Pentagon
halts program to train new militant forces in Syria
The Pentagon
plans to stop training new militant forces in Syria, in an
acknowledgment that the $500-million program has failed to produce an
effective proxy force in the war-torn country.
The
beleaguered program — which managed to field only a handful of
militants into the battle against Daesh (ISIL) in Syria at a cost of
about $50 million — will be abandoned, senior Pentagon officials
said on Friday. US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that he
“wasn't happy with the early efforts” of the program, “so we
have devised a number of different approaches.”
[...]
A senior
Pentagon official told the New York Times that the United States
would cease to recruit so-called moderate militants to go through
training in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.
Instead, the Pentagon plans to set up a less ambitious training
center in Turkey, where a small cadre of “enablers” would be
taught operational tactics such as how to call in airstrikes.
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