The US military’s decision to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq appears aimed at helping Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s spring re-election campaign, experts told Al-Monitor.

The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq all but confirmed today that US military advisers are beginning to leave the war-torn country. The coalition's announcement, following an early morning Associated Press report, characterized the shift as a change in mission toward “policing, border control and military capacity building” as “invited guests in Iraq” following battlefield victory against IS.

“This is to give Abadi the visible reduction he needs to show before elections,” Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Al-Monitor. “The US knows it has the same influence with 4,000 or 8,000 troops.”

The United States had already announced that 5,200 troops in Iraq would shift to a “conditions-based” presence in the country after Abadi declared IS defeated on Dec. 9. Last month, the head of special operations for the anti-IS coalition, US Brig. Gen. James Glynn, said US special forces spent up to 80% of their time advising and “hardly ever” accompanied Iraqi troops on missions. That figure, which excludes short-term deployments that included special operations troops, is believed to be far short of the real total, however.