UK troops to leave Iraq by July 2009

The mutterings about this have been around for a while, but now it’s been confirmed: UK troops will be leaving Iraq by July 2009.  In a joint statement just now – at the start of a surprise visit to Iraq by our PM – Brown and Nouri Maliki claimed that UK forces will have “completed their tasks” by then.  Expect plenty of questions over all this: are those tasks really complete?  Are the Iraqis being abandoned?  Is the withdrawal operation too rushed?  But, as I see it, the most important conflict zone for us is Afghanistan; or, more specifically, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.  Any signs that the Afghan mission is being given greater priority should broadly be welcomed.