As the US leaves Iraq in chaos, its brutality and devastation of a nation remains unaccounted for

• On 30 September 2026, the last US and coalition forces left Erbil Air Base. This formally ended Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq after 12 years.
• These forces returned in 2014, three years after the US withdrawal that followed the 2003 invasion.
• The coalition headquarters is relocating to Jordan, and operations continue throughout the region.
• No US or British political or military leader has faced prosecution for their extensively documented war crimes.

London — On 30 September, the last US and UK troops left Iraq. For close to forty years, Iraq has lived under the bombs, blockades and occupations of Washington and London. In 1991 they invaded. In the same war, a US strike on the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad killed hundreds of civilians sheltering inside. In the following years they enforced sanctions that hollowed out Iraqi society, killing half a million children through malnutrition and preventable disease, while bombing from the air under the cover of no-fly zones. In 2003 there was another illegal invasion based on fabricated intelligence, extracted through torture in the secret prisons of the War on Terror.

The American occupation that followed gave the world the notorious torture prison Abu Ghraib, the sieges and chemical attacks on Fallujah, the massacre of 24 civilians by US Marines at Haditha, and the killing of 17 civilians by Blackwater contractors at Nisour Square. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed. Prisons like Camp Bucca held thousands without charge or trial. Those responsible at the top have never answered for any of it.

Anas Mustapha, Head of Public Advocacy at CAGE International, said: 

"America wants to leave Iraq with a ceremony and a clean record. Iraqis remember the country that starved them under sanctions, invaded them on tortured confessions, and filled Abu Ghraib with their sons. The United States must be held responsible for the bloodshed it has brought to the Middle East since 1991. Its presence across the region, and the killing carried out under it, are war crimes that must be accounted for."