Washington – The U.S, Defence Secretary, Ash Carter, told Congress on Tuesday that the country was only training about 60 Syrian opposition fighters to battle Islamic State as of July 3.
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Carter said the figure was far below expectations, partly due to rigorous U.S. vetting of recruits.
“We are looking for ways to streamline our train and equip programme’s vetting process to get more recruits into the training pipeline.
“We are also refining our curriculum, expanding our outreach to the moderate opposition, and incorporating lessons learnt from the first training class,” Carter told a Senate hearing in prepared remarks.
The programme, which was launched in May in Jordan and later in Turkey, had aimed to train as many as 5,400 fighters a year. (Reuters/NAN)
