The U.S. is going to suspend its faltering Syrian rebel training program, U.S. officials said Friday.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter said during a news conference in London that the U.S. “remains committed” to training forces in Syria against ISIS, but is looking for ways to “improve” the program.
“I was not satisfied with the early efforts in that regard, and so we are looking at different ways to achieve the same strategic objectives, which is the right one, which is to enable capable motivated forces on the ground to retake territory from ISIL and reclaim Syrian territory from extremism so we have devised a number of different approaches to that going forward,” Carter said, using a different name for ISIS.
He added that the president would be talking about it on Friday. The New York Times first reported the move.
A U.S. official told CNN that the program is being suspended as the administration looks for other ways to support the moderate opposition in Syria. But U.S. backing for the rebels is not ending.
‘Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook released a statement Friday saying that the U.S. has continually reviewed the progress of the program to train and equip Syrian opposition forces.
He said that Carter is now directing the Pentagon 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.”
“We will monitor the progress these groups make and provide them with air support as they take the fight to ISIL,” he said.
Cook said “refinements and adjustments” will continue to occur with time, acknowledging that the ISIS fight will be “a long and arduous process.”
The new program will include ammunition and communications equipment for the Syria Arab Coalition, some 5,000 moderate rebels in the north, a U.S. official told CNN.
Current members of the New Syria Force — the fighters who have been through the train and equip program — in the field and in training will still get support, though there are not more than a few hundred of them. However, the suspension means that there will be no new recruits or training.
Some U.S. Special Operations commanders had been pressing for that decision for weeks, defense officials told CNN, after seeing the coalition achieve success on the battlefield.
Individuals in the coalition will be vetted through their leadership and given training and be given expertise in communications and intelligence support.
“We have devised a number of different approaches to that going forward and taken them to President (Barack) Obama, and you will be hearing I think very shortly from him,” Carter said Friday.
Asked about the news on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Friday, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said the program was bound for failure from the start.
“It really is (a joke) because, you have the CIA program and you eventually had a DoD program, the problem with the program is they’re training them to fight ISIL only,” the GOP presidential candidate said. “No one in Syria is going to just fight ISIL, they want to take Assad on, who has massacred their family, so it was doomed to fail with these restrictions.”
Graham has been highly critical of the administration’s strategy in Syria and the Middle East more broadly.