Operation Featherweight: Month 3, Week 3, Day 5.

Over the past two days Kobane/Ayn al-Arab has seen some of the fiercest fighting since the battle for control of the strategically important city began. Having been steadily building up reinforcements around the city over the past week the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) boosted their numbers even further on Saturday (25/10/14) with fighters brought in from Aleppo. On Saturday night those strengthened ISIL forces launched another attack from the south and the east in an attempt to seize Kobane's northern border crossing. Fortunately it appears that fresh assault has been repelled by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) who are defending Kobane.

What seems to have provoked this latest ISIL attempt to seize the border crossing have been reports that Turkey is soon going to allow 200 members of Iraq's Kurdish Peshmerga to travel to Kobane to boost its defences. Sadly this is only partly true because Turkey had given permission for two Peshmerga artillery platoons totalling 150 fighters to travel to Kobane. These platoons will be allowed to bring their heavy weapons with them and their experience in directing artillery strikes also gives them the experience needed to direct air-strikes by the US-led coalition. However apart from ridiculously onerous reporting requirements that require the Peshmergas to account for every single bullet they bring with them Turkey is also demanding that in order to enter Kobane they must also bring 1,300 fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) with them which poses a whole host of extra problems.

Firstly it is not clear whether the FSA fighters will operate under the YPG's chain of command or whether they will run around doing their own thing making an already dire situation even more chaotic. Secondly the fact that these FSA fighters are currently located in Turkey rather then Syria demonstrates that they are nowhere near the standard of the YPG and Peshmerga fighters they will be expected to support. Also the FSA have a history of co-operation with ISIL - particularly over the kidnapping of Steven Sotloff the US journalist that ISIL killed in September - and they clearly enjoy a close relationship with Turkey who hate the Kurds. As such there are very serious questions over whether they can be trusted to operate in Kobane. Finally every extra fighter be it from the YPG, Peshmerga or FSA who is sent into Kobane will need to be kept supplied with food, water, ammunition and medical supplies to allow them to fight off ISIL.

As such it is possible that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is demanding that these FSA fighters are sent into Kobane in order for them to weaken they city's defences or even act as fifth columnists who will link up with ISIL to fight the YPG from inside. That way when ISIL take control of Kobane Erdogan will be able to open Turkey's border to supply ISIL with weapons and fighters or use ISIL's presence in Kobane as a pre-text to send Turkish troops to occupy northern Syria in much the same way they occupy northern Cyprus. It is much more likely though that Erdogan has calculated that he won't get permission to send Turkish troops into Syria. So instead he is trying to change the ethnic make-up of the area from Kurdish to Arab so he can use the FSA as a proxy for Turkish troops to occupy northern Syria.

Waking up today though it appears that Erdogan has abandoned both of those scenarios because the news of ISIL's fresh assault on Kobane's northern border crossing has prompted Turkey to suspend transfer of any troops to Kobane indefinitely due unspecified "technical reasons." As such it seems that Erdogan has gone back to his plan A of hoping that Kobane will soon be over-run.

On Friday (24/10/14) Erdogan actually provided the World with a prime example of the double game he is playing over ISIL. During the speech in Estonia in which he demanded that FSA fighters be sent to Kobane   Erdogan went on to declare that Kobane shouldn't need to be a major priority for the US-coalition by saying; "Why are they so keen on Kobane, but not on the whole of Syria? That's a question to ask." - the implication of course being that there was some hidden (Kurdish) agenda behind the battle to save Kobane. So allow me to answer Erdogan's question;

At any given point during the 42 day battle for Kobane we have literally been a few short hours from the city falling under ISIL control and all of the 15,000 or so people in that city being slaughtered. Although Erdogan seems to find genocide amusing I most certainly do not. Even if Kobane were unoccupied though we would still need to battle to keep it out of ISIL's hands because if ISIL seize Kobane they will control a direct route from the Turkish border to their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa which is some 140km (84 miles) to the south-east. Also ISIL control Kobane means they will also control the main road linking Raqqa with Aleppo which sits 115km (70 miles) to the south-west of Kobane. And yes we also need to stop ISIL gaining control of Kobane to show that we can stop them and their victory is not guaranteed by god.

Having said all that though I do not consider Kobane to be anything other then a defencive priority. That is to say that once Kobane has been strengthened to the point that ISIL will be unable to seize control of it I think that the coalition should focus its efforts elsewhere. In fact I'm actually at the point where I would be quite happy to never have to type the word "Kobane" ever again. Unfortunately though Erdogan's behaviour means that I don't have that option.

While I am deeply unhappy at being forced to discuss matters of strategy here on the world wide web I don't think it is any secret that the overwhelming strength of the coalition's forces lie in Iraq. Therefore simple maths demands that the coalition's main push against ISIL is going to have to come from Iraq. In fact I'm already on record pointing out that I think it was a grievous mistake to begin the strategic bombing of ISIL's infrastructure in Syria before the group had been pushed out of Iraq. However in order to push ISIL out of Iraq the coalition first has to start conducting regular aerial patrols of the Iraq frontlines. In order to do that they need a local airbase to operate from. The obvious choice is United States Air Force (USAF) base Incirlik in Turkey. However the use of USAF Incirlik in still being blocked - by Erdogan.

As such it seems that the only possible response to Erdogan's speech was for the US to discreetly inform him of all this in no uncertain terms. However the US instead decided to indulge Erdogan further by reducing the number of air-strikes around Kobane to just 1 allowing Saturday's ISIL offencive to take place and increasing the number of air-strikes in Iraq to 22. However by some miracle the US actually managed to avoid carrying out any of those air-strikes around Zumar where the Peshmerga made gains against ISIL or Jurf al-Sakhar near Baghdad where Iraqi forces also made gains.

The moral and legal imperatives aside it is becoming increasingly impossible for US President Obama to continue placing the whims of Turkish President Erdogan over the interests of the US. You remember those ground troops that Obama definitely won't be sending into Iraq? Well on Thursday (23/10/14) they sustained their first death when Marine Lance Cpl. Sean Neal was killed in what is being described as a non-combat incident. That death highlights that even in a non-combat role this deployment does place US service personnel at increased risk so it is the responsibility of their Commander in Chief to successfully end this operation as quickly as possible.

Also Thursday the US saw its first terror attack related to the fight against ISIL when Zale Thompson who had self-radicalised via the Internet attacked 4 New York City police officers with an axe in the name of ISIL. Although I think the family of the man who is currently lying in an intensive care bed with an axe wound to his brain will dispute that this is insignificant it is certainly not the most serious terror attack that New York has ever seen. However in a nation where every citizen has the right to bear arms and has become synonymous with the mass shooting I don't think I really need to explain how much worse that attack could have been.

Therefore I think that it is long passed time that Obama fulfilled his duty to protect American civilians and either start conducting this war against ISIL properly or end it right now admitting that he simply doesn't have the stomach for it and genocide is something we're just going to have to learn to live with.

15:00 on 26/10/14 (UK date).