Coalition hands over major base, Camp Taji, to Iraqi forces
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The US-led coalition against ISIS, formally known as Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), held a ceremony on Sunday to turn over the Taji military base back to the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF.)
Taji is a huge, sprawling facility, located some 20 kilometers north of Baghdad. It was originally built as a base for Iraq’s Republican Guards during the reign of Saddam Hussein, when it was also a major facility for manufacturing chemical weapons.
Taji was heavily bombed during the 1991 Gulf War, and in 2003, when US forces returned to Iraq, they took it over for their own use. Iraqis recovered the base in 2011, when US forces left the country—only to return three years later to fight ISIS.
