The German government decided on January 12 to end its military mission in Syria but keep up to 500 soldiers in Iraq until the end of October 2022. The government sent a motion to the parliament which voted in favour of the extension of troops mandate in Iraq.
Germany’s defence ministry said in a statement on Friday that there are currently around 250 German soldiers in Iraq taking part in the global coalition against the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(ISIS) and NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
mission in Iraq.
Germany has been an essential member of the global coalition against ISIS. The Coalition was formally established in October 2014, after ISIS took control of vast swathes of territories in Iraq and Syria. Consisting of 84 nations, the US-led Coalition’s mission has been "degrading and ensuring ISIS’s enduring defeat," it says on its website, using Arabic acronym for the bad boy group.
The combat mission of the Coalition ended in Iraq at the end of the last year but it continues in Syria. The German army has been mostly based in Kurdish areas of both countries.
Kurdistan Region’s brass hats had welcomed the German government’s decision to extend the mission in Iraq, and they welcomed the parliament approval as well on Friday.
"I thank Bundestag for deciding to extend German troops deployment in Iraq. ISIS remains a serious threat to International peace and regional stability, and continued joint effort is needed to defeat terrorism," Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani said in a tweet.
The Region’s Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said he "strongly" welcomed the German parliament’s decision, saying "This mandate, and the support of the Global Coalition, is critical to the war on ISIS and training of Peshmerga forces and the Iraqi Army."