Last October, Canada suspended assistance to Peshmerga fighters from the Kurdistan Region as well as to Iraqi government forces amid escalating fighting between both parties.

On Thursday, Gen. Vance, the Chief of Canada’s Defense Staff, told reporters that Canada is now committed to training only Iraqi government forces.

“Training with the Peshmerga was ceased when it was no longer of any value in terms of the battle against Daesh (Islamic State),” Gen. Vance said on Thursday outside a Canadian Global Affairs Institute conference in Ottawa.

“We have changed … partners,” he said.

A representative in Washington of the Kurdistan Regional Government said the Kurds would decline comment on the matter for now.

Gen. Vance said Canada was continuing its advise-and-assist military mission by helping Iraqi government forces ensure the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was completely secure.

Mosul was retaken from Islamic State militants in the summer of 2017, but the city is not entirely secure. Gen. Vance said there are Islamic State sympathizers there.

“They are not actively conducting operations but they could,” he said.

“We are still deeply involved in helping set conditions for the successful return of the population to Mosul.”

For nearly three years, Canadian special forces provided military assistance to the Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq. It was valuable aid to some of the most effective opponents of the Islamic State, the jihadis who swept through Iraq in 2014 and threatened its future.

Stephen Saideman, a Carleton University political scientist, said it would be very difficult for Canada to continue training the Kurds.

“During the high point of IS as a threat, we put all our chips behind the Kurds because they were in the best position to fight and the most willing to fight.

“But if we’re training them now, we’re training a separatist movement,” said Prof. Saideman, the Paterson Chair in International Affairs.

He said the best way to build a stable Iraq − to prevent the return of Islamic State militants − is to help Baghdad defend itself.

Prof. Saideman said however it’s important that Canada ensure it’s not training elements of Iraq that want to engage in sectarian violence. “We will need to monitor the situation very closely and find out if the people we are training are becoming death squads, or were death squads. [In that case], we would need to get out of business.”

The military does not disclose how many Canadian special forces are currently in Iraq but the number is somewhere below a cap of 200 people.

Reporter’s code: 50101