“Less than 200 moderate Syrian rebels have started training with US military advisers through a new Pentagon-run program, and none has graduated, a Defense Department spokesman said Thursday”.
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Defense Secretary Ash Carter, speaking to reporters in London, said the USA “remains committed” to the idea of training rebel forces but said officials “have been looking now for several weeks at ways to improve” the current program.
“The work we’ve done with the Kurds in northern Syria is an example of an effective approach”, Carter said, referring to how USA air support has partnered with Kurdish ground troops to successfully fight ISIL.
Carter expressed dissatisfaction with the program, which to date has produced just 80 soldiers, most of whom have proved to be ineffective fighters.
After Islamic State’s brutal offensive through northern Iraq in June 2014, Mr Obama asked Congress for an initial $500 million to “train and equip” Syria’s opposition fighters, whom he later described as “the best counterweight” to Islamic State militants and a key pillar in his campaign to defeat them.
As Common Dreams reported at the time, Central Command admitted in September that the U.S.-trained and armed rebels at the center of the policy had turned over at least a quarter of their American-issued equipment to the al Nusra Front, which is linked with al Qaeda.
A few experts say the change in strategy is risky considering Russia’s recent escalation of military action in Syria.
“We will monitor the progress these groups make and provide them with air support as they take the fight to ISIL”.
But the efficiency and efficacy of the program that has trained less than 100 Syrian rebels at sites in Turkey and Jordan, has been vigorously debated since it began past year.
The overhaul keeps the effort in line with the administration’s basic formula of leveraging USA airpower to enhance the efforts of Syrian rebels on the ground.
Under the new approach, established and vetted rebel groups will be given weapons and equipment packages “so that over time they can make a concerted push into territory still controlled by” the Islamic State group, according to a Pentagon statement.
President Barack Obama’s administration unveiled the training programme in January but recruitment was slow because rebels had to pass stringent background checks to weed out extremists. But despite lofty goals – the Pentagon initially predicted 5,400 trainees by the end of the year – the program never truly got off the ground.
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“Right now, I think given the complexities of the situation, we’re going to take sort of an operational pause” in the train and equip program, Wormuth said.
