Operation Featherweight: Month 5, Week 2, Day 3.

Before events in Australia got ahead of me this was intended to be a continuation of my previous post that can be read here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/operation-featherweight-month-5-week-2.html

Apart from the decision to take no action against Turkey for their material support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and to send a further 1,300 ground troops to Iraq the main outcome from the December 3rd (3/12/14) meeting of the US-led coalition was to establish a Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) - the US' name for the operation. This brings all the nations with combat forces in the coalition together into, well, a joint task force.

This represent the beginning of the centralised command structure that I have been pressing for since the operation began. Although the exact details of how this particular CJTF will operate remain elusive it is the way that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members of the coalition (incl Australia) are used to working together. While all nations will be represented by senior officers in the command cell the setting up of a CJTF means that there is an overall commander who is responsible for identifying the jobs that need to be done and assigning forces to get them done. This should make the coalition more effective because it gets everybody moving in the same direction rather then charging around all doing their own thing.

However this is merely a step forward rather then the task being completed because although there is now a way to co-ordinate the forces in the coalition there still needs to be an over-riding strategic plan for them to carry out. For this we have to again look to US President Obama because he either still hasn't understood how a military operation functions or he has yet to come to terms with the fact that ISIL need to be defeated on the battlefield.

The bit I liked the most about this development though is that after choosing a logo featuring Arab-style swords CJTFOIR set up a Twitter account (@CJTFOIR). I appear to have been pre-emptively blocked from following this account which I suppose is a claim to fame of sorts.

Last Sunday (7/12/14) I was tempted to rush out a quick post before lunch explaining that while I wasn't posting I continuing to keep an eye on things and giving a quick update on the situation in Kobane/Ayn al-Arab. However with my PC finally dying a death I was prevented from doing so. This seems to have been for the best because on Sunday afternoon the Israeli Air Force (IAF) carried out air-strikes against Syrian government positions at the international airport in  the capital Damascus and a military airbase in the town of Dimas which is around 23km (14 miles) north-west of Damascus and around 5km (3 miles) from the border with Lebanon.

In 1967 Syria declared war on Israel during what is known as the Six-Day War. As the name suggests Israel rapidly won this war and occupied parts of the Syrian Golan Heights. Due to that occupation being unresolved a state of war still exists between Israel and Syria which means that these Israeli air-strikes against the Syrian government were entirely lawful. The target of these strikes appear to have been stores of and convoys moving S-3000 anti-aircraft missiles for the Syrian government to the Lebanon based group Hezbollah.

It is well established that Hezbollah are now fighting in Syria on the side of the Syrian government. Although this is an ideological allegiance that goes back decades it is also well established that Hezbollah are being compensated for their efforts with access to military-grade rockets from the Syrian government arsenal. Therefore this type of weapons shipment going back and forth is a pretty regular occurrence. However the S-3000 missile is a much more serious piece of equipment then anything Hezbollah currently has at their disposal. For example if the missiles had been deployed rather then loaded on the back of trucks they would have been more then capable of shooting down the IAF aircraft that destroyed them. I dread to think what they would do to a commercial airliner.

Therefore it is extremely likely that this threat and an opportunity to eliminate presented itself to the Israelis so they took it.

However whilst the strikes were going on the Saban conference taking place in Washington D.C, US. This is an annual conference on middle-eastern affairs that the US think-tank the Brookings Institute had rather unhelpfully decided to host slap-bang in the middle of COP20. Obviously the fight against ISIL and international sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program were high on the agenda. While I'm certainly not going to account for every political view held and sentence uttered in Israel particularly during an election campaign in the past I have got the impression that when Israel has demanded action on Iran's nuclear program they were in fact referring to Iran's supply of conventional weapons to Hezbollah. Therefore it is possible these strikes were timed to point out that US President Obama may be taking things a little too literally in his efforts to end Iran's nuclear program which even the Israelis describe as an existential threat.

These Israeli strikes though were particularly embarrassing for Syria's Sunni-Arab insurgent groups who take great pride in their hatred of Jews and their desire to destroy Israel. Earlier on Sunday the United Nations Disengagement Observer Forces (UNDOF) which monitors the Golan Heights presented a report to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) detailing co-operation between the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and the insurgents.

For the most part this involved allowing Syrian civilians to be treated in Israeli hospitals but there was also evidence of insurgents being allowed to cross into the Israeli occupied areas to receive medical treatment and to accompany their wounded comrades. I should point out that this is predominately humanitarian assistance and the IDF troops involved were from the Golani Brigades which was set up specifically to guard the border. That means that while the Golani Brigades are elite fighers they are also highly skilled at peacekeeping which this seems to have been part of.

However UNDOF also detailed meetings between people in civilian dress who were being guarded by members of the IDF and the insurgents. During several of these meetings mysterious boxes were handed by what we assume to be Israeli spies to the insurgents. These packages were very noticeably indistinct however they could well have contained the type of communication equipment used to identify ground targets for air-strikes.

Therefore it seems that Syria's Sunni-Arab insurgents ideological commitments are certainly negotiable, for the right price.

18:20 on 16/12/14 (UK date).