WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- About 2,500 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq despite Thursday’s formal end of the U.S. combat mission there, chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.
The U.S. and Iraq on Thursday announced the combat mission’s end following the final meeting of its military-technical coalition, which was tasked with discussing and implementing an agreement in July by both nations to transition the U.S. military’s role in Iraq.
The agreement reached by President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi included that the U.S. would remove all its troops with a combat role from Iraq by the year’s end. At the time, there were about 2,500 troops in Iraq.
Kirby on Thursday said the number of U.S. troops in Iraq won’t change, but it could in the future.
“Remember, this is a change in mission, right? Not necessarily a change in physical posture,” he said. “It’s not like today they snap the chalk line and all of a sudden there’s a massive change in the daily operations of our men and women over there.”
Rather, the troops are purportedly shifting their mission to an advisory role supporting Iraqi Security Forces fighting Daesh.
“There won’t be a dramatic shift from yesterday to tomorrow, based on how we’ve already been working ourselves into this new mission,” Kirby said.
The end of combat operations in Iraq comes about three months after the U.S. ended its 20 years of combat in Afghanistan on Aug. 30. However, unlike the Iraq end-of-operations, no U.S. troops remained in Afghanistan.
Iraq’s anti-terror groups dismissed the announcement, stressing that Washington cannot be trusted an inch and that resistance groups will continue their struggle until all American occupation forces leave.
“American forces cannot be identified as anything other than occupiers if they do not withdraw by the end of the current year. We express our support for the groups that are mounting resistance against occupying U.S. forces,” Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba spokesman Nasr al-Shammari said in an interview with Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen television.
Shammari, whose group is part of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) or Hashd al-Sha’abi, termed retaliatory attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq “a great honor”.
“We announce alliance with the groups that are targeting American forces,” he said.
“The deadline for the withdrawal of occupying forces is winding up, and must be fully implemented.

The resistance front will never face again the challenges it confronted between 2003 and 2011. The bloc is now stronger than ever.”
Shammari said, “The main weapon in the hands of resistance fighters is their beliefs. This is something which they cannot separate the combatants from.”
Earlier Thursday, Nujaba Secretary-General Akram al-Kaabi reiterated the resistance group’s readiness to fight U.S. forces if they refuse to pull out of Iraq.
American occupation forces will pay dearly for their massacres of Iraqi people and distinguished figures, Kaabi said. “The United States will continue to be viewed as an enemy even after the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq.”
He pointed out that the United States has “formed many proxies to pursue its own interests inside Iraq. The fight against them is a legitimate and national duty. The occupation only understands the language of armed struggle.”
Kaabi stressed that Washington does not respect Iraq’s sovereignty and does not recognize the authority of the Iraqi side it is negotiating with.
He said the statements of U.S. officials “have indicated that American forces will not withdraw from Iraq.”
The Al-Nujaba chief also dismissed any disarmament of the Iraqi resistance groups that stood up against the Daesh terrorist group despite their limited capabilities at the time.
“How can we talk about disarming the resistance in a country that is still occupied?” he questioned.
Kaabi said Iraqi resistance fighters have turned into “a nightmare for the U.S. and Israel which are making any effort in order to disarm them”.
The weapons of the resistance groups “will safeguard the Iraqi nation, and cannot be taken away from them by any means,” he said.
In Iraq’s southern province of Al-Qadisiyyah, a roadside bomb attack on Thursday targeted a convoy carrying logistical equipment belonging to the U.S. military.
Sabereen News, a Telegram news channel associated with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units, said the explosion took place near the provincial capital city of Al-Diwaniyah on Thursday evening.
The development came shortly after a roadside bomb exploded near a convoy of trucks carrying equipment for US forces. The convoy was moving on a highway in the central Iraqi province of Babil.
Anti-U.S. sentiment has been running deep in Iraq since last year’s assassination of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Units, along with the region’s legendary anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.
They were targeted along with their companions on January 3, 2020, in a terrorist drone strike authorized by former U.S. president Donald Trump near Baghdad airport.
Two days after the attack, Iraqi lawmakers approved a bill that requires the government to end the presence of all foreign military forces led by the U.S.