Obama Administration Abandons Pentagon Program to Train Syrian Militants
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Obama administration has ended the Pentagon’s $500 million program to train and equip Syrian militants, in an acknowledgment that the beleaguered program had failed to produce any kind of ground combat forces capable of taking on ISIL.
US President Barack Obama will overhaul Washington's approach to supporting Syrian militant following this year's deeply troubled launch of a US military training program, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Friday, according to Reuters.
The decision would be announced later Friday, he told journalists, saying: "I think you'll be hearing very shortly from him in that regard about the proposals that he has approved and that we are going to go forward with."
In May, the US military began training for up to 5,400 miltants a year in what was claimed to be Obama's strategy of having local partners combat ISIL militants and keep US troops off the front lines.
But the program was troubled from the start, with some of the first class of less than 60 fighters coming under attack from al Qaeda's Syria wing, Nusra Front, in their battlefield debut.
Reuters reported last week that the Obama administration was considering extending support to thousands of Syrian miltants, possibly with arms and air strikes, as part of the revamped approach to Syria.
That includes militants near the border with Turkey and members of the Syrian Arab Coalition.
Carter said the new US effort would seek to enable Syrian militants in much the way the United States had helped Syrian Kurdish forces to successfully battle ISIL in Syria.
"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.
"That's exactly the kind of example that we would like to pursue with other groups in other parts of Syria going forward. That is going to be the core of the President's concept."
The decision to abandon the training program came after Russia started its air campaign against ISIL terrorists.
Since late September, Russia has been carrying out bombings against the ISIL terrorist group in Syria, after Russia's parliament granted President Putin authorization to deploy the country's air force abroad.
