Syrian Train and Equip Program

The Syrian Train and Equip Program is an ongoing $500 million United States-led military operation that identifies and trains selected Syrian opposition forces inside Syria as well as in Turkey and other US-allied states who will then return to Syria to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

As the Syrian Civil War erupted in 2011 the Obama Administration began efforts to support the overthrow of the Assad Government in Damascus. At the direction of U.S. President Barack Obama, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was put in charge of the operations, worth about $1 billion annually, to arm anti-government forces in Syria at the early stages of the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011. At first, the CIA only supplied the apparently moderate rebels of the Free Syrian Army with non-lethal aid, but quickly began providing training, cash, and intelligence to selected rebel commanders.

While the CIA-run programs to arm and train Syrian opposition factions began 2013, on 17 September 2014, the House of Representatives voted to authorize the executive branch to train-and-equip Syrian rebels against ISIL forces. The United States was set to send 400 troops and hundreds of support staff to countries neighboring Syria to train 5,000 opposition soldiers a year for the next three years. The countries taking part in the train-and-equip program were to include Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The Pentagon confirmed that it had selected 1,200 Syrian opposition members to begin training in March 2015, with 3,000 to complete training by the end of 2015. However of that number only about 200 actually began training, the majority of whom left after being required to agree to fight only against ISIL and not the Assad government. As of mid-2015, only a group of 54 such fighters (Division 30) had been deployed, which was quickly routed by al-Nusra.

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