U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made an unannounced visit to Baghdad just days before the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein
QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA and BASSEM MROUEBAGHDAD — — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made an unannounced visit Tuesday to the Iraqi capital where he vowed to continue the fight against the Islamic State group until the extremists are defeated.
“We’ll continue working to accomplish this mission together. Through the global coalition to defeat Daesh, we liberated more than 50,000 square kilometers from Daesh and freed more than 4.5 million Iraqis from their cruel grip,” Austin said, using an Arabic name for IS. Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that removed longtime dictator Saddam from power, Iraq has been a point of friction between the United States and Iran. Tehran has widely expanded its influence in Iraq over the past 20 years.
Despite their defeat in Iraq in 2017, IS militants and their sleeper cells are still launching attacks in the country, as well as in neighboring Syria. IS has killed and wounded dozens of Iraqi troops over the past months.
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