USA to change training program of “Syrian moderate opposition”

The U.S.is going to suspend its faltering Syrian rebel training program, US officials said Friday.

“The work we’ve done with the Kurds in northern Syria is an example of an effective approach where you have a group that is capable, motivated on the ground, that you can enable their success”, Carter said.

“The question begs itself is it best to take those guys out and put them through training programs for many weeks or to keep them on the line fighting and to give them additional enablers and support them”, he said.

The switch in tactics will be seen as a tacit admission that the Pentagon’s $500 million program to train thousands of “moderate” Syrian rebels has failed.

But the decision to abandon the rebel training program, which has for the past two years been a central tenet of the administration’s strategy against ISIL, suggests disarray in the White House’s overall posture toward the war in Syria that has killed at least 250,000 people and spawned a refugee crisis from the Mideast to Western Europe.

The core of the new approach, Wormuth said, is to work with groups already fighting ISIL on the ground.

“The Administration had no defined objectives, no effective strategy and no way to ensure that these fighters and the weapons, ammunition and equipment we provided them would not end up in the hands of ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra and other extremist groups who are our enemy”, Gabbard alleged.

An global anti-Islamic State coalition, led by the United States, has been training a few of these groups, as well as providing them with arms.

The Pentagon will continue to evaluate this program and expect to make refinements and adjustments over time as appropriate, the statement added.

As of May 30, the US has spent $41.8 million as to fund the training of Syrian opposition fighters, according to the Pentagon.

Seeking to underline the dangers of the Russian operation, USA officials said four Russian cruise missiles fired from a warship in the Caspian Sea had crashed in Iran which drew a swift denial from Russia that the rockets hit their targets.

The plan reflected the priorities of a president who was reluctant to get entrenched in another Middle East conflict, but who needed a ground force to complement U.S. air strikes against Islamic State in Syria.

Cook said the new USA focus on equipping and enabling rebels, rather than building a new rebel force, will allow the U.S.to “reinforce the progress already made” in countering ISIL.

“I wasn’t happy with the early efforts of the program, so we have devised a number of different approaches”.

Officials said the Pentagon has drawn up separate initiatives for different areas along the Syrian border with Turkey.

“This problem, compounded by the administration’s immoral refusal to protect those we train from Putin’s bombs, could doom this new effort to the same failure as the previous one”, McCain said.