Julie Cooper – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-01-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many members of the Iraqi army have been trained by British servicemen since 2003.

Penny Mordaunt

Since 2003, the UK has played an important role in delivering training to the Iraqi Army through a range of training, mentoring and advisory activities. Due to the varied nature of the training it is not possible to give an exact figure of the numbers trained, but we do have figures for some specific areas of training.

Between 2004 and 2009 – as part of Operation TELIC – British Service personnel in the south of Iraq trained over 20,000 Iraqi Army soldiers. During this period the UK also supported the NATO training mission in Iraq, with British Forces providing advice and training to the Iraqi Ministry of Defence. The UK was the lead for officer education and training, and British mentors provided training and advice to the Iraqi Security Forces.

Under Operation SHADER, during 2015 and 2016, the UK has trained approximately 5,000 members of the Iraqi Army. This training has mainly focused on the delivery of Counter-IED training to support the Iraqi Security Forces in defeating Daesh.