Kurdish Independence, Canadian Aid

"It's extraordinarily cavalier to say what comes next is Iraq's problem. Our [Canadian military] training of the [Kurdish] peshmerga is not helping if the end result is a stronger group to fight against the Iraqi government later on."
Peggy Mason, former Canadian disarmament ambassador

"The Canadian Forces putting the [flags] on their uniforms tells the rest of Iraq that we don't support the territorial integrity of your country."
Denise Natali, Middle East expert, Institute for National Strategic Studies, Washington

A Canadian special forces soldier, foreground, working in northern Iraq with local peshmerga soldiers wears the Kurdish flag on his uniform.  (Bruce Campion-Smith / Toronto Star)

General Jon Vance, Canadian Chief of the Defence Staff thinks otherwise. He feels that what may happen between the various factions -- religious, ethnic, tribal, clan, sectarian -- once the combined international and local efforts to destroy the presence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and their caliphate succeeds, remains an issue to be sorted out by Iraqis themselves.

SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images   Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters fire an anti-tank cannon on the front line near Hasan Sham village during an operation aimed at retaking areas from ISIL, on May 29, 2016.

In past years, under Saddam Hussein, a state system of organized mayhem foisted on parts of Iraqi society by the Baathist government that favoured the Sunni minority while disempowering the majority Shiites and bringing death and destruction to any perceived interior enemies of the Saddam Tyranny through mass murder represented a constant state of terror.

Marsh Arabs were punished by the draining of the waterways upon which they traditionally lived. The large Kurdish population, yearning for the eventuality of a state of their own were systematically attacked and violently disabused of any notion of sovereignty. The artificial construct of borders foisted by former Western colonizers is not a country that must be preserved by Western states.

Now that the majority Iraqi Shiites are in the driver's seat in government they have made no effort to include ethnic and religious minorities, let alone the three major groups, with Sunnis and Kurds, into the administration of the country on an equal footing as should be done in a pluralist society. Although the dictatorship of Saddam has been destroyed, it has been resurrected in reverse.

Now the Kurds in Iraq, in Syria and those in Turkey and Iran envision that it may be possible finally for them to have a sovereign state of their own, long promised, timelessly delayed. The Sunni jihadists prepared to sacrifice any who stand in their way of a Sharia-tight caliphate that would destroy the lives of all who fail to join their dystopian vision of fanatical Islam have faced fierce opposition only from the Kurds.

It is also the Kurds who practise no discrimination against other sects and ethnic groups, who have rescued Christians and Yazidis from the deadly talons of ISIL. The Canadian military is involved, along with members of elite U.S. troops, in training the Kurdish military in conflict operations with the use of modern weapons for offense and defense. The Kurds would understandably appreciate additional assistance in the form of surplus stocks from those sources.

SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images   Smoke billows on the front line as Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters hold a position near Hasan Sham village during an operation aimed at retaking areas from ISIL, on May 29, 2016.

The Canadian military has an inventory of Husky armoured vehicles, Buffalo vehicles, Coyote wheeled armoured vehicles and tracked light armoured vehicles used in Afghanistan to protect Canadian troops. There are graders, tractors and other types of heavy equipment in surplus inventory of potential use in removal of barricades and fortifications erected by ISIL forces. Small arms and anti-tank weapons also in inventory would be useful to the Kurds.

Some Kurdish units have been outfitted with mortars, anti-tank weapons and armoured personnel carriers through the U.S. military. It isn't as though Kurdish leaders have been mute about their future intentions; they argue their right to break from Iraq. "Iraq is a failed state", said Masrour Barzani, head of intelligence for the Kurdish government, son of the president. Heavy weapons are needed for defense.

The Kurds will refuse to surrender those portions of Iraq where they have traditionally lived and where their ethnic heritage resides. Their insistence on independence will not fade. Canadian special forces have taken pride in their work with Kurdish forces, in view of the fighting spirit of the Kurds, able to push back ISIL where the Iraqi military failed miserably.