Despite graduating only 54 Syrian rebels from the U.S. train-and-equip program, the Pentagon has no plans to revise its goal of training 5,400 troops by the end of the year.
Analysts, however, say there is no way the Pentagon can train even close to that number of moderate Syrian rebels, due to a sluggish vetting process and a low number of qualified recruits.
“Honestly, no, I do not see a way for the Pentagon to hit that number,” said Chris Kozak, a Syria analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. “It seems at this point to be an unrealistic number for what the program will be able to achieve in coming months.”
The program to train the rebels was supposed to be a key part of the strategy to defeat the Islamic State in Syria. Within days of being placed into combat, however, a number of the 54 graduates in that first class were captured by terrorist group al-Nusra, in spite of U.S. air support that eventually pushed back attackers.
A second and third cohort of Syrians is training. Officials have declined to release how many are participating, citing security concerns.
Asked about the need to revise the Pentagon’s target number of trainees, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said Tuesday that high-ranking officials were re-evaluating every part of the program, but that the 5,400 target was unchanged.
“I’m not going to adjust what was the target initially. There are people above my pay grade making hard decisions, evaluating this program, and again, when we’ve got — if there’s a new target number, we’ll provide that for you as well,” Cook told reporters.
But to Kozak, the numbers don’t add up. A Syrian commander said that of 1,100 names he submitted to be vetted for the program, the U.S. accepted only 42, according to a New York Times report.
Based on that ratio, Kozak said the U.S. would need to get about 140,000 volunteers.
“It’s not scientific whatsoever, but it illustrates the scale of the problem in terms of the numbers that they’re seeing and the problems they’ll have to come even close to hitting benchmark,” he said.
Officials have defended the lengthy, thorough vetting process, saying it ensures trainees have no ties to terrorist groups and will commit to fighting the Islamic State, not the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The U.S. has struggled to recruit enough Syrians who meet both these criteria, since most see the fight against Assad as a priority, analysts said.
Steve Bucci, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said that in addition to a lengthy vetting procedure, the transporting moderate rebels to training sites in Turkey and Jordan, completing the weeks-long training and then bringing them back to the battle is time consuming.
“It all takes a heck of a lot of time,” he said.
Kozak said the Pentagon should wait for a larger group to graduate and insert them into a safer region of the country to have some success with the mission.
The military should also allow U.S. ground forces to accompany trained Syrian fighters once they are reinserted into the country to give them a better chance of success in combat, Bucci said.
“I think the intent of it is good, but doing it the way we’ve been doing it I don’t think is sufficient,” he said. “It has the potential to throw good money after bad by just training them up, sending them out, then they get killed, captured or turned [to join an extremist group].”
Cook said the department has learned lessons from the first group’s insertion into combat, but declined to go into any details about ways the train-and-equip program might change. He stressed that the mission is still a key part of enabling a local ground force to defeat the Islamic State.
“We’re going to tweak the program, make adjustments as we go. That doesn’t suggest anything’s really changed. We’re moving forward with the program and considering other ways we can enhance our fight against ISIL,” Cook said.
