Coalition troops start leaving Iraqi Kurdistan ahead of the 30 September deadline

U.S.-led coalition forces have begun leaving the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Kurdistan interior minister Rebar Ahmed said on Thursday, 10 September 2026. They are due to be gone by 30 September under a 2024 agreement between Baghdad and Washington that ends the coalition mission against Islamic State on Iraqi soil.

Ahmed told reporters the units "have in fact already begun" moving and are transferring daily to locations outside Iraq. A senior Iraqi official confirmed to AFP that coalition troops now sit only at Erbil international airport. They left federal Iraq, including the large base at Ain al-Asad, in January. They left Syria earlier this year. What remained was the northern pocket at Erbil and Harir.

Qasim al-Araji, the Iraqi government's security adviser, said on Sunday the exit includes air-defence systems in Kurdistan, among them Patriot and C-RAM batteries used against Iranian drones and missiles since the U.S.-Iran war opened on 28 February. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi told Admiral Brad Cooper of U.S. Central Command that 30 September is the "fixed and final date." A U.S. official said Washington expects to meet that date and that Iraqi forces, including the Peshmerga, will lead the fight against Islamic State inside Iraq.

The coalition arrived in 2014 after Islamic State took Mosul and large parts of Anbar and Nineveh. The territorial caliphate was broken in 2017 in Iraq and in 2019 in Syria. The remaining mission was advise, assist and air defence. Bases in the Kurdish region have been hit repeatedly since February as Iran and aligned groups treated U.S. sites in Iraq as targets in the wider war.

For Erbil the practical loss is the batteries and the political signal. The Kurdistan Regional Government has used the American presence as insurance against Baghdad and against Iranian pressure. Budget fights with the federal government and disputes over territories outside the official region do not end on 30 September. They lose an outside backstop. The Atlantic Council and other Washington briefs published this week make that point without new classified detail.

Baghdad presents the date as sovereignty recovered. Washington presents it as a mission completed and a relationship converted into training and intelligence channels that do not need a large garrison. Both descriptions can be true on paper. On the ground the question is whether Iraqi air defences can cover Erbil once the Patriots leave, and whether Islamic State cells in the disputed belts treat the departure as an opening. Those answers will not arrive on 30 September. They will arrive in the incident reports that follow.