Syrian Train and Equip Program
By 2013, at the direction of U.S. President Barack Obama, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was put in charge of Timber Sycamore, a covert program to arm and train anti-Assad rebels,[5] while the State Department supplied the moderate rebels of the Free Syrian Army with non-lethal aid, channeled exclusively through the opposition's Supreme Military Council; the latter was suspended in December 2013 when shipments were seized by the Islamist Islamic Front.
[6] In late 2013, the CIA program started providing training, cash, and intelligence to selected rebel commanders,[7][8][9][10] and from early 2014 some weapons.
[5] John R. Allen, President Obama's envoy to the international coalition against ISIL, has said "It is clearly part of our plan, that not only we will train them, and we will equip them with the latest weapons systems, but we will also protect them when the time comes," alluding to aiding the opposition with air support and no fly zones.
[20] Congressional legislation authorizing the U.S. Secretary of Defense to assist Syrian opposition forces was attached to a bill for continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2015.
[23] After verifying their identities and passing initial tests, the candidates were trained in tactics and advanced weapons systems by the Department of Defense.
The Turkish-trained group, a convoy of 54 men who had completed a 74-day program in central Anatolia, re-entered Syria on 12 July,[27] and deployed to Azaz.
[35] However, the Washington Post's Missy Ryan and Greg Jaffe reported on Monday, 21 September 2015, that the Executive Office of the President is working on a plan to provide weapons "to a wider array of rebel groups in Syria and relaxing vetting standards, effectively deepening America's involvement in the ongoing civil war.
"[36] A US official said recruiting of moderate Syrian rebels to go through training programmes in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates would cease, and, instead, a much smaller training centre would be set up in Turkey, where a small group of "enablers" (predominantly leaders of opposition groups) would be taught operational methods such as how to call in airstrikes.
[1] At the same time, the House Intelligence Committee voted to cut as much as 20% of the classified funds flowing into the parallel CIA programme of rebel support, with a shift of emphasis to combating ISIS in Iraq.
[37] In November 2016, the main train and equip programme suffered a major setback when three American special forces trainers were killed while entering King Faisal Air Base in Jordan in a deadly attack.
The US-led Coalition stated that this deployment violated the agreement for U.S.-backed forces to only fight ISIL and not the Syrian government, and planned to cease support for the group.
