The Iraqi parliament on Saturday held a session condemning deadly strikes carried out by the United States as a violation of the country’s sovereignty and referred to a petition calling for the expulsion of all foreign troops from Iraq to the legislature’s security and legal committees. Many Kurdish and Sunni lawmakers did not attend the session, to the ire of the Shiites.
“A number of Shiite lawmakers told us that we will have a stance and you will need us. They meant the amendment of the Iraqi budget law and the election of the speaker of parliament,” MP Soran Omar of the Kurdistan Justice Group (Komal), who attended the meeting, told Rudaw.
Omar feared a lack of explanation from Kurdish blocs in the Iraqi parliament for refusing to attend the session will significantly disrupt efforts to amend the budget law - a highly sought-after request by the Kurdistan Region.
Erbil has been eyeing an amendment to the law to guarantee stable payments to cover the salaries of the Kurdistan Region’s increasingly-frustrated civil servants.
“The Shiites are very concerned about the Kurdish stance because they are saying we had a stance on the bombings in Erbil,” Omar said, referring to the deadly Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) strikes on the Kurdistan Region’s capital on January 15.
A US drone strike in eastern Baghdad’s Mashtal neighborhood on Wednesday killed three, including Abu Baqer al-Saadi, a leading commander of the pro-Iran Kataib Hezbollah group. The Iraqi government condemned the attack, saying Baghdad was now “more than ever” compelled to end the mission of the US-led global coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS) in the country and force the withdrawal of foreign forces.
During the session, lawmakers met to discuss a petition signed by over 100 MPs proposing a binding resolution to remove all foreign troops from Iraq. Muhsin al-Mandalawi, first deputy speaker of the parliament, referred it to the security and legal committees.
Faleh al-Khazali, a Shiite MP, said that through boycotting the session, the Kurdish and Sunni lawmakers violated the constitutional duty of devoting themselves to preserving Iraqi sovereignty.
Hussein al-Amri, another MP, said during a press conference that not attending the session was a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and warned that “a lack of solidarity will lead to more bloodshed and instability.”
The recent American strike on Baghdad was in retaliation for a series of rocket and drone attacks by Iran-aligned armed groups that have targeted US personnel in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan since mid-October over Washington’s support for Israel in its war on Gaza.
A deadly drone strike claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow Iraqi militia groups affiliated with the IRGC, in Jordan late last month killed three American soldiers. US President Joe Biden warned that the response would be carried out in multiple phases.
Baghdad is currently engaged in talks with the US-led coalition against ISIS to wind down the mission and end the presence of foreign troops on Iraqi soil. The talks were instigated by Iraq’s anger over repeated US airstrikes on its territory.
Around 2,500 American troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria are leading an international coalition through Operation Inherent Resolve that has assisted Kurdish, Iraqi, and local Syrian forces in the fight against ISIS, which once held swathes of land in Iraq and Syria but was declared territorially defeated in 2019.