More on How Canada Is Tiptoeing into Battle with the Islamic State

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We don’t know exactly what they’re doing, when they’re going, or which government they report to, but Canadian military are soon to be en route to Northern Iraq to help Peshmerga fighters take on the militants of the Islamic State.

Two Conservative ministers and the head of Canada’s military appeared before a parliamentary committee today to explain the mission. But the most interesting aspects of the mission are what they chose not to discuss.

Canada’s plan started off by kicking in additional humanitarian effort and support for the region’s mass of refugees, and pledging it would not be contributing to the military effort. Then, in August, it dispatched two military transport planes—a Hercules and a Globemaster II—with 30 Canadian Forces personnel. We found out a week later that those aircraft were sending Albanian military supplies to Iraqi security forces—now totaling some 500,000 pounds. By September, Ottawa has ponied up $15 million for body armour, support vehicles, and other expenses to bolster the Iraqi-Syrian border that has been almost erased by ISIS.

On Sept 5, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that “upon final consent from Iraq,” Canada would be sending in military personnel.

Appearing before the committee yesterday, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and National Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, flanked by Chief of Defence Staff Tom Lawson, provided some early details on the mission.

Canada will be sending approximately 75 Canadian Forces soldiers to the autonomous Kurdish Region of Iraq to advise the Peshmerga.

Opposition MPs peppered the ministers with questions about the details of the plan, while the ministers kept to generalities, likely guarding the details of the fast-moving and top-secret mission until the Canadians are actually in the country.

The risk-averse opposition parties repeatedly lamented that there could be “mission creep”—the operation snowball into something more serious—but utterly missed the nuance hiding behind the ministers’ poker faces.

Operational Security

“We didn’t ask the flight numbers,” NDP defence critic Jack Harris told a gaggle of reporters after I asked why he was trying to delve into operational details of a mission that hasn’t yet been launched.

Details that have filtered out about the plan may explain why the ministers were so cagey.

CTV News reported last week that the troops heading to Iraq involved troops from the highly trained Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR), which is often deployed to clandestine anti-terrorism operations abroad. Their usual missions involve training national forces with limited capabilities—not unlike the Green Beret’s.

If CSOR is the Green Berets, then Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) is Seal Team 6. JTF2 is Canada’s premier anti-terror special forces unit, and one of very few military assets that would be more classified than CSOR—JTF2 is the highest-ranked Tier One, while CSOR is Tier Two.

JTF2 may already be familiar with Iraq. A 2006 report singled them out as part of a team that rescued three aid workers from Iraqi rebels. It’s expected that they were embedded with American soldiers.

During the committee hearing, Minister Nicholson noted that there are already a handful of Canadian troops on the ground, including at the Canadian High Commission in Baghdad inside the British embassy. JTF2 has previously been dispatched to embassies and high commissions—like the one in Mali—when trouble brews. CSIS also tends to have assets inside Canadian missions abroad.

JTF2 is, of course, so secretive that the military rarely, if ever, acknowledges their missions. As he left committee and answered journalists' questions, General Lawson was asked point-blank by VICE whether JTF2 would be heading to Northern Iraq, and he ignored the question entirely.

One thing he would confirm, however, is what they’re not sending: no Chinook helicopters and no drones.

John Baird answerin' questions. via Flickr user Andrew Rusk.

Friends and enemies

Baird virtually laughed off the suggestion that Canada would cozy up with Iran as they fight ISIS together.

“Some would say that the enemy of my enemy is my friend," he told the committee. "I would not say that.”

The Iranians have continued to prop up the Assad regime and have forged an unholy alliance with the United States in order to weed out the rapidly growing Islamic State.

That highlights just how poorly the regime in Baghdad became at dealing with crisis. The government of Nouri al-Maliki, supposedly an ally of both Washington and Ottawa, was actually singled out by Baird as a contributor to ISIS’s success.

Baird repeatedly made digs at the “overly sectarian” al-Maliki government, and how it contributed to inspiring Sunni militias to form and, in some cases, fight for ISIS.

Up until a few months ago, al-Maliki’s government and Ottawa were trying to forge closer ties. Once their Prime Minister began strong-arming his own people and leveraging Sunni-Shiite relations, Canada was quick to usher his ouster.

But it’s unclear if the new government, under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, can do much to heal those wounds. That’s probably why Canada is flying weapons to the Kurds, not the Iraqis. Its allies are similarly standoffish when it comes to arming the poorly-performing Iraqi soldiers.

