Russia and Putin · First term · № 33
Ended the CIA program arming Syrian rebels fighting Assad, a step Russia had sought
“The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad.....”
- Said
- , Decision reported July 19, 2017 (quote from Twitter, July 24, 2017)
- Subject
- CIA Syria rebel program
- Type
- NATO and allies
- Topic
- Foreign policy
- Era
- First term
What happened
The Washington Post reported on July 19, 2017, that Trump had decided to end the CIA's covert program, begun in 2013, to arm and train Syrian rebels fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move the paper said Russia had long sought. Officials told the Post he made the decision nearly a month earlier, ahead of his July 7 meeting with Putin. One U.S. official told Reuters it was not a major concession given Assad's grip on power but was 'a signal to Putin that the administration wants to improve ties to Russia'; officials also said the program had produced little success and that some trained rebels had defected to Islamic State. General Tony Thomas said at the Aspen Security Forum on July 21 that the decision was 'absolutely not a sop to the Russians' and was based on an assessment of the program. A separate U.S. military effort supporting other Syrian forces continued. Trump acknowledged ending the payments in a July 24 post accusing the Post of fabricating facts.