Mission to Iraq obscured
Marching orders, timelines remain foggy
Canada is in discussions with Iraq to send what may be called a military advisory team to work with key Iraqi ministries, a senior military source says.
In a separate development that indicates Canada’s bigger Iraqi training mission may be more dangerous than its current bombing operation against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, due to end Feb. 22, the military has confirmed Canada will deploy four Royal Canadian Air Force Griffon helicopters to northern Iraq to help the growing number of Canadian army trainers; it will also send military clinicians to an Australian- led hospital there.
If Baghdad gives the green light, the MAT may be similar to the strategic advisory team the Martin and Harper governments deployed for several years in Afghanistan. This SAT, which was always led by a Canadian colonel, was the brainchild of thenchief of defence, Gen. Rick Hillier.
Although there were never more than several dozen Canadian soldiers and civilians on the SAT at a time, they played an influential role in shaping how the Afghan government established priorities, and built better governing and accounting practices.
The situations in Afghanistan and Iraq are not strictly comparable. The U. S. has al- ready done a lot of work with Iraq’s security ministries, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Wednesday after a NATO ministers’ meeting in Brussels. Iraq has welcomed Canada’s decision to send military advisers to work with its senior officers, he said, without elaborating what that might mean.
Complicating talks was the fact Canada does not have an embassy in Baghdad.
The Trudeau government has emphasized the humanitarian nature of Canada’s contribution and said other Canadian agencies would be closely involved in its work in Iraq.
However, its only formal commitment so far has been to triple from about 70 the number of Canadian trainers working closely with the Kurdish peshmerga. The Kurdish troops have established front- line positions on a mountain overlooking Mosul, the largest city held by ISIL in Iraq and one of the most likely launch pads for an Iraqi and coalition offensive against the jihadists.
This hot spot, which I visited last year with a peshmerga general, has a commanding view of the Tigris River Valley, with Mosul across a vast plain in the distance. The heavily fortified bunkers are only a few hundred metres from ISIL’s black battle flags and close enough to easily pick up their commanders’ walkie-talkie chatter. It is almost exactly where Sgt. Andrew Doiron was killed in March when peshmerga allies mistook Canadian trainers for the enemy.
The Canadian Griffons are agile tactical helicopters that can be used as surveillance platforms and can carry small numbers of passengers and cargo. Although they are not gunships, their cockpits were armoured when they flew in Afghanistan. They were also modified to carry door gunners, whose potent mini- Gatling guns were used for self- defence, to protect aircraft flying with them and sometimes to provide close air support to troops on the ground.
What still remains unclear is what the government means when it says there will be no combat component to the training mission. Its mantra has been that those there now and those joining them soon are to “advise and assist.” The crux is what is understood by such semantics. In military parlance “advise and assist” usually means mentors will go on the battlefield with their students, as Canadian instructors did in Kandahar in 2006-11.
The Trudeau government, like the Harper government before it, has been deeply reluctant to be specific about how it defines the term. Canada’s top soldier, Gen. Jonathan Vance, said Monday casualties were possible and troops have separately been told to prepare for this possibility.
The timelines for getting additional trainers to Iraq as well as the humanitarian and development aspects of the undertaking remain foggy. “As soon as possible” is what Sajjan said in Belgium.
An officer familiar with what is being planned said it would be months, not weeks, before the enhanced training mission was fully up and running.
Whenever the additional Canadians actually reach Iraq and what their orders turn out to be, they will be surrounded by a cauldron of violence and hate that has multiple simultaneous crises, escalating across the region from Ramadi and Mosul in Iraq to Aleppo, northwestern Syria, where bombing by Russia aircraft has created a new refugee crisis that will inevitably have consequences for Turkey and Europe.
The Canadian trainers being sent to help the peshmerga will likely be perched near Mosul for some time. While Ash Carter, the U.S. defence secretary, said in Brussels the U. S. was in a “hurry” to defeat ISIL, Lt.- Gen. Vincent Stewart, his director of defence intelligence, said Tuesday the assault on Mosul was such a “complex operation ( it) certainly” will not take place until next year.
‘ADVISE AND ASSIST’ USUALLY MEANS ON BATTLEFIELD.