“We need to be flexible”.
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The administration has acknowledged that its efforts to attract recruits have struggled because the program was exclusively authorized to fight Islamic State, rather than Assad.
“Is it best to take those guys out and put them through training programmes for many weeks?”
The Pentagon confirmed last month that a group of U.S.-trained Syrian rebels had handed over ammunition and equipment to Nusra Front, purportedly in exchange for safe passage. The USA believes that a capable ground force is essential for success against Islamic State, but those troops will not be American.
In a statement released Friday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said, “I remain convinced that a lasting defeat of ISIL in Syria will depend in part on the success of local, motivated, and capable ground forces”, and the changes in the program “will, over time, increase the combat power of counter-ISIL forces in Syria”.
According to an unnamed official, the training of the opposition in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates will be suspended and the rebels will be trained in a small center in Turkey.
Individuals in the SAC will be vetted through their leadership and given training and be given expertise in communications and intelligence support.
“We are very careful to provide support to groups who are not involved in that type of activity”, said Benjamin Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser. But the US backing for the rebels is not ending.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a frequent critic of Obama’s Syria policy, said Friday that continuing to insist that rebels fight only against the Islamic State is a “fundamental flaw” of the revised US approach.
Another US official said the new weapons supplies could eventually be channelled through vetted commanders to thousands of fighters, but declined to be more specific about the numbers.
The United States would also provide air support to rebels as they battle Islamic State, Cook said.
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, adding that the USA “will be taking a few of the leaders of these groups who are already fighting on the ground”, vetting them to ensure against affiliations with terrorist groups, “and then giving them basic equipment packages to distribute to their fighting force”. As of May, $41.8 million had been spent, according to the Pentagon’s latest public accounting. Lindsey Graham said the program was bound for failure from the start.
In recent days, members of Congress had called on the administration to clarify its Syria strategy as Russian Federation began airstrikes in the country to shore up the regime of President Bashar Assad. Those groups have made significant progress against strongholds of the Alawites, Assad’s sect, but are now under Russian bombardment, officials said. The Central Intelligence Agency has other covert operations.
The United States has demanded Assad step down in order to allow a political settlement to the civil war and the creation of a transitional government.
The $500 million train-and-equip program was jointly organized by the US and coalition partners.
“What you’re seeing now is a focus more on the equipping aspect of that formula than the training aspect”.
Speaking in London today, Carter said the adjustments to the program were meant to improve it.
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The senior defence official said a few training and embedding of rebels would continue to take place, and Mr Carter cited the work U.S. trainers have done with Kurds in northern Syria as an example of how the effort may be focused in the future.
