Kataib Hezbollah suspends attacks as the last US troops leave Erbil

Kataib Hezbollah said on 1 October that it was suspending military activity in Iraq, with one exception: attacks on aircraft it describes as hostile and inside Iraqi airspace. The group's leader, Ahmad al-Hamidawi, issued the instruction after the last US-led coalition troops and equipment left Erbil Air Base. The suspension is the first public change in the group's rules since the departure it had spent years demanding.

The Pentagon marked the Erbil exit as the end of Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq. Defence Department spokesman Sean Parnell said the departure concluded the military mission that defeated Islamic State as an organised force in the country, and that the relationship would now be a bilateral security tie rather than a wartime coalition. The exit followed a 2024 agreement in which Baghdad and Washington set the end of the multi-country anti-Islamic State coalition for 2025 and the end of Inherent Resolve itself for the end of 2026. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth had told Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi the mission would close by 30 September. It did.

What the exception keeps open

The exception is the operational sentence. A group that stops attacks on bases, convoys and advisers, but keeps the right to fire on aircraft it calls hostile, has not disarmed. It has narrowed its target list. US aircraft are no longer based at Erbil. Other aircraft still cross Iraqi airspace: Iraqi, Turkish, Iranian, and whatever flies the corridor between Syria and the Gulf. The phrase hostile aircraft is al-Hamidawi's, not a term in the bilateral agreement.

Kataib Hezbollah grew out of the 2003 invasion, fought Islamic State inside the Popular Mobilisation Forces, and has claimed attacks on US troops and facilities for years. It said, before this week, that it would discuss giving up arms only after foreign troops left. The troops have left. The discussion has not started. Other Tehran-aligned factions marked the withdrawal and refused to hand over weapons. The suspension is not a handover.

The date al-Zaidi moved

Al-Zaidi had told Washington that disarmament of the Iran-backed factions would be done by the end of this year. Back from the UN General Assembly, he set a new deadline: 30 June 2027. In a statement he said 1 October had to be the starting point for dealing with weapons outside state control, on a clear roadmap, with 30 June 2027 as the latest date. The shift is nine months. It is also an admission that the end-2026 promise will not be kept on the day the American justification for the militias' arsenal left the country.

Baghdad called 30 September Sovereignty Day and scheduled a three-day holiday. The political use of the date is straightforward. The government can say the occupation-era mission is over. It cannot yet say the militias are under the prime minister's command. Kurdish officials in the north have said the loss of American air defence worries them after more than a thousand drone and missile attacks on their region during this year's US war with Iran. That concern sits next to al-Hamidawi's exception. The aircraft he reserves the right to hit are the kind of aircraft Erbil no longer has a US battery to stop.

A bilateral relationship with the arsenals still there

Parnell's line about a normal bilateral relationship describes the US-Iraq channel. It does not describe the chain of command inside Iraq. Kataib Hezbollah and the other mobilisation factions have pay, ranks and political blocs that run through the state and through Tehran. A suspension of attacks removes the weekly rocket on a US outpost, because the outpost is empty. It leaves the rockets. The June 2027 date is the test al-Zaidi has now set in public, later than the date he gave Washington, and with no published list of which units must turn in which weapons.

Islamic State no longer holds Iraqi cities. That is the fact the Pentagon cited. The group still has cells, which is why the bilateral training mission continues on paper. The harder fact on 1 October is the exception in al-Hamidawi's order. A militia that stops fighting the Americans because the Americans have gone, and keeps a right to fire at aircraft, has changed its timetable. It has not changed its status as an armed force outside the army. The holiday in Baghdad marks the exit. The deadline that matters is the one al-Zaidi moved to June.