The Kentucky Fried Chicken may be good, but Syrian rebels who graduate from a secret US training programme in Jordan devised to help to overthrow the regime of President Assad are routinely left with limited weaponry and no decisive advantage.

A 20-year-old rebel fighter described how he was taken off a battlefield in southern Syria and sent by his Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander to a training centre in the Jordanian desert where American trainers spent 40 days instructing them.

“I was told we would be trained on heavy weapons and anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles,” the fighter, who declined to be named, told The Times. The young man, the only member of his brigade sent to the camp, went to Jordan via co-operation between