What the statement fixes

The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said on Wednesday that 30 September is the fixed and final date for ending the military mission of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and completing the departure of its forces, and that 1 October will open a phase in which Iraq is free of any foreign military presence. The statement followed a meeting with General Brad Cooper, the commander of US Central Command, and said both sides had agreed the deadline during al-Zaidi's visit to Washington in mid-July.[1]

The same statement set a second condition beside the first: putting all weapons under exclusive state control, described as an essential prerequisite for the country's next phase. A US official told The Associated Press that Washington expects to complete the pullout by 30 September, but declined to say how many troops remain or where they would be redeployed, and said Iraqi security forces, including the Peshmerga, would lead the fight against ISIL from then on.[1]

Two conditions on two clocks

Only one of the two conditions has a date. A foreign military presence can be counted, and therefore ended on a calendar. Exclusive state control over weapons is a claim about who is disarmed and by whom, and the statement attaches no schedule to it. The likeliest reading is that the withdrawal comes first because it is the part Ali al-Zaidi's government can deliver on its own. An alternative fits the same statement: both sides describe the relationship shifting to economic and security cooperation, so some of what the coalition did may continue under a bilateral arrangement, in which case presence falls on 30 September and capability does not.[1]

This column argued on 29 July that the reply written to the launch network rather than to the missile force could only be measured by the rate of attacks launched from Iraqi territory. That measurement is about to lose its instrument. The bases in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, the last ones the coalition held and the ones under regular attack since the US and Israel began the war on Iran on 28 February, are the same bases now scheduled to close. The force that absorbed those attacks and answered them is the force leaving.[1], [2]

The indicators to watch before 1 October

One document would settle most of this. If a bilateral security cooperation text is published before 1 October and names which functions the US keeps in Iraq, the change on 30 September is a change of legal framework more than of capability. If no such text appears, the first measurable quantity after the handover is the rate of attack on the bases in the Kurdish region once the force that was being attacked there has gone. A fall would suggest the presence was itself the target. A steady or rising rate against Iraqi installations would suggest the target was the arrangement behind that presence. Neither reading is available today, because the US official who could have given the troop figures declined to give them.[1]