“We also made progress in our preparations to launch a new training mission in Iraq at the Summit in July to help Iraqi forces fight terrorism, stabilize their country, and prevent the re-emergence of ISIS,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on Friday morning.
NATO leaders will hold a summit in Brussels on July 11 and 12.
“Today we agreed on the concept of operations for our mission. This will include several hundred personnel. They will train Iraqi instructors, and develop Iraqi military schools so that our expertise can reach thousands of others,” Stoltenberg explained.
Training local forces is a priority for NATO which has moved away from deploying large numbers of troops as they had in Afghanistan.
“I strongly believe that one of the best weapons we have in the fight against terrorism is to train local forces,” Stoltenberg said last week in a press conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, adding, “…in the long run it’s better to enable local forces to stabilize their own country and to fight terrorism themselves.”
The military alliance currently has small numbers of mobile teams operating in Iraq for short periods of time.
Twelve Iraqi military instructors completed a Polish-led training course on maintenance of Soviet-era vehicles on April 17.
The new training mission will be a permanent presence in Iraq to help professionalize the country’s forces, establishing specialized military academies.
“When our neighbours are more stable, we are more secure,” tweeted Marjanne de Kwaasteniet, Netherlands’ representative to NATO about training missions in Iraq, Jordan, and Tunisia on Friday. “NATO has the expertise, partnerships and staying power to make a real difference.”
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