work since.

Israel cut off all food, medicine and other supplies to Gaza on March 2. It said the blockade and its subsequent resumption of the war aimed to pressure Hamas to release the hostages it still holds. But warnings of famine have stoked international criticism of Israel.

It allowed several hundred trucks into Gaza last week. But much of it hasn’t reached the population, either aid trucks were looted or because of Israeli military restrictions on aid workers’ movements, especially in northern Gaza, according to the UN Aid groups say the amount of supplies allowed in is nowhere near enough to meet mounting needs.

Abu Taeima and her family fled their home in the Shati refugee camp on the northern side of Gaza City in November 2023. At the time she and one of her children were wounded in a tank shelling, she said.

They first headed to the strip’s southernmost city of Rafah where they sheltered in a tent for five months. They then moved to the central town of Deir al-Balah a year ago when Israel first invaded Rafah.

During a two-month ceasefire that began in January, they went back to Shati, but their landlord refused to let them back into their apartment because they couldn’t pay rent, she said.

Several schools-turned-shelters in Gaza City at first refused to receive them because they were designated for people who fled towns in northern Gaza. Only when she threatened to set herself and her family on fire did one school give them a space, she said.

Abu Taeima said her family can’t afford anything in the market, where prices have skyrocketed for the little food that remains on sale. She said she has tried going to charity kitchens, but every time they run out of food before she gets any. Such kitchens, producing free meals, have become the last source of food for many in Gaza, and giant crowds flood them every day, pushing and shoving to get a meal.

“People are struggling, and no one is going to be generous with you,” she said. “So collecting from the trash is better.”

The risk of catching disease isn't at the top of her list of worries.

“Starvation is the biggest disease,” she said.