NATO will expand its security training mission to Iraq with thousands of troops following deadly rocket attack on a military air base earlier this week.
The 30-member alliance will increase its staff in Iraq from 500 to about 4,000, an effort 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 make sure they cannot return,” Stoltenberg told reporters at the end of a two-day virtual NATO defense meeting.
He said NATO’s efforts would now include more Iraqi security institutions and areas outside Baghdad, although their presence “is based on conditions and the increase in the number of troops will be incremental.”
He added that the Iraqi government had made a request for the extended mission, which would begin in the coming months.
NATO has been in Iraq since 2004 to train Iraqi security forces. The current training mission, which began in 2018, is intended to help Iraqi forces resurrect ISIS.
The increase in NATO troops could potentially ease the pressure on US troops in Iraq, where about 2,500 troops are based on a mission not isolated from the alliance.
A senior Defense official told reporters earlier this week that the Pentagon “welcomes NATO’s growing focus on Iraq” but declined to say whether it would add more troops to the training mission itself.
Plans for an expanded NATO footprint follow Monday’s rocket attack on Erbil International Airport, a military air base in northern Iraq that killed a civilian contractor and injured nine people, including a U.S. official.
The militant Shia group Saraya Awliya al-Dam claimed credit for the attack, although the Biden government did not publicly confirm who was responsible for the strike.
The foreign ministry on Wednesday said “consequences for any group responsible for this attack.”