U.S.-trained anti-Islamic State commander kidnapped in Syria
BAGHDAD — The commander of a group of Syrian fighters trained by the United States has been kidnapped by al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, his group said in a statement Thursday.
The commander, Nadeem Hassan, and seven of his fighters were taken by the Nusra Front, a rival of the Islamic State in Syria, as they were returning from a meeting in Turkey.
A contingent of 54 fighters from Mr. Hassan’s group, known as Division 30, are the only ones who have graduated from a Pentagon program to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State in Syria. One the fighters taken with Mr. Hassan was his deputy, Farhan Al-Jasem, who commands the fighters who graduated from the American training program.
A number of other insurgents in Syria said that Mr. Hassan’s men had participated in the American program to train insurgents to fight the Islamic State. Mr. Hassan’s description of details of the training program, including the timing, content, logistics and number of fighters who participated, matched what American officials have said publicly and privately about the Pentagon program.
The reported kidnapping is likely to be a new blow to the troubled American program, which in its first year has trained only about 60 fighters, according to an American official — all of them apparently from Mr. Hassan’s group. If it turns out that all seven of Mr. Hassan’s kidnapped comrades were trainees, then there will be only 47 fighters left in Syria from the Pentagon’s training program.
The American trainees were expecting to take on a more central role in Syria, now that the United States and Turkey say they are planning to try to sweep Islamic State fighters from a northern segment of the country, with Syrian insurgents as their ground force.
The insurgents who would participate in the cooperative effort to rout Islamic State from a slice of Syria near the Turkish border remains to be worked out, but they would be likely to include Americantrained, American-vetted fighters from the Pentagon program, as well as a larger group of fighters trained covertly in a different CIA effort. That program has a different goal: ousting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
The CIA program suffered its own setback late last year, when the Nusra Front defeated the groups trained by the CIA, the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and Harakat Hazm. The Nusra Front also seized some of the sophisticated antitank missiles the United States had provided to the groups, which were effectively dismantled.
A Pentagon spokeswoman, Commander Elissa Smith, would not say if any trainees of its program had been taken in Syria.
“While we will not disclose the names of specific groups involved with the Syria Train and Equip program, I can confirm that there have been no New Syrian Force personnel captured or detained,” she said, referring to the Pentagon’s name for militias organized to fight the Islamic State in Syria.
Abu Mahmoud, another insurgent commander, said in April that he had decided not to join the Pentagon program. He said he would happily fight the Islamic State after stopping Mr. Assad’s forces from bombarding insurgent areas. Reached in Idlib province on Thursday, he said Mr. Hassan’s abduction had been predictable.
“I’m not blaming the Americans only, for choosing the wrong people and putting them in the wrong position,” said Abu Mahmoud, who uses a nom de guerre for safety. “I also blame these commanders.”
“Those people can’t even protect themselves — how can they operate inside Syria against the Islamic groups? How can you drive your car to a place where you know that you don’t have enough fuel?”