Canadian commander warns battle against IS could go ‘underground’

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – A Canadian special forces commander warned that the battle against the Islamic State (IS) could “go underground” despite the group’s recent defeat in Iraq and Syria.

Major-General Mike Rouleau, the commander of Canada’s special forces, said although the extremist group suffered a military defeat, it was “far from dead.”

“The threat is going to morph,” Rouleau told CBC News in a recent interview.

“What is [IS] going to do next? If they are not landowners with an overt military presence and heavy weapons in the hinterland, we believe they are probably going to go underground,” he explained.

The Canadian special forces commander said the threat of IS retaliating after their defeat would mean Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi forces would have to be taught “to fight a counter-insurgency and counterterrorism war.”

“It’s much more intelligence-driven,” Rouleau said, adding a counterterrorism war was a “much more delicate, precise kind of warfare.”

“It’s a slightly different skill set,” he noted. “It’s too early for me to tell you whether [the new mission] is going to have a training component to it—or just an advise, assist component. But, these are all the things we are looking at.”

Since arriving in the Kurdistan Region in the fall of 2014, Canada’s special forces have trained Peshmerga forces in an “advise and assist” capacity without engaging in direct combat.

Last June, the Canadian government said it would keep troops in Iraq until 2019 to expand their operation and focus on “rebuilding,” but did not specify what their role would be once IS was officially defeated.