Trump says he would stop support for Syrian rebels

US president-elect Donald Trump on Friday said he would likely stop American support for Syrian rebels who have been fighting to overthrow the regime of president Bashar al-Assad for over five years.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Trump said, “I’ve had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria.”

Trump suggested that he would shift away from the current administration’s policy of supporting moderate Syrian rebel groups fighting Assad and focus on efforts to fight the Islamic State group (IS).

“My attitude was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria,” Trump said using another acronym for IS.

“Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are,” he added.

Trump spent most of his presidential campaign attacking the Obama administration’s foreign policy, including it’s support of Syrian rebels.

Earlier this year, the US revamped a train-and-equip programme for rebels after a previous attempt failed spectacularly.

The new initiative aimed to work with a set number of members from each opposition group instead of entire rebel units fighting on the front lines as was the case with the previous effort.

The Pentagon's initial $500 million project to train "moderate" opposition members was widely criticised when the US admitted its failure.

The programme failed to recruit adequate numbers due to the strict background checks to weed out possible extremists and many objecting to pledge to fight the IS group only - and not Syrian troops.

A group trained by the US was caught handing over ammunition and other gear to Syria's al-Qaeda franchise, the Nusra Front.

The CIA has also been involved in training Syrian rebels, though the secretive agency has not officially provided any details of its efforts.