The Ukrainians are long gone. So are the Norwegians. The Italians and South Koreans are getting ready to leave, and the Britons and Japanese could begin packing their bags later this year.
Slowly but steadily, US allies in Iraq are drawing down or pulling out as Iraqi forces take more responsibility for securing the country. By year's end, officials say, the coalition may shrink noticeably.
The continuing withdrawals and reductions will test the Iraqis' ability to tamp down attacks and rebuild, Anthony Cordesman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said.
The UK, with about 8,000 troops in Iraq, is the US' most important coalition ally. Officials repeatedly have said they hope to begin bringing home some of those troops later this year, though Defense Secretary John Reid has played down recent reports that the UK has settled on a timetable for withdrawal.
On Tuesday, however, he made clear that "if things in Iraq continue to progress as they are, there will be significantly fewer British forces there by next year."
Poland's new president, Lech Kaczynski, said his country might keep its scaled-down contingent of 900 troops in Iraq into 2007.
But other countries have abandoned the coalition, shrinking the overall size of the force to 157,500, including the roughly 138,000 US troops.
The Pentagon says the US contingent itself has been cut to its lowest level since last summer, when a buildup for election security expanded the US force to about 160,000.
In the months after the March 2003 invasion, the multinational force peaked at about 300,000 soldiers from 38 nations -- 250,000 from the US, about 40,000 from the UK, and the rest ranging from 2,000 Australians to 70 Albanians.
Among the larger contributors to pull out of Iraq was Ukraine, which withdrew its last contingent of 876 troops in December.
Bulgaria also brought home its 380 infantry troops, and though it plans to send in 120 soldiers by mid-March to help guard a refugee camp north of Baghdad, those will be non-combat forces with limited rules of engagement.
Key coalition members such as South Korea and Italy will begin drawing down later this spring.
South Korean officials say they plan to bring home about 1,000 of their 3,270 troops in phases this year from their current base in the northern region of Irbil, where they help train Iraqi security forces and provide security for UN officials stationed in the area.
Although a timeframe and details have not been set, parliament in December approved the staged drawdown while extending the overall deployment to the end of the year.
The South Koreans have not engaged in combat with insurgents, but their deployment nonetheless has been highly unpopular back home.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS