In just a few weeks, the United Nations' special mission to Iraq will leave the country for good.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, known as UNAMI, has been in the country for 22 years and was set up shortly after the US invasion of Iraq back in 2003.

UNAMI's exit marks "the start of a new chapter rooted in Iraq's leadership of its own future," UNAMI boss Mohamed al-Hassan said earlier this week, as he delivered the organization's final briefing to the UN Security Council.

The Iraqi government has said that having such an organization on its territory, meant to support and assess the country's transition to democracy, is no longer necessary.

In 2024, the Iraqi government asked the UN to close UNAMI down — UN missions can't operate without the host country's consent — and Iraqi government spokespeople have repeatedly said they want a new relationship with the UN, one based on more equal terms.

"These are the words that are used by the Iraqi government: 'we want to be a normal country'," Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative at British think tank Chatham House, explained to Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, The National, recently.

Over summer UNAMI, which had about 700 staff, shut offices in the north of the country. By the end of this month, it should have closed its offices in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. UNAMI security forces from Nepal and Fiji are being sent home, buildings handed back to the Iraqi government, and by next September, all facilities should have been fully "liquidated," the UN says.

Phased withdrawal for US military

Also gone from Iraq by next September: US troops.

The planned departure follows a 2024 agreement beetween Iraq and the US, which stipulates that US-led forces will leave the country via a phased withdrawal by September 2026.

Following the US invasion of Iraq, as many as 200,000 troops were stationed in the country. But by 2011, most had left. Then in 2014, as the extremist "Islamic State" group seized parts of Iraq, around 1,500 US troops returned to help Iraqis battle the group.

This summer, some of the around 2,500 American soldiers still stationed in Iraq were redeployed to Syria or moved to a base in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan.

"Iraq today is no longer the country it was 20 years ago," Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani wrote in an op-ed in the New York Post last month. "This transition marks the beginning of a new era." 

Iraq's future without UNAMI, US troops

So what will that "new era" look like, without UNAMI and the US military? And do their departures truly signal a new, more sovereign Iraq, freed from international interference, that some locals have celebrated?

That might be overstating it a bit, Veronika Ertl, head of the Jordan office of Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), told DW.

The withdrawal is "not really an end, but rather a recalibration of international influence and particularly of US-Iraq relations," she explains. "While on the one hand, [this is] seen as important signal of moving away from occupation and war, many Iraqi actors have also come to see the stabilizing effect of these forces."

For example, in October 2025, Iraq and the US agreed that not all American forces should leave; between 250 and 350 are likely to remain at a US base in Iraqi Kurdistan, acting as advisors and trainers.

This is because the region is more volatile than ever, Iraqi politicians, including al-Sudani, have explained. The fall of the long-running dictatorship in neighboring Syria has led to fears that the "Islamic State" group, which still has up to 3,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria, might use security turmoil there to regroup. The ongoing conflict between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, and Israel's pursuit of Iran-backed militias also worries Iraq.

There are a number of Iran-supported militias in Iraq, some of whom exercise significant political and military power. While they have mostly restrained themselves and not acted overly aggressively against the US or Israel on behalf of Iran since the latest conflict in Gaza began, those groups fear that they too could become a target for Israel.

Ongoing security cooperation

"Some sort of security cooperation will remain central to the bilateral [US-Iraq] relationship, even if only to hedge against ongoing regional uncertainty," James Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Iraq, wrote in an analysis for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in September.

KAS expert Ertl expects to see continued military cooperation between Iraq and the US — the US State Department oversees two defense-department-run entities under its ambassador's purview ­— as well as the NATO mission in Iraq.

"At the same time, the Iraqi government has the clear vision of also moving beyond security by enhancing economic cooperation, for example with US energy companies," she points out.

As for UNAMI, its officers say they have been transferring the applicable responsibilities to the UN team that's been based in Iraq alongside them. This includes representatives working in almost all fields, including child welfare, housing, human rights, immigration, mine clearing, heritage and the environment, as well as the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, and the International Monetary Fund.

As UNAMI's al-Hassan stressed during a panel on the subject in Iraqi Kurdistan earlier this year, "UNAMI may conclude, but the UN is not leaving Iraq. Nor will Iraq leave the UN."

Ongoing pressure from US

And US influence over Iraqi affairs doesn't seem likely to fade anytime soon. In fact, over the past few months, the Trump administration seems to be pushing for more sway over the Iraqi government.

For years, the Iraqi government has tried to strike a delicate balance between the US and Iran. But recently, the US government has been putting increased pressure on Iraq to diminish Iranian influence, especially regarding Iran-backed militias.

In September, the US designated four of those militias as terrorist organizations and also placed sanctions on what it says is a militia-linked company. US politicians have also threatened to sanction or hinder Iraq's state-run oil company, whose revenues are crucial to the country's economy, and Iraq's central bank.

But as Ertl of KAS points out, even if Iraq wanted to, it would find it difficult to move away from Iran completely.

"And even if the power of Iran-linked militias was to be reined in — a big challenge in itself — Tehran's political, economic, religious, and cultural influence in Iraq would not just disappear," she notes. "This means that there are limits to what US pressure can achieve. The question is whether these limits are recognized within the Trump administration's approach."

Edited by Jessie Wingard.