The Pentagon is overhauling its program to train moderate Syrian fighters, and instead plans to identify rebel leaders and provide them with weapons, equipment and air support.
In making the announcement, the Obama administration is pushing back on reports that the Pentagon is ending its beleaguered program to train and equip moderate forces in Syria combating the Islamic State, instead framing Friday’s announcement as “adapting” the strategy and simply “pausing” the program.
“It’s not halting the program,” said Brett McGurk, deputy special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter the Islamic State. “Those stories are not true; it’s adapting it.”
The Pentagon is reworking the program launched in the spring that ended up training only a handful of fighters, Christine Wormuth, undersecretary of defense for policy, said.
“This is the most complex situation imaginable,” McGurk said about the effort to train Syrians to fight the Islamic State, which the administration also refers to as ISIL. “It’s the most dynamic situation imaginable.”
Wormuth said the program was hamstrung by the parameters Congress set for it in authorizing the mission last year.
Congress set “a very high recruitment bar” in that the Defense Department had to find locals willing to fight the Islamic State and only the Islamic State, Wormuth said. The Pentagon was not authorized to train and equip Syrians who wanted to join the civil war against President Bashar al-Assad.
That was a “very challenging recruiting mission,” she said. “It was inherently a very complex mission.”
In total, the Pentagon trained about 100 recruits. Congress appropriated $500 million for the program, but the Pentagon said this summer it had spent roughly $50 million. The goal was to train 5,400 rebels by the end of this year.
President Obama telegraphed the change last week when he admitted that the plan was not playing out as envisioned.
“The training-and-equip program was a specific initiative by the Defense Department to see if we could get some of that moderate opposition to focus attention on ISIL in the eastern portion of the country,” Obama said on Oct. 2. “And I’m the first one to acknowledge it has not worked the way it was supposed to.”
Now the program will focus on aiding groups already fighting the Islamic State, including “Arabs, Christians and Kurds,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communication.
In the fight for the Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish border, Pentagon trainers got to know Arab, Christian and Peshmerga groups fighting ISIS, Rhodes said.
The Defense Department will leverage those relationships and aid those groups in their battle with the Islamic State. Assistance could take the form of airstrikes and equipment.
The Pentagon now is “vetting leaders as opposed to each individual fighter,” Wormuth said. “We’re focusing on enhancing the counter-ISIL mission.”
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, blamed the administration for having a “weak, inadequate” policy on Syria.
“Adjusting one program, even if it were successful, will not solve the problem. Whatever else he does, the president must be willing to stand up and bolster our defenses, and he can start by signing the Defense Authorization Bill, which passed with strong, bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate.”
The course change comes after the Pentagon revealed that of the roughly 100 fighters it trained, only a handful were still on the battlefield.
Furthermore, the program called for sending would-be fighters to training camps away from the battlefield. Now the Pentagon can coordinate with their leaders and allow the fighters to continue battling the Islamic State, the White House officials said.
The Pentagon said the changes are the result of reviewing the program and focusing on what has worked and eliminating elements that have not.
“Throughout this period, working with our coalition partners, we have also pursued other efforts to partner with and enable capable ground forces motivated to take back Syrian territory from ISIL,” Defense Department spokesman Peter Cook stated.
“Building on that progress, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is now directing the Department of Defense to provide equipment packages and weapons to a select group of vetted leaders and their units so that over time they can make a concerted push into territory still controlled by ISIL,” Cook stated.
“We will monitor the progress these groups make and provide them with air support as they take the fight to ISIL,” Cook stated. “This focus on equipping and enabling will allow us to reinforce the progress already made in countering ISIL in Syria.”
The Pentagon still will not aid or train rebels who want to take down Assad.
“We didn’t expect then and don’t expect now that you can end the conflict in Syria through support for an opposition group,” Rhodes said, reiterating the White House refrain that the only solution is Syria is a diplomatic one that sees power transition away from Assad.
