Pentagon giving up on building new Syrian rebel force

Congress approved $500 million for the program but much of that is unspent.

The Pentagon said it would shift its focus away from training to providing weapons and other equipment to rebel groups whose leaders have passed a USA vetting process to ensure they are not linked to militant Islamist groups.

Syria’s civil war has killed more than 240,000 people since 2011 and has displaced millions.

The first was on October 1st but since then the USA and Russian jets have flied too close to one another a couple of times, according to the Pentagon.

Russian aircraft started carrying out precision airstrikes against ISIL targets in Syria on September 30, following a request from Syrian President Bashar Assad. “That’s exactly the kind of example that we would like to pursue with other groups in other parts of Syria going forward”.

Obama has previously questioned the notion that arming rebels would change the course of Syria’s war. The New York Times first reported the move.

The Observatory said Friday that Russian warplanes struck a base in northwest Syria belonging to a rebel group that has received USA training.

The setbacks involved separate programs with distinct missions. “It is a hopeless case,” he said.

The Pentagon has signaled there would be a change to the train-and-equip program last month when they put training on hold, saying no new recruits would be allowed out of the training camps.

When it was launched, the program was seen as a test of Obama’s strategy of having local partners combat Islamic State militants and keeping US troops off the front lines.

Another 75 members of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front militant group were eliminated and their pick-up trucks, equipped with heavy machine guns, were destroyed as Syrian government troops launched a barrage of mortar shells and artillery rounds at Um Haratain village, where the Takfiris had been holed up.

ABC News also learned that rebel groups will be provided with ammunition, though it does not appear that weapons are included.

Washington and its European and Middle Eastern allies oppose the Syrian president and believe he should leave power in any peace deal, while Moscow supports Assad and says his government should be the centerpiece of global efforts to fight extremism. Let us not forget that the killing in Syria began four years ago when Assad brutally crushed peaceful pro-democracy protesters.

“The discussions were professional and focused narrowly on the implementation of specific safety procedures”, the US Department of Defence said in a statement released on Saturday.

The United States would also provide air support to rebels as they battle Islamic State, Mr Cook said.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said during a Friday news conference in London that he “wasn’t happy with the early efforts” of the program, adding that “we have devised a number of different approaches.” He did not provide more details.

As Russian planes continued to pound rebel forces in western Aleppo and other frontlines in the country, numerous opposition fighters who ousted Isis from the province at great cost previous year found themselves pinned down and unable to halt the terror group’s largely unopposed advance towards the city at the end of last week.

Yet that program is relatively modest when compared to what the Pentagon one once promised, and rebels expressed little hope that there was more robust US support in store.