Canadian Military Training Iraqi War Criminals in Military Best Practices

In this file photo, Major-General Peter Dawe speaks to reporters at a Canadian Special Operations Forces Command change of command ceremony in Ottawa on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle

 

"[The videos showed some of the Iraqi student-soldiers] raping a woman to death; the torture and execution of a line of bound prisoners whereby they were beaten to death with what appeared to be a rebar steel bar; the execution of bound prisoners by shooting; and the execution of a man by hanging him from the barrel of a MBT [Main Battle Tank]."

Garrison Petawawa troop document, Canadian Forces

 

"We remain uncertain whether appropriate action was effectively taken."

"I am an ethical man and I believe in our moral doctrine and the LOAC [Law of Armed Conflict]. I am bothered by the fact that my assigned duties allowed me to train and enable people who in my mind were criminals."

Briefing by Canadian soldier through his chain of command

 

"I think we have a pretty good vetting process in place to screen out those potential instructors to ensure we have quality people, that they -- the Iraqi government -- feel confident with."

Maj.-Gen.Dany Fortin, Canadian commander, NATO  training mission in Iraq

This 2019 file photo shows a Canadian Forces member at a U.S. base near Mosul teaching combat skills to Iraqi Wide Area Security Forces. Photo by Spc. DeAndre Pierce /Combined Joint Task Force - Oper

Canadian Forces personnel were stationed abroad to help bring stability to troubled countries in the Middle East and South Asia (Iraq and Afghanistan respectively) where they engaged in military training missions in cooperation with the United States, the purpose being to train troops in both those countries in the advanced elements and strategies of modern warfare. Inculcating them at the same time, presumably, with moral standards of the West, while in combat situations. Somehow, the latter prospect has gone missing, and even the former is in doubt, when judging the readiness of the Afghan police and military.

Now, complaints have surfaced from among Canadian military personnel, employed as trainers, to produce trainees that once having gone through the training process, would themselves become trainers to other troops in Iraq. The ostensible purpose was to ensure that whatever remains of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant would be left to the combative devices of the Western-trained Iraqi troops. The heinous atrocities committed by ISIL in targeting the Yazidi, Christians and other Muslims horrified the world, even as ISIL succeeded in recruiting Muslims living in Europe and North America to the cause of their caliphate.

Canadian military personnel attached to Garrison Petawawa, sent to a U.S. base close to Mosul to train the Iraqi Wide Area Security Forces (WASF), joining an international push against the terrorist group ISIL, were shocked to discover that the Iraqi troops they were tasked to train included among them war criminals. Iraqis proud of having committed atrocities easily the equal of anything that ISIL itself committed, as Islamist fundamentalist terrorists.

 

It seems that the Iraqi troops had no compunction about sharing their treasured videos that made them so proud of their actions, never imagining how appalled their Canadian counterparts would be in reaction to seeing the video contents of torture, rape and murder. The Canadian military personnel, reeling from the import of being instructed to train war criminals in the art of modern warfare, went directly to their leadership. 

 

Whose response was to inform the complaining soldiers that they were expected to continue the training, and merely to avoid watching those videos, despite Iraqis eager to share with them. These events took place in September of 2018. When the troops involved had returned to Canada they wanted to know what had been done about their complaints, continuing to voice concerns over whether their complaints were ever acted on. The videos which had elicited such alarm in the Canadian soldiers showed some of the personnel the Canadians were instructing committing barbaric acts of torture, rape and murder.

 

The indelible impression of the Canadian troops was that the Iraqis they were training were in essence, no different than the terrorist group they were being trained to eradicate. While ISIL, an acknowledged terrorist group, committed large-scale atrocities in Iraq, members of the Iraqi forces themselves, mostly drawn from sectarian militias, were also guilty of war crimes. A U.S-trained Iraqi division was acccused in 2017 of conducting executions and other crimes in Mosul.

 

Iraqi forces begin anti ISIS clearing operations    The Defense Post

Five Canadian Forces sergeants and two master corporals had viewed the videos and reported them to their leadership situated in Iraq. One sergeant had the expectation that the issue would be immediately dealt with, while routine activities in training would be temporarily placed in abeyance. Their officers, however, informed them that while the problem would be suitably dealt with, they were to continue processing the Iraqi troops. They were simply not to view or accept any videos from the Iraqis they were training.

 

The Canadian Joint Operations Command, which oversees the Iraqi and Middle East mission named Operation Impact, failed to respond with any information requested on the issue. The month prior to the Canadian soldiers reporting their concerns, then-Canadian commander of NATO training mission in Iraq spoke to journalists of his confidence that they would be weeding out the presence of any Iraqis suspected of having been involved in the commission of war crimes.

Initiated in 2014, Operation Impact saw the Canadian military expand their training mission by special and regular forces. There are at present 500 Canadian military personnel assigned to Operation Impact, including a headquarters in Kuwait, with two Hercules transport aircraft assigned to the mission. A year's extension was announced to run until March 2022. The extension comes complete with authorization for increased Canadian personnel numbers up to 850, if required.

Operation Impact has come with a cost to Canadian taxpayers of  over $1-billion, not inclusive of military personnel salaries. Western nations are anxious to sunder their military relationships with Iraq and Afghanistan. The fiercely fundamentalist Islamists are resilient enough to keep returning and growing their recruits, appealing to their followers' faith in Islam. 

 

For Western troops to be mired in the quagmire of Byzantine Middle East politics -- and worse -- Islamist politics in an effort to keep the worst among them from infiltrating and committing atrocities abroad the commitment seems endless, the financial cost monumental, the loss of lives unforgivable. In the interests of finally leaving it all behind, they are willing to gamble that the countries assaulted by their own co-religionists' massive psychopathy can look to their own interests. Overlooking in the process that the countries themselves are still basically tribal, sectarian and riven with ancient hatreds.

Security Force Assistance Operations    Army.mi