“Probably 60 to 80 percent of the arms that America shoveled in have gone to al-Qaida and its affiliates”, said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.
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“However, fearing Russian airstrikes, they abandoned Baksa”.
He called it a “more strategic approach” than what the USA has been doing from the beginning. A Syrian military official said troops seized the northern Hama village of Tak Sukayk.
Acknowledging that the Pentagon’s 2014 US$500 million (RM2.07 billion) train-and-equip programme, which involved training individual recruits and returning them to the battlefield, faced “significant challenges”, the USA strategy will now concentrate on bolstering forces already fighting the Islamic State.
The Observatory says IS has no real real presence in these areas.
Russian leaders have responded to a proposed draft of safety guidelines for military aircraft flying missions in the increasingly crowded skies over Syria, the Pentagon said Friday.
What were really trying to do here is build on what has worked for us and learn from a few of the things that have been a lot more challenging, Christine E. Wormuth, undersecretary of defense for policy, told reporters.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, says the US should consider establishing a no-fly zone that allows rebels a safe place from which to operate, and shooting down Syrian helicopters that are bombing civilians.
“I don’t think at all this was a case of poor execution”, Wormuth said.
Another reason the USA failed to reach its goal of training up to 5,400 moderate Syrian rebel fighters within the first year was due to its rigorous vetting process that significantly slowed down recruitment.
The campaign has been critical for the regime’s fight in Sahl al-Ghab, a strategic plain in Hama province that borders both the regime’s coastal bastion of Latakia and the rebel stronghold of Idlib province.
Carter’s remarks come a day after defense officials revealed us aircraft have had to change course to avoid colliding with Russian planes over Syria.
Yet the Islamic State continues to make gains.
The United States has since a year ago led a 60-plus member coalition of nations bombing Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria.
This external funding enabled Islamist factions to systematically displace secular Free Syria Army (FSA) leaders, culminating in the rise of IS.
Konashenkov said one of the targets hit near Aleppo was a concealed base for military vehicles, which he said had received a direct hit from an Su-24M bomber.
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Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement that the plan was to supply rebel groups so that they could “make a concerted push into territory still controlled by ISIL”.
