US pulls plug on Syria rebel training effort; will focus on weapons supply

PROBLEMS RECRUITING

The administration has acknowledged that its efforts to attract recruits have struggled because the program was solely authorized to fight Islamic State, rather than Assad.

"No one in Syria is going to just fight ISIL ... it's doomed to fail with these restrictions," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on MSNBC, using an acronym for Islamic State. Graham has been a leading critic of the Syria policy of Obama, a Democrat.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement that the plan was to supply rebel groups so that they could "make a concerted push into territory still controlled by ISIL."

The United States would also provide air support to rebels as they battle Islamic State, Cook said.

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in the statement he believed the changes would "over time, increase the combat power of counter-ISIL forces in Syria."

US support would now focus on weapons, communications gear and ammunition, another Pentagon official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding the re-envisioned program would start in "days." The official declined to say how many Syrian rebel leaders would be trained.

Another US official said the new weapons supplies could eventually be channelled through vetted commanders to thousands of fighters, but declined to be more specific about the numbers.

The Pentagon did not name which groups would receive support.

Reuters reported last week that the Obama administration was considering extending support to thousands of Syrian rebel fighters, including along a stretch of the Turkey-Syria border, as part of the revamped approach to Syria.

The United States would also support members of the Syrian Arab Coalition, under that plan.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to London, Carter said the new US effort would seek to enable Syrian rebels in much the way the United States had helped Kurdish forces to successfully battle Islamic State in Syria.

After Islamic State's brutal offensive through northern Iraq in June 2014, Obama asked Congress for an initial $500 million to "train and equip" Syria's opposition fighters, whom he later described as "the best counterweight" to Islamic State militants and a key pillar in his campaign to defeat them.