Four years later on, after a series of setbacks, US President Donald Trump finally axed the program, terminating what the New York Times described as “one of the most expensive efforts to arm and train rebels since the agency’s program arming the mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the 1980s.”
The attempts to supply Syrian rebels under the auspices of the Pentagon produced dismal results. A huge public outcry followed revelations that a $500 million effort launched by the US military to train Syrian fighters to battle against ISIS produced a measly "four or five" soldiers, instead of the promised 5,000. For those interested in the math, that’s a 0.1% success rate, or a cost of $100 million per soldier.
And now, as some Syrian militants continue to call for more guns courtesy of Langley, it might be worth recounting what led the US to shut down this program in the first place.
Sputnik International
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