The Huffington Post quotes Rafik Hariri Center Resident Fellow Faysal Itani on the Obama administration’s failed training program for Syrian rebels and what it means moving forward for the fight against ISIS in Syria:
“It’s fair to say the program itself has failed, in that it has failed to achieve its basic objective of building a local anti-ISIS force,” said Faysal Itani, a fellow at the Atlantic Council who recently wrote about viable partners for the U.S. in Syria. “I do not believe this reflects negatively on the ideological character of the insurgency. Nor does it imply the insurgency has no interest in fighting ISIS. It simply means that the insurgency does not want to fight ISIS on the restrictive terms the United States has set, namely: refraining from fighting the regime. A train and equip program that was entirely misaligned with the interests and priorities of its intended participants was never going to succeed.”
Itani noted in an email to HuffPost that various nationalist Syrian rebels continue to fight ISIS and Assad.