Pedestrians walk by as people wait in line outside of Madison Square Garden to attend a rally for Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump in New York City, US, October 27, 2024. [Leah Millis/Reuters]

When I read that the American presence in Iraq – 23 years after the invasion – ended with no fanfare, with the last Americans boarding a C-17 transport plane in the predawn hours of September 30 at an air base at Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, my mind wondered to another withdrawal, some 35 years earlier. Although then, too, the last American troops were leaving Northern Iraq, conditions were very different. On the sunny afternoon of July 15, 1991, F-16 fighter jets roared overhead, followed by lumbering A-10 “tank killers,” in a festive flyover, as a long convoy of the last 3,170 men and women of US and allied forces left Northern Iraq. A crowd of Kurds (fighters and civilians) had gathered at the Habur River crossing on the border with Turkey, to cheer on the allies. A few months earlier, America had led an international coalition that evicted Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait and then hastened to protect the Kurds and other groups in Northern Iraq (Assyrians, Chaldeans, Armenians, Yezidi, and others) from the dictator’s wrath. In the deserted border post, as Bob Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” (in the brilliant Guns N’ Roses version) drifted over from a US Humvee with an anti-tank launcher on top, the final US sentry position in Iraq, a Kurdish fighter turned to me and said, “I came to say goodbye. But I would rather say, ‘See you later.’”

These words, and the scene playing out before us, encapsulated the relationship between the United States and the Kurds from 1975 till today. Whereas the two have been allies several times, in the end the Kurds are left alone to deal with the region’s Arabs and the Turks. Until the Americans need them again. This happened in 1972-75, when the United States provided covert aid as the shah of Iran supported the Kurds against Iraq – until Iran and Iraq struck a deal delineating their border, leading to Iran and America abandoning the Kurds to their fate. In 1991, as the Gulf War wound down, president George HW Bush encouraged Iraq’s Kurds and Shiites to rise up against Saddam, provoking brutal suppression and forcing the Americans and the nations of a broad coalition to intervene and establish a safe haven for Kurds in Northern Iraq. When I reported on the allied withdrawal in the summer of 1991, as a correspondent for The Associated Press, the Americans were ending a successful mission, leaving the Kurds in a state of fragile autonomy. In 2003, when the president George W. Bush ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Kurds helped the Americans and achieved a greater level of autonomy. But when they held a referendum on independence in 2017, and the Iraqi government attacked and took territory from them, the Americans stood by without helping them. Later, in Syria, the Americans again called on the Kurds, to help defeat the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Then the Americans again abandoned the Kurds, at Turkey’s bidding.

Today, the Kurds and other citizens of Iraq are afraid of what comes next, as it appears that both the presence and the absence of the Americans cause problems. This is clear when we look at the pressing issue that Iraq faces – the need to disarm the pro-Iranian Shiite militias. The US withdrawal deprives these groups of their ostensible reason to exist, yet they are greatly empowered by the fact that they no longer have American troops to fear and will have no desire to give up this power. This, in combination with the expected reconstitution of Islamic State forces that have been in hiding, means that the tragic consequences of the American entanglement in Iraq are still playing out.

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America, the Kurds and Iraq