Military officials admitted late Friday that a U.S.-trained Syrian rebel commander handed over some of his group’s equipment to the Islamist extremist Al-Nusra Front just days after having pushed back against previous reports of collaboration.
Central Command said in a statement that the New Syrian Front commander told representatives of the U.S.-led coalition that he had handed over six pickup trucks and some of his group’s ammunition to the al Qaeda-linked organization earlier this week in exchange for safe passage.
“If accurate, the report of NSF members providing equipment to Al-Nusra Front is very concerning and a violation of Syria train and equip program guidelines,” Central Command spokesman Col. Patrick Ryder said.
“In light of this new information, we wanted to ensure the public was informed as quickly as possible about the facts as we know them at this time. We are using all means at our disposal to look into what exactly happened and determine the appropriate response.”
On Wednesday, the Pentagon pushed back against previous reports that some of the U.S.-trained rebels had defected to Al-Nusra and handed over their equipment, saying the extremists were trying to discredit the coalition’s train-and-equip program with false information.
“All coalition-issued weapons and equipment are under the positive control of New Syrian Force fighters,” Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said at the time.
Ryder said Friday that Central Command officials had rejected the earlier report based on reporting from the U.S-trained rebels and the fact that an image of a coalition-issued rifle tweeted by Al-Nusra was an old one.
The admission is just the latest problem for the program, which has spent $41 million of an authorized $500 million to train about 100 out of an expected 5,400 rebels. As of Sept. 18, only nine were still fighting in Syria.
Central Command chief Gen. Lloyd Austin drew a harsh, bipartisan rebuke from lawmakers at a Sept. 16 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing when he admitted that only “four or five” of the initial class of 54 rebel graduates were still in the fight. At the same hearing, Christine Wormuth, undersecretary of defense for policy, noted that the strict vetting process required by law limited the number of potential recruits.
She told lawmakers that many potential recruits also wanted to fight the regime of President Bashar Assad rather than the Islamic State “and that’s not the focus of our program.”
Wormuth said administration officials were reviewing the program to see how it could be improved.
Two committee members, Republican Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri, wrote Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Friday seeking a briefing on how the Pentagon planned to change the program to make it work better.
