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The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has cut off the US$500 million program to instruct and arm Syrian insurgent groups, officials told The New York Times Friday, due to the lack of impact the plan had on fighting the Islamic State group.
An official announcement of the termination of the scheme was due to take place Friday, after Defense Secretary Ashton Carter left London having completed talks about the wars in Syria and Iraq.
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“I wasn’t happy with the early efforts of the program, so we have devised a number of different approaches. I think you’ll be hearing from President Obama very shortly,” Carter said.
An anonymous Defense Department source told The New York Times that they would no longer recruit Syrian “moderate” rebels into training programs across the region, but that instead a more compact training center would be instructed in operational maneuvers.
“Training thousands of infantry was not the right model, I think that’s become pretty clear,” said another senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon has been equipping and training groups who oppose both Islamic State Group and the Syrian government, almost since the conflict began in 2011, with the aim of training 15,000 insurgents.
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However, U.S. government officials worried that the scheme could in fact aid terrorists.
Senator Chris Murphy told Russian media his fears had been confirmed.
“My concern from the beginning was that we were going to end up unwittingly aiding and abetting terrorist groups like al-Qaeda,” Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, told Sputnik news agency Wednesday, adding “I am sorry that my concern turned out to be true.”
The senator urged the government to relocate the funds to addressing the humanitarian crisis and “put towards refugee resettlement and humanitarian relief.”
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