Denmark offers to lead NATO’s anti-ISIS training mission in Iraq

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Denmark has offered to take charge of NATO’s training mission in Iraq for a period of 18 months starting in 2020, the Danish foreign ministry announced Tuesday. 

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s training mission in Iraq began in October 2018 and is currently led by Canada. 

If the offer is accepted, Danish forces stationed in Iraq would assume control of the NATO mission, which provides Iraqi security forces with military training to fight the Islamic State group (ISIS). 

A further 213 Danish personnel will be deployed.

“With the contribution, we will be able to deliver an even stronger effort in our joint fight against the ISIL terrorist group by training the Iraqis,” Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said in a statement, using another name for ISIS.

Kofod said he has already discussed the offer with his US counterpart Mike Pompeo and with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in last week’s NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels.

The response to the Danish offer was “very positive”, he added.  

The offer will be formally announce at NATO’s leadership meeting in London next week.  

There are currently 500 NATO personnel stationed in Iraq supporting the anti-ISIS training mission. 

ISIS militants seized control of large areas of northern Iraq and neighboring Syria in the summer of 2014. Iraq declared the group territorially defeated in December 2017 after retaking its urban strongholds.

However, remnants of the group and its sleeper cells remain active in the areas disputed between the Kurdistan Region and Iraq’s federal government. 

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed last month in a US-led operation on in the village of Barisha in the northwest Syrian province of Idlib.  

However, many local and world leaders have warned the death of Baghdadi does not mean the end of ISIS in the region.