© Khalil Ashawi / Reuters
Rebel fighters fire mortar shells at the frontline in the Jabal al-Akrad area in Syria's northwestern Latakia province.
Only four or five US-trained Syrian rebels are still fighting in the war-torn nation, a top US general told Congress on Wednesday. He acknowledged that Washington's training program is behind schedule, and that the military's targets will not be met on time.
When asked how many US-trained forces were fighting in Syria, General Lloyd Austin, who leads the US military's Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee:
"The ones that are in the fight, we're talking four or five."
He added that Washington will not reach its goal of training 5,000 Syrian fighters anytime soon. The US had originally aimed to have a force of 5,400 by December, to take on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.
However, Austin downplayed the significance of the numbers, stressing that the program is
"designed to be a complement to all the other things that we're doing." He also said he expects the number of fighters to grow over time.
But the numbers of fighters in training is also small, according to Christine Wormuth, the under secretary of defense for policy. She told Congress that only 100-120 people are currently in the program.
"This number is much smaller than we hoped for at this point, partly because we put our volunteers through a very vigorous screening process to meet standards very appropriately set by US Law."
She added, however, that additional recruits are
"in the pipeline."
During the panel, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ga.) called the program a "total failure," adding that it's "way past time to react to that failure."
Comment: First there was the railway bomb scare in Germany, now this. The idea of ISIS hiding among the refugees has been peddled by the MSM for the last few weeks. Given the involvement of Western intel agencies with the people smugglers, we wonder if there's more to this story than meets the eye. Germany has an interest in pursuing its own interests (which may run counter to the interests of its masters in Washington). The West has an interest in keeping Germany in line, by whatever means necessary. Do the math.
See also: Syrian refugees in Europe, regime change in Damascus, and the mass migrations still to come