History of the Australian Army with automatic weapons; and shoot army personnel or others until they were killed or captured. Australia, as one of the many countries who sent troops to Afghanistan, provided specialist SAS teams for use against Taliban/Al Qaeda forces. Australia was one of the countries to provide combat forces for the US-led invasion of Iraq. In Australia it was known as Operation Falconer. In all Australia contributed some 2,000 personnel. The Army contribution to this was 500 soldiers. Following the end of major combat operations, Australia announced a withdrawal of most of its forces in Iraq. It left behind approximately 950 troops
Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan of 2016. These remaining forces would be a regular armed forces assistance group, largely to handle military sales under the authority of the U.S. ambassador, but also guard the US embassy, train Afghan forces and support counter-terrorism operations. These troop will not exceed 1,000 troops, akin to the security presence that is currently as of May 2014 in Iraq. The president's plans were subject to the approval of the incoming Afghan government and its willingness to sign the bilateral security agreement providing immunity for U.S. troops serving in the country, which outgoing president Karzai had refused to sign. The U.S.