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US to alter Syrian train-and-equip programme

September 9, 2015 at 10:45 am

The US will make changes to a train-and-equip programme for Syrian opposition groups as the programme failed to produce effective results in the fight against Daesh, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday.

“We’ve been candid that the initial phase of this programme did not lift off with the kind of efficiency that we’d hoped,” Peter Cook told reporters. “We’ve learned lessons from that, continue to learn lessons from that.”

Cook said Secretary of Defence Ash Carter views moderate Syrian forces as a critical component of the fight against Daesh and has been looking into possible options to expand and enhance the efficiency of the Syrian rebel groups.

“We’re going to tweak the programme, make adjustments as we go,” the spokesman added without providing specifics of any potential changes.

The announcement comes after Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, attacked a group of 54 Syrian fighters who had graduated from the train-and-equip programme in late July. A day prior to the attack, two leaders of the trainee group and several of its fighters were captured by Al-Nusra.

The US has trained just 54 Syrian opposition fighters in the course of half a year. The encounter with Al-Nusra revealed several deficiencies in the trainees’ ability to defend themselves and their intelligence gathering capabilities.

Cook said the US has spent $41.8 million as of May 30 to fund the training of Syrian opposition fighters, adding that the comptroller is still working to update this amount.

He said that while Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan have each publicly pledged to host training sites, training has been conducted only in Turkey and Jordan.

Two classes are now currently in training, bringing the total number of train-and-equip programme classes to three, said Cook, who declined to provide details about the number of trainees or sites.