WASHINGTON (AP) – The Obama administration is preparing a major overhaul of its failed effort to train thousands of moderate Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State group, shifting from preparing rebels for frontline combat to a plan to embed them with established Kurdish and Arab forces in northeastern Syria, U.S. officials said.
Instead of fighting the Islamic State in small units, the U.S.-trained rebels would be attached to larger existing Kurdish and Arab forces. They would be equipped with U.S. communications gear and trained to provide intelligence and to designate IS targets for airstrikes in coordination with U.S. troops outside of Syria, the officials said.
The change amounts to an acknowledgement that the administration’s current approach is not working. It was described by officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because a final decision on how to proceed has not been made.
The discussion of a new approach comes a day after the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Lloyd Austin, told Congress that the $500 million effort to train 5,000 moderate Syrian rebels in a year had yielded “four or five” new fighters after another 50 or so were captured, wounded or fled in their first encounter with extremist militants.
The new approach is designed to intensify military pressure on Raqqa, the self-declared capital of the so-called caliphate the Islamic State has established across much of Syria and Iraq. The city is sometimes targeted by American-led coalition airstrikes, and Syrian government forces have occasionally targeted it as well.