Only 'Four or Five' US-trained Syrian Rebels Are Fighting in Syria, Pentagon Says

In tense testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, top Pentagon officials admitted they were far behind goals set out by the White House a year ago to "degrade and destroy" the so-called Islamic State (IS).

Though the US set aside half a billion dollars to train a rebel force in Syria, the program has borne little fruit, admitted General Lloyd Austin, commander of US Central Command. When asked how many US-trained rebels were fighting, he responded,  "We're talking four or five." At this time last year, the Pentagon predicted that it would have trained 5,000 anti-ISIS rebels in a year.

"The program is much smaller than we hoped… we are not bragging," the Pentagon's policy chief, Christine Wormuth, admitted on Wednesday, though she mentioned that a few hundred fighters were "getting terrific training."

In July, the first US-trained rebels from the program entered Syria. They were attacked almost immediately by the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front, which captured several of the rebels, inlcuding the group's commander and his deputy.

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So far, the Obama administration's anti-IS strategy has consisted of a massive aerial bombing campaign and a parallel initiative to train friendly rebels in nearby Jordan and Turkey. Micah Zenko, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the strategy was never suited to the administration's stated goal of destroying the group.

"They should never have used to word 'destroy,'" he told VICE News, adding that the airstrikes and training program could not be expected to eliminate "a diffuse militant army." "No one in the Pentagon I've spoken with thought this would work," he said.

Zenko says that the failure to recruit troops is understandable, since most Syrian rebels "don't' share the objectives of the US," which are to prioritize the fight against IS before supporting the rebel fight against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Both General Austin and Wormuth defended the current strategy.

"Progress is being made," Austin told the Senators, who appeared shocked and angry with the Pentagon's status report.

"One year into this campaign it seems impossible to assert that we are winning and that ISIL is losing," Arizona Senator and Committee Chairman John McCain said. "The US and our partners do not have the initiative, our enemies do"

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"We have to acknowledge this is a total failure," said Republican Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama.

"I wish it weren't so, but that's the fact," Democrat Claire McCaskill agreed. "It's time for a new plan," she said.

Also in his testimony, Austin confirmed that some US trainers are helping to train Kurdish fighters to take on IS.

"[US special operation forces] in northern Syria… didn't wait for the New Syrian Force program or train and equip program to fully develop," Austen said. "At the very onset, they began to engage elements like the YPG and enable those elements, and they are making a difference on the battlefield."

Although Austin's statement seemed to indicate that US troops were operating in Syria, the Pentagon later said that was not the case, and that the general was "referring to the coordinating relationship that US Special Operations Forces share with Syrian anti-ISIL forces."

"Coordination and liaising by US forces is conducted outside of Syria at the Coalition's Joint Operation Center in northern Iraq," the Central Command press release said. "There are no US military forces on the ground in Syria, nor have we conducted any US military training of indigenous Syrian forces in Syria.

Watch VICE News' Talking Heads: How the US Created the Islamic State: