NATO will expand its security training mission in Iraq by thousands of soldiers after a deadly rocket attack on a military airbase earlier this week.
The 30-member alliance will increase its staff in Iraq from 500 to about 4,000, a move to prevent the war-torn country from becoming a breeding ground for terrorists, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Thursday .
“ISIS is still operating in Iraq and we need to ensure that they cannot return,” Stoltenberg told reporters at the end of a two-day virtual meeting with NATO defense ministers.
He said that NATO’s efforts will now include more Iraqi security institutions and areas beyond Baghdad, although its presence “is based on conditions and the increase in the number of soldiers is incremental”.
He added that the Iraqi government has made a request to expand the mission, which will begin in the coming months.
NATO has been in Iraq since 2004 to train Iraqi security forces. Its current training mission, which began in 2018, aims to help Iraqi forces prevent a resurgence of ISIS.
The increase in NATO troops could ease the pressure on US forces in Iraq, where some 2,500 troops are based for a separate mission from the alliance.
A senior defense official told reporters earlier this week that the Pentagon “welcomes NATO’s increased focus on Iraq” but did not say whether he would add more troops to the training mission himself.
Plans for an expansion of NATO’s footprint follow the rocket attack on Monday at Erbil International Airport, a military air base in northern Iraq, which killed a civilian contractor and injured nine people, including a member of the U.S. service.
The Shiite militant group Saraya Awliya al-Dam claimed credit for the attack, although the Biden government has not publicly confirmed who is responsible for the attack.
The State Department on Wednesday promised “consequences for any group responsible for this attack.”