And it’s not just the Iraqis who have let Canada down.

While they may have had a few spats, Canada and Qatar are nominally friends, even if entities within Qatar regularly fund groups like Hamas and the al-Nusra Front—the latter of which competes with ISIS for support in Syria.

But that funding is about to put Qatar in direct opposition to Canada’s plan in Iraq. Those groups in Qatar have been fuelling Islamist rebels in Syria for years, and while the government keeps denying it’s sending money to ISIS, it’s inarguable that aid has flowed to ISIS’ coffers from Qatari citizens.

Moreover, it’s telling that Qatar is the only state that ISIS would allow to play mediator in hostage talks with Lebanon. Not to mention, the office Qatar allowed the Taliban to set up in Doha for negotiations with NATO.

When asked about Qatar, a spokesperson for Baird downplayed the oil-rich state’s involvement.

“Qatar, like its Gulf neighbours, has condemned ISIS, recognizing, as we do, that countering this despicable group will require a coordinated and combined international effort, including by countries in the region,” wrote spokesperson Adam Hodge in an email to VICE.

This whole mess is definitely a contributing factor to Canada’s refusal to fund arms anywhere near the conflict zone.

That’s except for the consistent exports of small arms that Canada regularly sends to Qatar, according to Industry Canada trade data, as well as more than $100 million in aircrafts since 2009. Iraq has also received ample support from Canadian industry for its airforce.

For years, Canada has refused to recognize any of the fighting groups in Syria and supply them with weapons, fearing that the wrong hands might get ahold of them—a prophecy evidently proven right, as ISIS cruises through Iraq and Syria on the back of American-bought trucks stolen from the Iraqis and firing Turkish-funded weapons taken from the bodies of other fighters in Syria.

That doesn’t mean that Canada isn’t sending weapons—it’s just not paying for them.

The airlifts running back and forth from Iraq are saddled with Albanian-bought weapons, though exactly what kind of weapons, it’s not clear. Meanwhile, we’re working with the Americans and English—the former of which is only sending light weaponry while the latter is finally answering prayers for heavy machine guns.

Canada isn’t joining in the fray. It’s not like we’re above sending weapons to the Middle East—Canadian industry has been contracted for $10 billion in military and policing equipment to Saudi Arabia, after all.

The real reason might be a bit more complex.

Turks and Kurds

The awkward reality of the situation is that Canada is trepidatiously dealing with the central Iraqi government, the one that was swept away in lands now controlled by ISIS’s caliphate, which is still trying to cobble together a unity government. Meanwhile, Canada is rushing with its allies to get supplies to the Kurdish Peshmerga—a large fighting force devoted to creating an independent Kurdistan.

The problem there is that Canada doesn’t appear to support an independent Kurdistan, and neither does the Iraqi Government.

“That’s not something we’re looking at,” Baird told committee. We obviously want to see Iraq be safe, secure, be a pluralistic society whether you’re Shia, Sunni, Kurdish, Christian—we want to see it survive… We obviously have important responsibilities to continue to have a good and constructive working relationship with a central government in Baghdad.”

Indeed, it’s the Iraqi Government that’s giving Canada permission to operate in the North. But the Peshmerga has never had much of a real fighting force, with most of their equipment dating back to the Soviet-era and much of their experience coming from small-scale guerrilla warfare.

The closest thing to war that they’ve experience in recent years, before ISIS came along, were repeated stand-offs and scuffles with al-Maliki’s government.

To that end, the area that could someday be the independent state of Kurdistan is just an ally of convenience with Baghdad.

Making the matter even more complex is the Peshmerga’s integration with the PKK, a Turkish paramilitary group and political organization that advocates for a single Kurdish state and that has long operated in Iraqi Kurdistan. The group has led a campaign against the Turkish government for decades and is listed as a terrorist organization by Canada. Now, the very PKK rebels that waged a hard-fought war against the government in Istanbul are working alongside the Peshmerga.

Istanbul did ink a ceasefire with the PKK last year, but a well-armed and well-trained Peshmerga could add fuel to the fire if the conflict rekindles in the future. That may be at the root of Ottawa’s skepticism.

When asked about the awkward relationship, Baird’s spokesperson wrote that they were working with the Kurdistan Regional Government, as well as Turkey to “ensure that the equipment remains under the control of the intended security forces in Iraq and that the equipment will not be diverted to unintended recipients.”

Skepticism, as always. Canada has in spades.

@Justin_Ling