“This is now a timing issue. How this is going to happen and when it is going to happen specifically is what we need talks for to see to do this without creating a vacuum in the security situation in the country. This is what nobody wants,” German Ambassador to Iraq Christiane Hohmann told Rudaw’s Nwenar Fatih in an interview in Erbil.
Her remarks came amid heightened tensions between the US-led coalition and the Iraqi government against the backdrop of the Israel-Gaza war, with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani on Friday saying his government is working to expel coalition troops after an American drone strike targeted the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces’ (PMF) Harakat al-Nujaba in Baghdad a day prior, killing two.
American and coalition instillations in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq have been the target of a spate of drone and rocket attacks by pro-Iran militias since October 17 in response to Washington’s support for Israel in its war against the Gaza Strip.
Hohmann said that she has seen “an improvement of the security situation over the past year” despite the uptick of attacks on coalition personnel.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow Iraqi militia groups backed by Iran and affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has claimed responsibility for most of the recent attacks, numbering at over 100, on US troops in Iraq and Syria.
On the international coalition’s role in the country, Hohmann said that “we are here to help Iraq to be as strong as it can.”
Sudani defended his decision calling for coalition forces to be removed by saying the “justifications for its [the coalition’s] existence have ended” in Iraq as ISIS has been rendered unable to pose security threats in the country.
“I think it is most important for everybody to remain vigilant and I think that the attack in Kerman last week is a good reminder that while the overall war against ISIS may have been won in 2017, the situation is far from black and white,” Hohmann said, adding that ISIS cells remain active in the country.
ISIS rose to power in 2014, seizing vast swathes of Syrian and Iraqi land in a brazen offensive and declaring a so-called “caliphate.”
While the group was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017 and Syria in 2019, it still continues to pose serious security risks through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions, especially across expanses of the Syrian desert as well as several Iraqi provinces where there are security vacuums.
