Attack on Syrian rebels raises questions about training

And last week, a U.S. effort to send newly trained Syrian rebels into the fight had an inauspicious start when the fighters were immediately attacked and scattered by an Al Qaeda offshoot.

In reality the latest pretext, ISIS, was created and to this day perpetuated by US, Saudi, Israeli, Jordanian, and Turkish support.

Activists said the Islamic State group abducted 230 residents, including dozens of Christians, from Qaryatain in recent days.

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, a U.S. ally in the campaign against Islamic State, controls some 400 km (250 miles) of the border to the northeast of Aleppo.

At the time, there were some 400 U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq. The move was said to be a strategic and targeted one as villages like Al-Qaryatain are key routes used to ferry supplies and fighters.

Previous US attempts to train certain factions of the Syrian opposition have also run aground.

For weeks, ISIL militants and Syrian forces have skirmished in the countryside to the east of Homs.

The programme, which launched in Might in Jordan and Turkey, was designed to coach as many as 5,400 fighters a yr. Washington admitted it couldn’t practice greater than 60 fighters, citing rigorous vetting of recruits. This figure prevented the AKP from sustaining the majority party rule it had held over the previous 12 years and compelled the party to consider a coalition government and/or early elections.

As recently as last month, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. did not have the authority to conduct airstrikes against the Syrian regime.

Shortly after the fighters were deployed they came under attack by al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, the Nusra Front.

“We do need another ground force”, said Jennifer Cafarella, Syria analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

Still, Tabler said, the program is unlikely to thrive until the Obama administration drops its restriction that trainees must pledge to fight the Islamic State, not the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

But assembling a force from scratch to combat the Islamic State in Syria has become far less urgent.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than in Syria, where the U.S. has tried to recruit and train forces exclusively to fight the Islamic State. It’s a confusing place where the insertion of additional forces, absent any commensurate diplomatic initiatives, is more likely to muddy the waters rather than clear them.

“If this isn’t enough, then Dawlah (Islamic State) also provides your family with the basic household items, such as a washing machine, fridge, cooker, carpets, mattresses and some other kitchen items”, the blog said.

“No one is surprised at how unsafe and how fluid the situation is in Syria”, Ryder said.

The Pentagon has refused to say how many groups they are working with in Syria.

Navy Cmdr. Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, elaborated on the complexity in an email to McClatchy.