Operation Featherweight: Month 3, Week 4, Day 4.

Friday (31/10/14) was a comparatively quiet day in the city of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab which sits just 1km (0.6 miles) from Syria's border with Turkey.

In the morning there was just occasional shelling by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In the afternoon ISIL carried out two harassment type attacks in the east of the city which were quickly repelled by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) who are defending Kobane. During these exchanges 21 ISIL fighters were killed and others were forced to retreat leaving behind weapons and ammunition that were seized by the YPG. In the evening ISIL launched another attack in the south of the city. Details of that fighting are yet to emerge but it is apparent that ISIL have failed to make any significant gains.

Some two weeks ago somebody tried to explain to me that the reason why neither side were making significant gains in the battle for Kobane anymore is that after more then a month of fighting both sides were bled white and exhausted like boxers in the 12th round of a bruising contest. The battle has now entered its 48th day. However I think the reason why Friday was so quiet was because everybody was waiting to see if, how and when the 2 platoons of Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters would enter Kobane from Suruc in Turkey where they've been waiting since Wednesday (29/10/14).

While everybody was waiting to see how the Peshmerga was going to enter I started thinking about the best way for them to go about it. It is clear that the Peshmerga have brought with them a number of pieces of field artillery. As the name suggests these are designed to be used in wide, open areas such as fields rather then in the tight confines of urban warfare. They work by firing up into the air and then relying on gravity to bring the shell down on a target several kilometres away. In fact the term "point blank range" doesn't refer to distance but the zero degree of elevation below which artillery cannot be used if indeed it can achieve point blank.

So this type of weapon will be incredibly useful in the later stages of the battle when it comes to chasing ISIL away from Kobane and setting up a defensive perimeter to stop them from returning. However in this immediate stage where the YPG are trying to stop ISIL from advancing within the city they are less useful. That is because while they can't really be used as weapons at such close range the YPG still has to find places to store them and protect them in order to stop them from falling into ISIL's hands. Therefore the most logical thing for the Peshmerga to have done would be to set up a supply depot in Suruc and then bring things into Kobane in small, daily deliveries as and when they are required.

Obviously though that isn't possible because Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is still making it clear that the Peshmerga are less then welcome in Suruc. In fact yesterday a spokesman for Iraq's Kurds openly accused Erdogan of both slowing down the supply convoy's journey across Turkey and delaying the Peshmerga's crossing from Suruc into Kobane in the hope that it would give ISIL just enough time to over-run the city. Erdogan himself slipped up very badly during a State visit to France yesterday when he claimed in a speech that there were "No people left in Kobane" which seems to make it clear that he views the Kurds as being somehow less then human.

Due to Turkey's ongoing hostility the Peshmerga were forced to cross into Kobane all at once last night. They were supported in this effort by up to 10 air-strikes by the US-led coalition that suppressed ISIL's firing positions meaning that its fighters were not able to attack the convoy as it made it's way into the city. We are now waiting for the Peshmerga to find their feet within Kobane and to find out how ISIL will respond to this significant strengthening of Kobane's defences. Apparently the so-called "Media Hill" which sits just on the Turkish border is even more packed with spectators then usual.

Of course when President Erdogan is not flying around in his lavish new Presidential plane, planning his lavish new Presidential Palace or freeing ISIL fighters like Basil Hassan from prison so they can plot terror attacks in European nations such as Denmark he is demanding to know why people are focusing on Kobane rather then what is going on elsewhere in Syria. Today he may be hoping that everybody focuses entirely on Kobane rather then events elsewhere in Syria.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) have today confirmed that they have lost control of the area around Jabal al-Zawiya to the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) following several days of fighting. Sitting some 35km (21 miles) south of Idlib and 90km (54 miles) south-west of Aleppo, the capital of Idlib province, Jabal al-Zawiya represented the FSA's last foothold in northern Syria. Although the position was encircled by ANF, ISIL and the Syrian government its loss means that Erdogan nor anyone else is any longer able to argue that the FSA can be trained and equipped to defeat ISIL and ANF in Syria.

As such it means that the Kurds are now not only the most viable and desirable candidates for coalition support they are in fact now the only candidates.

17:05 on 1/11/14 (UK date).

Edited at around 12:35 on 2/11/14 (UK date) to add;

Rather proving why I shouldn't work on Saturday's the above contains a glaring error. Aleppo city is the capital of Aleppo province while the capital of Idlib province is Idlib city. They are though still located around 55km (33 miles) away from each other.

On the topic of huge mistakes more details have begun to emerge of the FSA's defeat at Jabal al-Zawiya. Describing the FSA as an "Army" is something of a huge exaggeration. The name was specifically chosen to make the FSA sound a lot more organised and competent then they actually are. In reality the FSA is just a patchwork of Libya-style militia groups each with their own leaders and agendas. The main FSA group at Jabal al-Zawiya were the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF).

The SRF are important because they are one of the moderate groups that the US decided to directly train and arm in September 2014 after what we were assured was careful vetting and monitoring. A key factor in the FSA's collapse at Jabal al-Zawiya was the SFR's decision to surrender and defect en masse to the Al Qaeda affiliate ANF. They took with them a large number of US supplied weapons including US made MILAN-style TOW advanced anti-tank missiles and possibly Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.