US Sending 400 Troops to Train "Moderate" Syrian Opposition

By Julian E. Barnes, The Wall Street Journal

16 January 15

he U.S. will deploy 400 troops to sites around the Middle East this spring as part of the military’s effort to ramp up the training of moderate Syrian rebels, defense officials said.

The 400 military trainers will be in addition to the 3,100 troops the U.S. has committed for training and advising programs in Iraq.

Maj. James Brindle, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed the deployment Friday after the news was first reported by Defense One, a military news website, on Thursday.

The U.S. has been training a small number of moderate Syrian rebels under the authority of the CIA. Critics have long complained that the effort has produced too few fighters and lacks a coherent command structure.

Military officials said they hope to find enough moderate rebels in Syria to train a larger and more cohesive force. But vetting rebels without ties to extremists and willing to take on the Islamic State extremist group, as opposed to the Syrian government, has proved challenging to military planners.

Congress last year authorized the Obama administration to begin a military training program. Since then military officials, led by Maj. Gen. Michael Nagata, have been working to plan the training that is supposed to take place in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.

At a hearing in December in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Brett McGurk, Obama’s deputy envoy in its effort to defeat Islamic State, said the Pentagon’s train-and-equip program for moderate Syrian opposition should begin by March, with about 5,000 rebels expected to be trained by March 2016.