Operation Featherweight: Month 3, Week 2, Day 2.

Throughout Tuesday (14/10/14) and today the US-led coalition has continued its intensified bombing of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) positions around the strategically important and besieged city of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab which sits just 1km (0.6 miles) from Syria's border with Turkey. Adding to the 21 strikes on Monday (13/10/14) through Tuesday the coalition has struck a further 18 targets which destroyed 16 buildings that were being occupied by ISIL and 2 ISIL fighting positions. Essentially what the coalition is trying to do is to destroy all ISIL positions surrounding Kobane.

With their troop staging and re-supply areas on the outside of Kobane thrown into chaos ISIL fighters within the city have been substantially weakened. This has allowed the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) who are defending Kobane to start pushing ISIL back street by street. This is obviously a slow and dangerous process that could take many days and is not guaranteed to succeed.

Given that it has almost entirely crippled ISIL's operation within Kobane the obvious question remains of why did it take the coalition close to 3 weeks to start doing this? If this intensified level of air-strikes had started as ISIL began their advance on Kobane there is a very good chance that not only would have ISIL been prevented from entering the city where they have committed numerous beheadings and other unspeakable acts but they would also have been stopped from seizing the territory around the town. The other advantage is that if US President Obama had made it clear from the start that ISIL would not be permitted to advance to the Turkish border in order to provide a pre-text for a Turkish ground invasion of Kurdish territory then negotiations over the use of United States Air Force (USAF) base Incirlik would be at a much more advanced stage. After all it would have helped make it clear to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he doesn't get to make demands nor is he allowed to exterminate the Kurds.

Despite the increased intensity of the air-strikes and the YPG's advances on the ground the situation in Kobane remains perilous because the city has not been resupplied in more then a week. This means that stocks of vital supplies such as food, ammunition and medical supplies such as bandages and pain medication are running dangerously low. In fact it was several days ago that Kobane ran out of the diesel it needs to operate its fresh water pumps. If this supply problem is not solved soon then the residents of Kobane will still die even if ISIL can be kept at bay. For its part Turkey is still refusing to allow supplies to cross it's border to Kobane although it seems perfectly happy to deport Kurdish refugees across the border straight into ISIL's hands.

So if international pressure including the blocking of Turkey's attempt to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Thursday (16/10/14) fails to encourage Turkey to allow the re-supply of Kobane then the coalition's next step will have to be carrying out air-drops into the rural areas that have been liberated from ISIL.

Yesterday US President Obama hosted a meeting of the coalition at Andrews Military base just outside of Washington, US. Tellingly the Kurds were not invited to this meeting but the Turks were. Despite a lot of hype in the run-up - particularly from the UK - it seems that this meeting was less then earth-shattering. In fact its main purpose seemed to be to provide the members of the coalition with an opportunity to pat each other on the back and congratulate each other on how well the operation was going despite all the evidence to the contrary.

The main problem that came out of the meeting is that the coalition continued to state that; "The root of the struggle [against ISIL] lies in the conditions of the region:  Ethnic and religious tensions, exclusionary governance, intolerance, and economic privation." 

This position is fundamentally flawed for two main reasons; Firstly it is impossible to understand why the jihadists from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Russia, the UK etc who make up ISIL get to have any say in the governance and running of either Syria or Iraq. Secondly even if your are somehow able to justify ISIL as stakeholders within those societies there is still the problem that no government can find a way to include the views of a group who believe that 75% of the population should be exterminated because they are considered infidels.

As a result while the US may not be prepared to admit it publicly the only way to deal with ISIL is militarily by treating them as an invasion force that first needs to be stopped in its tracks then forced back from the territory it has occupied. Finally their military capacity needs to be degraded and destroyed to the point that they no longer represent a threat.

The other major problem to come out of the coalition meeting is that Obama couldn't even manage to concentrate on the task in hand for the five minutes in which he spoke to reporters afterwards. Instead - as always seems to be the case - Obama seemed desperate to forget about ISIL and talk about Ebola instead.

Finally the US today christened the operation against ISIL as "Operation Inherent Resolve." On one level I'm disappointed because after two and a half months I was starting to think that we'd all agreed to just use my name for it. After all the UK  have long been referring to their role in the mission as; "Operation Shader." However you can pretty much predict how future discussions in the White House about ISIL are going to go;

"Mr President we need to talk about Inherent Resolve."

"What's Inherent Resolve?"

"You remember. It's meant to be your response to ISIL."


19:20 on 15/10/14 (UK date).