Iraq deployment to face 'death cult'
Australia will send another 300 soldiers to Iraq to train local forces to fight Islamic State militants, Tony Abbott has announced today.
Flanked by Defence Minister Kevin Andrews and Defence Force chief Mark Binskin, Mr Abbott said Australian troops would work alongside 100 New Zealand soldiers on the training mission.
“We haven’t taken this decision lightly,” the Prime Minister said.
“Ultimately it is Iraq that must defeat the death cult but we do not want to leave the Iraqis on their own.
“We are naturally reluctant as a peace loving people to reach out to far away conflicts but as we now this conflict has been reaching out to us for months now.”
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Australia has already deployed 170 Special Forces to train Iraqi soldiers as well as 600 to support air operations including six RAAF Super Hornet jets which have been conducting bombing missions.
The PM said most of the Special Forces troops would come home when they finished their mission in September, with the new 300 deployment of 300 to concentrate on training regular Iraqi army units.
Mr Abbott denied the escalation of troop numbers amounted to “mission creep”, saying it was necessary to train Iraqis to take back their country.
He would not rule out a further increase in Australian troops to the area, saying the aim was to ultimately prevent the creation of a terrorist state in the Middle East.
“It would be wrong of me to say this is the last that we will do here,” he said.
The 300 troops will be based at Taji, about 30km north of Baghdad and will begin their work in May.
As well as New Zealand soldiers, troops from the United States, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands will also be part of the international Building Partner Capacity force.
Mr Abbott and Air Chief Marshal Binskin said they were both mindful of the risk of insider attacks by Iraqi troops – so-called blue on blue attacks – on western forces
“As for blue on blue, you can never rule these things out, but one of the reasons why there is a very strong force protection element in this training contingent is to prevent precisely that,” Mr Abbott said.
Air Chief Marshal Binskin added: “It’s a real risk, it’s a risk I take very seriously. As the prime minister said, there is a large force protection element involved in this deployment and we’re making sure that we take all our lessons learnt after the last 10 or so years of operations in the Middle East into account when we’ve been planning.”
