Minister welcomes troops home from Taji

Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee has this afternoon welcomed home the first rotation of 105 New Zealand soldiers from a six-month deployment to Iraq, where they helped train more than 2000 Iraqi Security Forces’ personnel.

“These New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) troops and those still in Iraq have much to be proud of,” Mr Brownlee says.

“They’ve gone into a dangerous environment and professionally established a training operation which is upskilling large numbers of Iraqi troops to better equip themselves to fight Daesh (ISIL).

“I had the honour of visiting these soldiers in June and was extremely impressed by how quickly they’d settled into their work, how proficiently they were carrying it out, and how well they were relating to the Iraqi soldiers they were training.

“From what I hear the mission has gone from strength to strength, and those troops returning today can be very proud of their service,” Mr Brownlee says.

The second rotation of NZDF trainers left for Iraq on 3 November and are now in place at the Building Partner Capacity (BPC) mission at the Taji Military Complex, north of Baghdad.