Philip Smart | Adelaide
The Government has committed to providing a military force to the international Building Partner Capacity (BPC) training mission in Iraq.
The force will involve about 300 ADF personnel, drawn largely from the Army’s 7th Brigade, based in Brisbane.
They will work as part of a combined Task Group alongside about 100 personnel from the New Zealand Defence Force.
The mission of the Australian and New Zealand trainers will be to help the Iraqi Government to prepare sufficient forces to maintain the momentum of the counter-attack against ISIL, or Daesh, and regain control of its territory.
On 3 March, the Government announced that it had decided to commence preparations to deploy this force.
This followed requests for an Australian contribution from both the Iraqi and US governments.
These preparations are now complete and the combined Task Group will deploy to Iraq over the next few weeks.
The training mission is expected to be fully operational in May 2015.
The combined Task Group will be stationed at the Taji Military Complex north of Baghdad, working to build the capacity of units of the Iraqi army.