The U.S. Program To Train Foreign Military Forces Is A Complete Failure (With A Few Exceptions)

U.S. Soldiers with 4th Iraqi Army Division Stabilized Transition Team's security element teach the Iraqi Intelligence Surveillance Recon branch proper procedures when clearing a room in the ISR compound in Tikrit, Iraq, June 10, 2010. DOD

Eric Schmitt and Tim Arango, New York Times: Billions From U.S. Fail to Sustain Foreign Forces

WASHINGTON — With alarming frequency in recent years, thousands of American-trained security forces in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia have collapsed, stalled or defected, calling into question the effectiveness of the tens of billions of dollars spent by the United States on foreign military training programs, as well as a central tenet of the Obama administration’s approach to combating insurgencies.

The setbacks have been most pronounced in three countries that present the administration with some of its biggest challenges. The Pentagon-trained army and police in Iraq’s Anbar Province, the heartland of the Islamic State militant group, have barely engaged its forces, while several thousand American-backed government forces and militiamen in Afghanistan’s Kunduz Province were forced to retreat last week when attacked by several hundred Taliban fighters. And in Syria, a $500 million Defense Department program to train local rebels to fight the Islamic State has produced only a handful of soldiers.

WNU Editor: A sobering report. read it all.