The Pentagon said it would shift its focus away from training to providing weapons and other equipment to rebel groups whose leaders have passed a US vetting process to ensure they are not linked to militant Islamist groups. The strategy switch comes as the Obama administration grapples with a dramatic change in the landscape in Syria's four-year civil war, brought about by Russia's military intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow's intervention has cast doubt on Obama's strategy there and raised questions about US influence in the region.
Moscow is mounting air strikes and missile attacks that it says are aimed both at supporting its long-time ally Assad and combating Islamic State. Washington says Russian air strikes in Syria are targeted primarily not at Islamic State but at other rebel groups, including those that have received US support. Obama has previously questioned the notion that arming rebels would change the course of Syria's war. In an interview with the New York Times in August 2014, he said the idea that arming the moderate Syrian opposition would make a big difference on the battlefield had "always been a fantasy."
By vetting only rebel commanders, the new US policy could raise the risk that American-supplied arms could fall into the hands of individual fighters who are anti-Western. Christine Wormuth, the Pentagon's No 3 civilian official, said however that the United States had "pretty high confidence" in the Syrian rebels it would supply, and that the equipment would not include "higher end" arms such as anti-tank rockets and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft rockets. The Pentagon will provide "basic kinds of equipment" to leaders of the groups, Wormuth, Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, told reporters on a White House conference call.
The Syrian rebel groups that have recently won favour with Washington include Sunni Arabs and Kurds as well as Syrian Christians, US officials have said. Wormuth defended the Pentagon program launched in May that trained only 60 fighters, falling far short of the original goal of 5,400 and so working out at a cost so far of nearly $10 million per trained fighter.
"I don't think at all this was a case of poor execution," Wormuth said. "It was inherently a very, very complex mission," Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, said the new approach showed there had been "deficiencies" in the train-and-equip program that had to be addressed.