OTTAWA—Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan toured the front lines in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on Monday, Dec. 21, downplaying the significance of last week’s major offensive and managing expectations on what Canada’s rebooted training mission will look like.
He met with Kurdish military commanders and Canadian special forces who repelled last week’s major offensive west of Irbil.
The front line was ruptured in perhaps as many as five places as ISIS units unleashed a torrent of artillery and massive armoured suicide bomber trucks, which the Americans call Frankentrucks.
The assault was rolled back the next day with the help of airpower—including Canada’s CF-18s—and U.S. coalition commanders estimate as many as 200 extremists were killed in the failed attempt to break the stalemate, which has gripped the line in northern Iraq since the summer of 2014.
Sajjan said the extremist offensive was not unexpected and the coalition is anticipating more.
“Our troops on the ground have worked very closely with the peshmerga to be able to prepare for eventualities like this, and their preparation and training paid off,” he said.
Some commentators in the international media have suggested the attack, involving hundreds of ISIS fighters, signals a shift in strategy by the terror organization. Sajjan said conversations are taking place trying to anticipate what the militant group will do next.
But the issue of the Trudeau government’s plan to withdraw Canada’s warplanes hasn’t come up in conversations with either Iraqi officials in Baghdad or the Kurds, said Sajjan.
“The irony is, I haven’t had one discussion about the CF-18s or discussing our contribution from the humanitarian side of things,” he said in a conference call with reporters from Irbil.
Instead, Sajjan says they’ve talked about how Canada can refocus its military commitment with a beefed-up training mission, and he’s given some suggestions on contributions the country can make, including ideas he hadn’t previously considered.
