Canada to send officers to Iraq to help establish a police presence in liberated Mosul

Canada to send officers to Iraq to help establish a police presence in liberated Mosul
Canada will send a batch of police officers to Iraq to help local authorities establish a police presence in the now-liberated Mosul, the government announced on Wednesday.

2 min read
10 August, 2017
Mosul was liberated after a gruelling eight month battle [Getty]
Canada will send up to 20 police officers to Iraq to help local authorities establish a police presence in Mosul, which was recently liberated from the Islamic State group, the government announced on Wednesday.

The officers are scheduled to arrive in the coming weeks, joining three Canadian police officers already on the ground and are expected to stay until March 2019.

"Progress has been made in Iraq with the liberation of Mosul, and Canada remains fully committed to supporting the Iraqi government and its people," Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said in a statement.

"Canada's policing contribution will be targeted at building key capacities of Iraqi security institutions and enhancing local policing skill sets, including in areas such as community policing," he said.

Most of the police infrastructure in the city, which took eight months of gruelling fighting to retake, was destroyed. The UN said last month repairing Mosul's infrastructure after the US-backed Iraqi offensive against IS will cost more than $1 billion.

Nearly one million residents fled, but have started to return.

Lise Grande, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, said the contrast between the east and the west of the city could not be clearer. Indeed: "Everyone's gone home to eastern Mosul except for 20,000 people."

"Mosul's really a tale of two cities. Eastern Mosul is a city that's recovering, people are home, schools are open, businesses are open, markets are open. Conditions aren't great but it's a city on the mend," she said.

Yet, the situation is very different in western Mosul, explained Grande, who is also the Deputy Special Representative of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

"In the 15 completely destroyed neighbourhoods, there are 230,000 civilians who come from those districts who are not coming home anytime soon."

Overall, she said that Mosul, which had been the site of the single largest urban battle since the Second World War, had also witnessed the largest managed evacuation in modern history, with nearly one million civilians assisted out of the city.

"Very exceptionally, humanitarian agencies were not near the front line, they were on the front line," she stated.

In all, some 3.3 million people across Iraq remain outside their homes, including those recently displaced from Mosul.