Only 60 Syrians have Received US Training to Combat Islamic State

On July 7, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US has only trained approximately 60 rebels in Syria to fight the Islamic State (IS). The number emphasizes growing concern over the efficacy of the US attempt to build up a local fighting force under American supervision.

Looking out at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carter said, “I said the number 60, and I can look out at your faces and you have the same reaction I do, which is that that’s an awfully small number.”

Pentagon officials said they want to train 3,000 fighters by the end of 2015 and 5,400 by May 2016, but they are not on track to meet their goal. Though they have 7,000 Syrian volunteers, less than one percent has been able to successfully pass the strict vetting process thus far.

Carter talked about the difficulty in determining which volunteers should receive training, saying that “we make sure that they, for example, aren’t going to pose a green-on-blue threat to their trainers; that they don’t have any history of atrocities.” The vetting requirements dictate that the US must be able to ensure that those trained will focus solely on IS rather than on also fighting the soldiers defending the Assad regime. Additionally, Volunteers must pass a counterintelligence screening.

When Carter announced the $500 million training program was finally starting after a number of delays in May 2015, he said that 400 volunteers had been cleared to receive training. At the time of his May announcement, he noted that 90 Syrians had already begun the program and that another group would join them “in the next few weeks.”

Carter acknowledged in May that “this is a complex program” that is “going to have to evolve over time” and that “any continued support for [the fighters] would be strongly conditioned upon their continued good conduct.” However, the number of program participants he gave to the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 7 (60) is smaller than the number he gave in May (90), and clearly does not include the nearly 300 more that were originally supposed to join the training. No indication was given as to the reasons for the decrease in numbers.

The program was approved by Congress in October 2014. Before its approval, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, cautioned that “we have to do it right, not fast.”

The Pentagon must acknowledge that after a certain point doing it right becomes doing it fast. Currently, Kurdish forces have proven to be the most effective in combating IS. However, The US is working closely with the Iraqi government, which opposes an armed Kurdish force. This opposition has led the US to attempt to block Arab states’ efforts to directly arm the Kurds while also refusing to aid them itself. Everyone wants to defeat IS, but only IS is helped by these attempts to sabotage the Kurds, who are currently the most effective resistance to the group. After a certain point the US must consider whether or not vetting Syrian rebels is taking too long while also taking into account the possibility that large numbers of Syrian rebels may not actually be worthy of arming. In order to bring about real change in the fight against IS in Syria, the US should side with the already existing and effective fighters, rather than the ideal-but-imaginary force they want.