The Pentagon’s Dangerous Game with Terrorists: Training Syrian Opposition “Jihadists” to Fight the ISIS
The U.S. policy in the Middle East has proved unsustainable once again. The Pentagon’s first attempt to train Syrian opposition to fight ISIS ended in “an abject failure”, CBS News reported in early August. The contingent of 54 fighters was trained by the U.S. military at a base in Turkey and sent across the border into Northern Syria. But instead of facing ISIS, they unexpectedly came under attack by Al-Nusra Front. As a result, the American-trained rebels scattered. Some were captured, some fled to Turkey, others were simply missing or likely turned the side and joined the Islamic State.
It was clear from the very beginning that the costly program to train “good” rebels to fight “bad” ones was doomed to failure. The Pentagon planned to spend half a billion dollars on the program. The U.S. has already faced misfortunes like that in its history. As we know, Washington took part in the creation of Al-Qaeda, the largest terrorist organization in the world until now. But as soon as the fighters got stronger they turned their weapons against the Americans.
The same situation is developing around the so called New Syrian Force. Returning to Syria the Pentagon-trained rebels joined the organization they were supposed to struggle against.
It is hard to escape a conclusion that the U.S. doesn’t learn from its own mistakes. But the situation may be much more complex. Given the Pentagon’s great experience in covert operations it may appear that the U.S. special services planned the rebels would turn the side beforehand. To cover this fact the U.S. defense and state departments usually very sophisticated in concealing or justifying their failures were easy to accept their mistake this time.
