U.S. overhauls troubled plan for Syrian force

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is overhauling its faltering program to train a moderate Syrian rebel force to battle the Islamic State, shifting instead to a plan to provide arms and equipment to already existing tribal and other forces, the Pentagon announced Friday.

The Pentagon’s $500 million training plan has fallen far short of its initial goal of training 5,400 rebels a year. Instead, only a handful of U.S. military-trained rebels made it into Syria since the program got underway this year.

The first Pentagon-trained team to make it into Syria this summer came under attack by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria and dispersed. The second team handed over some U.S.-supplied arms and equipment to the same terror group.

The Pentagon had already suspended the movement of recruits out of Syria to the U.S. training centers in the region, acknowledging the program had problems. “I’m the first one to acknowledge it has not worked the way it was supposed to,” President Obama said last week.

Obama attributed the difficulties to getting the rebels to focus on fighting the Islamic State instead of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The new program will be aimed at training small cadres of rebels who can embed in  forces already fighting the Islamic State, particularly in areas around Raqqa, Syria, the militants' de facto capital, and other parts of northern Syria, an Obama administration official with knowledge of the plan told USA TODAY.

These cadres could also help coordinate airstrikes, which would still need to be vetted through the U.S. chain of command. The official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to discuss details of the program, did not know whether the Pentagon would also provide arms to the rebel forces.

The Pentagon announcement said the U.S. military would be supporting a "select group of vetted leaders and their units."

"This focusing on equipping and enabling will allow us to reinforce the progress already made in countering ISIL in Syria," the statement said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

The aim is to support Arab forces who have already been identified and would capitalize on progress made by Kurds in northern Syria.

The Kurds have been effective at battling the Islamic State in their hometowns, but using them in areas outside their control could be counterproductive.