Operation Featherweight: Month 4, Week 4, Day 1.

Since my last post on the subject on Monday (24/11/14) things have been comparatively quiet in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Basically much like people in the rest of the world everyone in Syria and Iraq have been waiting to see if the US was going to slip into widespread race riots in response to the decision in Ferguson in the Micheal Brown case.

I can't help but feel though that perhaps if US President Barack Obama had turned up to the occasional intelligence briefing on Syria he may have learnt where making up stories about fictional instances of oppression in order to pursue a sectarian agenda can lead a country.

In the city of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) have continued to mount patrols on all fronts to remove ISIL fighters from buildings/positions they occupy. I wouldn't go so far as to say that ISIL are no longer capable of fighting the YPG because every building is being fought over hard. However ISIL are certainly no longer able to take territory from the YPG and are instead desperately trying to hold onto the territory they do occupy without much success. Over the past three days the YPG have liberated around 15 ISIL positions, killed around 48 ISIL fighters and captured weapons and ammunition across all fronts.

The YPG have also started to mount commando-style raids against ISIL positions outside of Kobane. One such raid on Thursday (27/11/14) killed a senior ISIL commander known as Abu-Khansa along with his bodyguards in the village of Til Khazal.

On Saturday (22/11/14) and Sunday (23/11/14) it appeared as though ISIL were assembling forces just outside of Kobane in order to launch a fresh assault on the city. Although it seems to have been discouraged by the YPG themselves the US-led coalition did eventually move to eliminate the threat carrying out 10 air-strikes between Monday and Wednesday (26/11/14) which destroyed 7 ISIL fighting positions and 4 ISIL troop staging areas wiping out a large ISIL group unit and 2 smaller ground units in the process.

Although they turned up late as always these strikes were undoubtedly welcomed by the YPG. However with ISIL continuing to shell Kobane from artillery positions some 8km (4.8 miles) to the west I can't help but feel they are a poor substitute for establishing a supply corridor through Turkey that would allow the YPG to defend both Kobane and Serekanyie (Ras al-Ayn) without having to rely on coalition air-strikes which are difficult to organise and very, very expensive with Hellfire-type missiles costing around USD100,000 each.

Sadly there is still absolutely no indication that the US intends to exert any pressure whatsoever on Turkey to make this happen. This is despite Turkey announcing plans to dispatch heat-trapping blankets to Syria and Iraq to help ISIL fighters hide from coalition air-strikes which rely on infrared targeting systems. This of course hasn't stopped Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unleashing another anti-US rant on Wednesday in which he condemned US "impertinence, recklessness and endless demands" over the suggestion that the world doesn't allow ISIL to carry out a genocide in Kobane.

On a related note on also on Wednesday Israel's internal security service the Shin Bet arrested 30 Hamas members who had been plotting a Mumbai-style terror attack against sports stadiums in Jerusalem. The attacks were planned in and the attackers trained in Turkey. Meanwhile the Palestinian Authority accused Turkey last Saturday (26/11/14) to trying to overthrow them.

On Wednesday the Syrian government launched a series of air-strikes against the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa. This is highly unusual because prior to ISIL making it their centre of operations Raqqa was of extremely limited strategic value. As a result it was the first major city that the Syrian government let fall to the Sunni-Arab insurgency. Since then the Syrian government has concentrated first on securing the capital Damascus and then slowly liberating the major cities along the west of the country such as Homs, Hama and they are currently fighting over Aleppo City.

The US has repeatedly tried to use the Syrian governments failure to fight ISIL in the north-eastern section of the country they hold to claim that ISIL are allied to the Syrian government rather then simply part of the Sunni-Arab insurgency that the US supports.

Therefore the US is utterly furious with the Syrian air-strikes against Raqqa. Firstly because they showed that the Syrian government is most certainly trying to fight ISIL but also because they showed that the years of sanctions and arms embargoes that the US has imposed on Syria in order to assist the Sunni-Arab insurgency has left the Syrian government incapable of carrying out the type of precision strikes that the US is capable. Therefore when the Syrian government carries out attacks against the insurgents it is forced to put civilian lives at risk.

Apart from furious condemnation by the US Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Samantha Power the US also appears to have tired to punish the Syria government for its attacks on ISIL by instructing insurgents in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) grouping to launch a fresh offensive against government troops to the south of Damascus. This offensive stands absolutely no chance of over-running Damascus but is does give the Syrian government something else to think about.

It does also though serve to highlight the stupidity of the US' current approach to the fight against ISIL. Apart from this small band of positions to the south of Damascus and an ever shrinking number of pockets around Aleppo City the FSA grouping has no presence in a country which is divided between ISIL, the Al Qaeda allied Al Nusra Front (ANF) and the Syrian government. That means that it is simply impossible for the FSA grouping to be used as a ground force in the fight against ISIL and ANF.

It also means that if the Syrian government is overthrown as the US still wishes to do then the last substantial, moderate element in Syria will be removed and the entire country will be overrun by ISIL and ANF - two groups that are prescribed by the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the US-led coalition is supposed to be trying to defeat.

Finally during the Ferguson protests the US network FoxNews claimed that ISIL were trying to use the protests as a way to recruit Americans to their cause. This was widely mocked on Twitter but I was actually watching ISIL do this at the time. It is after all very much the way that ISIL operate.

Often describing jihad as their "Call of Duty" in reference to the popular video game their recruiting pitch is normally along the lines of; "Stuck in a dead-end job? Can't get a girlfriend? Sick of playing video games all day? Well join ISIL and give your life purpose by fighting oppression!" Of course once the recruits have been suckered in by the pitch they discover that the oppression doesn't exist and they're being forced into suicide squads so decide they'd much rather be back home playing computer games instead.

Therefore it has to be said that there's not a whole lot of difference between the way that ISIL recruit and the way that the Obama administration responded to the Micheal Brown shooting.

16:40 on 28/11/14 (UK date).