WASHINGTON: The US military is planning to send more than 400 soldiers to train Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State along with hundreds of US support personnel, a Pentagon spokesman said on Thursday.

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.

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 Islamic State fighters, while pounding them with airstrikes.

But the insurgency in Syria is now dominated by hardline Sunni Islamists, including both Islamic State and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, complicating US measures to find a suitable ally on the ground. Warren did not offer additional details on the troop figures.

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 Islamic State.

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.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2015

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