The setbacks have been most pronounced in three countries most important to Washington.
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 had to fall back last week when attacked by several hundred Taliban fighters.
And in Syria, a $500 million US program to train local rebels to fight the Islamic State terrorist group has produced a mere sixty fighters, give or take…
“Our track record at building security forces over the past 15 years is miserable,” The New York Times quoted Karl W. Eikenberry, a former military commander and United States ambassador in Afghanistan, as saying earlier this week.
