Canada airstrikes against Islamic State to end by 22 February

Canada will stop bombing Islamist State targets in Syria and Iraq by 22 February at the latest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has confirmed.

“It is important to understand that while airstrike operations can be very useful to achieve short-term military and territorial gains, they do not on their own achieve long-term stability for local communities,” Trudeau said in Ottawa on Monday. “Canadians learned this lesson first hand during a very difficult decade in Afghanistan where our forces became expert military trainers, renowned over the world.”

He added that Canada will keep two surveillance planes in the region, and that Canadian armed forces would now allocate more military resources to training Iraqi security forces so that “a murderous gang of thugs who are terrorising some of the most vulnerable people on Earth” could be defeated.

Trudeau, who was elected in October, had promised during his campaign to withdraw Canada’s six fighter jets from the region. His decision has been sharply criticised by the opposition, whose leader Rona Ambrose in parliament accused the government of “stepping from the fight against IS when our allies are stepping up”.

“The reality is that when we talk about Canada’s new approach to fighting IS – Canada is backing away,” she said.

However, Trudeau insisted that his decision makes strategic sense.

“Call us old-fashioned, but we think that we ought to avoid doing precisely what our enemies want us to do,” he said. “They want us to elevate them, to give in to fear, to indulge in hatred, to eye one another in suspicion and to take leave of our faculties.”