LONDON — The U.S. is abandoning its goal of training a new force of moderate Syrian rebels and will focus on equipping, arming and supporting established rebels groups already fighting against the Islamic State group inside Syria, officials said Friday.
The current approach has produced only a handful of combat-ready moderate rebels and drawn widespread criticism in Congress.
Officials briefed on the new approach said it would focus heavily on equipping and enabling established Kurdish and Arab rebel groups rather than recruiting and vetting a new cadre of moderate rebels, training them at camps in Turkey and Jordan and re-inserting them as an infantry force into Syria. The $500 million Congress provided last year for the program will be used more for equipping select rebel groups inside Syria, with limited training activity.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the change publicly.
The CIA runs a separate, covert program run that began in 2013 to arm, fund and train a moderate opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad. U.S. officials say that effort is having more success with its goals than the one run by the military, which only trained militants willing to promise to take on the Islamic State exclusively.
Read Saturday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.