In a counterstrike measure to United States President Donald Trump's sweeping immigration ban on seven Muslim-majority countries including Iraq, lawmakers in Baghdad voted to call on the coalition government on Monday to impose a similar visa ban on Americans.
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The Iraqi lawmakers proposed to impose a ban, similar to that of Trump's, on Americans, if the US president did not withdraw the immigrant visa ban. Trump's executive actions on extreme vetting and visa ban applies to migrants, refugees and US legal residents — green-card holders — from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Trump said that the executive order was passed in a bid to increase American safety from "radical Islamic terrorists."
The vote to demand a counterstrike measure against the US administration was passed by a majority, the Iraqi lawmakers told the Associated Press. However, it was not clear whether the lawmakers called for a blanket ban on the entry of all American nationals or if the US military personnel and the government officials were exempted from it.
According to a Newsweek report, the US personnel involved in the battle against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq are likely to be excluded from the visa ban for Americans.
An Iraqi security official, before the vote, confirmed that Baghdad is "thinking that they should start with Americans who have nothing to do with the government and those who are outside the embassy and the international coalition." He added that the proposed ban will not "affect the need of Americans in Iraq for battles against ISIS."
The official said, "[Iraqi Prime Minister Haider] al-Abadi is very embarrassed in front of the parliament parties and must disrupt the visas for American civilians and non-military [personnel]."
Around 5,000 American troops are currently fighting a battle in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, against ISIS along with Shia paramilitary groups, Kurdish peshmerga forces, backed by US airstrikes.
Former Iraqi ambassador to the US, Lukman Faily, believes that Trump's executive orders will "certainly have an adverse impact" on the war against ISIS. Faily will not be allowed to travel to America because of the controversial immigrant ban.
