But US officials said this week that Russian Federation has directed parts of its air campaign against U.S.-funded groups and other moderate opposition groups in a concerted effort to weaken them.
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In a statement, the Department of Defense said that it was now moving to “provide equipment packages and weapons to a select group of vetted leaders and their units”, who are poised to take territory currently controlled by the Islamic State.
A military official quoted by Syria’s state-run SANA said Saturday that two F-16s from the U.S.-led coalition violated Syrian airspace and targeted civilian infrastructure in Aleppo. Russian airstrikes have raised questions about whether and how the USA would protect rebel groups it is working with if they are hit by Russian bombs. At last count, the USA said it had been able to train only about 60 fighters.
Ash Carter has announced a “more strategic approach” in training troops in Syria.
168-a-13-(Defense Under Secretary Christine Wormuth (WOR’-muhth), the Pentagon’s top policy official, in teleconference)-“single individual fighter”-Defense Under Secretary Christine Wormuth says the Pentagon will scour the backgrounds of rebel leaders before giving them arms and equipment for their fighters”.
“That approach is tantamount, as I said then, to throwing gasoline on the fire”, Carter said last week.
Carter said they had “devised a number of different approaches to that going forward”.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the change publicly.
The new aim is to “work with groups on the ground who are already fighting ISIL and provide them a few equipment to make them more effective, in combination with our airstrikes”, Wormuth said.
US officials have said the new effort would focus more on embedding recruits with established Kurdish and Arab units, rather than sending them directly into front-line combat.
The closing of the program comes as the administration’s attention is shifting to northeastern Syria, where it hopes to assemble a group of Sunni tribes in a “Syrian Arab Coalition” to fight alongside Syrian Kurdish forces against the Islamic State.
Carter said at a news conference in London that the work the USA has done with the Kurds is a good example of an effective approach with a capable, motivated ground combat force.
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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. A second class yielded only a small number of new fighters, drawing criticism from USA policymakers who condemned the programme as a joke and a failure. It also would streamline the vetting process created to weed out terrorist infiltrators.
