Canada Extends Iraq War Mission by Another 12 Months

Mission includes training in Jordan, Lebanon

With just hours left in its military mandate on the Iraq/ISIS War, Canada DM Anita Anand announced another 12 month extension on Thursday evening, keeping a long but relatively minor engagement in the Middle East active.

Like most NATO members, Canada committed to support the war against ISIS in vague and fairly open-ended terms. A few hundred troops from Canada are involved, including training in Jordan and Lebanon which are at best tangentially related to ISIS.

Canada’s involvement in Iraq is mostly an extension of US involvement Canada is a trade partner with Iraq, selling cereals and wood to the Middle Eastern nation for oil and gas.

The 12 month extension is mostly just record-keeping, and neither reflects a likely deadline for the war, nor makes it unlikely Canada will rubber-stamp it again this time in 2023 for another 12 months.

With engagements like this, the mandates are mostly just a reminder that the operations are even going on at all. Since the Defense Ministry signs off on it there is little chance for debate nor possibility of not extending the mission.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.