Pentagon head: USA to change Syrian rebel training program

The strategy switch comes as the Obama administration grapples with a dramatic change in the landscape in Syria’s four-year civil war, brought about by Russia’s military intervention in support of President Bashar Assad.

“It’s not halting the program”, added Brett McGurk, the deputy special envoy for the anti-ISIS effort.

Defense officials say the Obama administration will end the program to train and equip Syrian rebels in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS).

The official declined to say how many leaders would be armed and trained, but noted the new effort would get under way “within days”.

Washington was forced Friday to admit the failure of its plan to create Syrian rebel units to fight the Islamic State, vowing instead to arm select local leaders.

Administration officials stressed that Syrian rebel commanders would continue to receive military equipment. The United States has already had a few success working, for example, with Syrian Arab rebel groups. “That’s how we will mitigate the risk”.

“I believe the changes we are instituting today will, over time, increase the combat power of counter-ISIL forces in Syria and ultimately help our campaign achieve a lasting defeat of ISIL”, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said.

“We have been looking for now several weeks at ways to improve that program”, Carter said.

Its $500m programme was heavily criticised after it emerged that US-trained rebels had handed vehicles and ammunition over to extremists.

The aim, Mr Cook said, is to work with these unspecified units “so that over time they can make a concerted push into territory still controlled by Isil”, using an acronym for Islamic State.

The official said that instead of training large groups of rebels, the focus will now be on training the leaders of rebel groups.

Cook said that the shift does not imply Washington’s unwillingness to support other ground forces that have been fighting ISIS successfully. USA officials say that effort is having more success with its goals than the one run by the military, which only trained militants willing to promise to take on the Islamic State exclusively.

NPR’s Tom Bowman reports that the new program will train so-called enablers at a site in Turkey.

However, USA government officials anxious that the scheme could in fact aid terrorists.

Individuals in the SAC will be vetted through their leadership and given training and be given expertise in communications and intelligence support.

“We have devised a number of different approaches”, Carter told a news conference in London.

Asked about the news on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Friday, South Carolina Sen.

Wormuth said the program was hamstrung by the parameters Congress set for it in authorizing the mission past year. “At the same time, the more we try to rigidly fit a square peg into a round hole and try to do things the way we might’ve envisioned them, the less effective we’ll be”.

Their talks come after Mr Fallon announced plans for the deployment of around 100 British troops in to the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as part of a “more persistent presence” by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in eastern Europe. To many rebels, the train-and-equip program seemed to underscore how the nations that had pledged their support to the opposition were no longer interested in regime change.