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Obama: US plans to train Syrian fighters failed

October 12, 2015 at 9:32 am

The US’s “train and equip” programme for Syria “did not work”, President Barack Obama said in a TV interview broadcast yesterday night.

Obama said he had been sceptical of the plan to train 5,000 fighters to combat Daesh in Syria but he felt compelled to test the plan.

“I’ve been sceptical from the get-go about the notion that we were going to effectively create this proxy army inside of Syria,” the president told CBS’s Steve Kroft.

“My goal has been to try to test the proposition. Can we… train and equip a moderate opposition that’s willing to fight ISIL [Daesh]? And what we’ve learned is that as long as Assad remains in power, it is very difficult to get those folks to focus their attention on ISIL.”

Speaking from the White House’s Roosevelt Room, he added: “Look, there’s no doubt that it did not work. And one of the challenges that I’ve had throughout this heartbreaking situation inside of Syria is that you’ll have people insist that all you have to do is send in a few truckloads full of arms and people are ready to fight.”

Last week, the Pentagon announced a pause in the train and equip programme for moderate Syrian opposition groups after the $500 million scheme failed to produce a credible force. Reports claim some of the US-trained fighters defected to groups such as Al-Nusra Front.

Describing the Syrian conflict as a “difficult problem for the entire world community”, Obama recognised that the US had been unable to “change the dynamic inside of Syria”.

He said there were no “silver bullets” to resolve the conflict, which has seen more than 250,000 Syrians killed, and reaffirmed his opposition to “try to reinsert ourselves in a military campaign inside of Syria.”

One of America’s priorities is to support moderate groups to persuade Russia and Iran to pressure Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad into accepting change, he added.

Asked if the US was “throwing in the towel”, Obama outlined the “enormous” military presence in the Middle East but said it would be a bad strategy to establish America as “not just the police, but the governors of this region.”