The Pentagon's effort to train Syrian rebels in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) has hit several snags, officials have confirmed.
According to
a CNN report, less than 200 of the 6,000 Syrians who signed up to take on ISIS are training. One of the problems delaying the program has to do with getting the Syrians out of their native country and into either Turkey or Jordan to train with American forces, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steven Warren said.
Further, 4,000 of the prospective rebel fighters still have to be fully vetted by the American government. Part of the deal for the rebels is that they will return to their villages in Syria and fight ISIS, as opposed to the Assad regime, reports CNN.
Of the 2,000 rebels that have been fully vetted, 500 were rejected for various reasons, according to CNN. The Americans' goal was to fully train 3,000 rebels during the remainder of this year and roughly 5,400 every year thereafter.
"The Syria train-and-equip program is even more challenging than the Iraq train-and-equip program," Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday, according to CNN.
Politico reports Carter pointed to a lack of qualified rebel fighters as the problem.
"We have enough training sites. We don't have enough trainees to fill them," Carter said.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the training program is
in its early stages and it is too soon "to give up on it."
Last week, meanwhile, the U.S. Army's public website
was apparently hacked by someone demanding that the military cease training Syrian rebels.
The Syrian Electronic Army took credit for the hack and posted a screenshot of one of the messages that was appearing on the Army's site onto Twitter:
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