The $500 million effort begun last December to train and equip Syrian rebels in the campaign against ISIS has produced thus far only four or possibly five fighters actually on the ground in Syria, the head of U.S. Central Command said.
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Gen. Lloyd Austin III, commander of U.S. Central Command, made the disclosure Wednesday during a heated hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he was grilled about the $500-million program’s effectiveness.
The Obama administration was already struggling to defend its military strategy to “destroy and degrade” the terrorist group by airstrikes and programs to train, assist and equip local forces.
“I don’t see the force available being prepared to protect them now”, Austin told an angry Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican and former presidential candidate who chairs the panel.
“Austin also vowed to take “appropriate actions” if an investigation indicates that senior defense officials altered intelligence reports on Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria to exaggerate US progress”.
But the numbers of fighters in training is also small, according to Christine Wormuth, the under secretary of defense for policy.
“It’s a small number“.
President Barack Obama said previous year that strengthening the Syrian rebels represented the “the best counterweight” to ISIS militants, NBC News notes. Numerous others no longer fighting have been killed or kidnapped by an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. The quota, set at the program’s outset, called for 3,000 to 5,000 fighters to be trained in the first year. Yet Clapper, who has apologized for misleading the Senate, confirmed and defended his contact with Grove, with its frequency being his only factual challenge to the Guardian’s story: the Guardian reported it as “nearly every day”; Clapper said it came “once or twice a week”. “Like Sen. McCain, I expect the committee will be kept apprised of this investigation as it continues”. Translated from Pentagon-ese, that means there are some communications and planning links between the US and the Kurds, but American forces aren’t on the ground planning missions or taking part in combat. “So they’ve been in the program for quite a while”.
“We have to acknowledge this is a total failure”, said Sen.
“That’s a joke”, Sen.
It’s hardly unprecedented for a combatant command running a military campaign to have a more positive view of its effectiveness than intelligence agencies, which tend to take a pessimistic line.
“The YPG, or the Syrian Kurds, and some Arabs and Turkmen have done tremendous work in northeast Syria”, Austin said.
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While most of the hearing focused on Syria, Austin and Wormuth touted the more robust US training program in Iraq.
