The US military is planning to send more than 400 soldiers to train Syrian rebels to fight Daesh along with hundreds of US support personnel,
| ...so about a thousand or more altogether? |
a Pentagon spokesman said on Thursday.
| What could possibly go wrong... |
The training mission is expected to begin in the spring at sites outside Syria, Colonel Steve Warren said. Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have offered to host the training.
| Sure, give 'em guns too. Why not... |
The Syrian state news agency Sana said the plan showed Washington was continuing to support terrorism in Syria. Syria’s government describes all of its armed opponents as terrorists.
The training programme is a part of US President Barack Obama’s plan to field local forces in Syria to halt and eventually roll back radical fighters, while pounding them with air strikes.
But the insurgency in Syria is now dominated by hardline militants, complicating US measures to find a suitable ally on the ground.
| Complicating? Isn't it part of the plan? |
The Pentagon has estimated that it can train more than 5,000 recruits in the first year under a $500 million programme, and that up to 15,000 will be needed to retake areas of eastern Syria controlled by al-Qaeda ISIS Daesh.
Critics in Congress have said the Pentagon programme will not aid Syrian opposition forces fast enough, however, and question whether it is too small to influence the course of Syria’s civil war, which pits President Bashar Al Assad’s government against an array of opponents.
The disclosure of the planned troop deployments for the Syria training mission followed a meeting between senior US officials and Syrian opposition and civil society leaders in Istanbul.
“These introductory meetings were an important step as we prepare to launch the train-and-equip programme later this spring with our international partners,” Pentagon spokeswoman Commander Elissa Smith said. |