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Peggy Mason, a former disarmament ambassador in Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney’s government, said Canada and its allies have failed to think beyond the next battle against ISIL and weigh the consequences of their actions in the region. “How much progress have we really made if Iraq is so riven by internal divisions that new civil wars erupt — between Sunni and Shia, between the Kurds and the central government, with ISIL or its successors taking advantage of the various schisms and weakness of Baghdad at every turn?” asked Manson, president of the Ottawa-based Rideau Institute.

In July, Gen. Raymond Thomas, head of U.S. Special Forces Command, suggested any moves toward independence by the Kurds will lead to conflict as the Iraqis would not stand by and simply allow them to become independent.

“I don’t think they’re going to say, ‘Sure, take the oilfields and Kirkuk and go your way,’” Thomas told a security forum. “It’s not going to go peacefully.”

In addition, Mason questioned why the offer of Canadian Forces training, and training provided by other western forces, hadn’t been made conditional on the Kurds remaining part of a unified Iraq.

The Canadian government has said it supports a unified Iraq and that its training of the Kurds falls within that objective. When asked directly last year about concerns that Canadian training and equipment could inadvertently aid the Kurdish quest for independence, Vance replied it was important to have political unity during the fight against the Islamic State. “Where, after, Iraq decides to go in terms of its political laydown is up to Iraq,” he said. Kurdish president Masoud Barzani has cited Quebec’s quest for independence as one of the reasons he and his fellow Kurds are entitled to their own country. The Kurds will never surrender any of the territory they now hold in Iraq, Barzani has insisted.

Turkey, Iran and Syria oppose the referendum, worried it would further fuel separatist actions among their own Kurdish citizens. But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday his country would support the creation of a separate Kurdish state.

• Email: dpugliese@postmedia.com | Twitter: davidpugliese

UPDATE: After this story’s publication, the Department of National Defence responded to the reporter’s request for comment to clarify that Canadian special forces no longer wore Kurdish flags on their uniforms. The story has been updated to reflect that fact.