CIA’s Failed Syria Rebel Arming Program in Tatters

Many Fighters Abandoning War or Joining ISIS

There’ve been stories going around for awhile about how poorly the CIA program to smuggle arms in to various Syrian rebel factions is going, but the Wall Street Journal is offering some of the most stark details of a failed program, which failed to get those so-called moderate rebels any real gains, and indeed has seen a large number of them abandoning the battlefield, or joining ISIS and other Islamist groups outright.

The CIA struggled to get weaponry into Syria in large enough amounts to seriously boost such groups, and forced them into rationing bullets while other Islamist rebel groups are seemingly awash in a sea of weaponry.

Cash given to the rebel groups is increasingly drying up as well, as the US shifts to the plan of training up a whole new rebel force to fight against ISIS, and leaves the future of their old allies uncertain, at best.

The previous secular rebels note that accepting US aid put a huge bullseye on their backs, and the weapons that came with it certainly weren’t worth the cost. The rebel factions the US was backing were never particularly successful, and US funding didn’t make them any moreso. Instead, it just underscored that the real rebellion was the Islamist rebellion.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.