Helping train troops to take on ISIS only part of the battle, Canadian veteran says

As the Canadian government seeks to shift its focus in the battle against ISIS, a retired lieutenant-colonel says that Ottawa may be making a mistake in taking its fighter jets out of the equation.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the governing Liberals campaigned on the fact that they would pull Canada's jets out of the U.S.-led coalition that is bombing militants in Syria and Iraq.

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Trudeau has publicly stuck to this commitment, though the prime minister has said he wants to have more military trainers on the ground helping to train the local fighters that are taking on ISIS.

Morris Brause, a retired lieutenant-colonel with the Canadian Army, is concerned that the government is pulling its fighter jets without considering how that affects the overall mission.

"Taking the air force out causes me some concern, because they are doing strategic interdiction where they are hitting headquarters and IED factories and groups of ISIS and ISIL [that are] ready to attack," Brause told CBC Radio's Windsor Morning on Thursday.

The military has tended to use a "layered" approach when it is involved in campaigns, Brause said.

"To take that layer out, I really hope that this discussion has been thorough with the coalition and that it's actually going to make sense," he said. "Otherwise, it looks like we're pulling out of what I think is an important role."

Brause previously spent nine months helping to train military police in Afghanistan.

He said that even if the Canadian military trainers working with the local troops fighting ISIS are not directly involved in combat, they are still facing risks in going there.

"I think that no matter what, [whenever] you go into an insurgency area like that, you are going to have some danger, it's inherent," said Brause.

But he believes that the training of local forces is necessary to establish long-term safety and stability in regions like these.

"If we are always over there resolving their issues, they are never going to resolve their issues," Brause said. "They need to have the capability of trained armies and credible police forces to provide the security for their own people, and if you don't have that in a nation state, you have a failed state."