The irony, of course, being the U.S.-trained rebels reportedly had to pledge to fight only ISIS and not Assad. A second class yielded only a small number of new fighters, drawing criticism from US lawmakers who condemned the program as a joke and a failure.
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The Pentagon program, which was budgeted at $500 million in 2015 and $600 million in 2016, was originally envisioned to create a force of 5,000 by the end of the year and 15,000 at the end of three years.
“While it is somewhat encouraging to see the administration, at long last, acknowledge the facts on the ground, it remains clear we have lost valuable time and opportunities waiting to address this situation”, she said in a released statement. “That’s how we will mitigate the risk”.
Speaking in London today, Carter said the adjustments to the program were meant to improve it.
Carter said Friday the U.S.is committed to supporting “capable motivated forces on the ground to retake territory” from the Islamic State group. Then Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of the Central Command, acknowledged to Congress that only “four or five” U.S.-trained fighters were at large in Syria. But Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said he knows from his own sources in Syria that fighters linked to the USA have died. However, the suspension means that there will be no new recruits or training.
Commanders in the US special operations community had been pressing for that decision for weeks, defense officials told CNN, after seeing them achieve success on the battlefield.
Individuals in the coalition will be vetted through their leadership and given training and be given expertise in communications and intelligence support.
“I wasn’t happy with the early efforts of the program”, Carter said Friday. But he was not part of the failed program that was killed off on Friday.
The programme had suffered from “significant challenges”, the official said.
Moscow has said that Russian airstrikes have hit more than 100 ISIL targets in Syria. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, want the Obama administration to further increase the number of refugees from war-ravaged Syria and to give higher priority to resettling persecuted minorities from Syria and Iraq.
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.
“I don’t think at all that this was a case of poor execution”, Wormuth added.
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What’s more, for Syria observers, the comments were less surprising considering how troubled the program was from the beginning, starting from its premise: that rebels will focus their attention on ISIL instead of the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. “We are going to redirect it out of existing authorities and funds”.
