Operation Featherweight: Month 13, Week 4, Day 5.

Yesterday (21/8/15) Europe experienced another Islamist terrorist attack.

At around 16:00 (GMT) a man boarded a train from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Paris, France in the Belgium city of Brussels. Just as the train was preparing to cross the border between Belgium and France the man went into the toilet, removed his shirt and drew out a knife, a handgun and an AK-47 assault rifle with 10 x 30 round magazines. He then exited the toilet and proceeded to attack passengers at random.

Unfortunately for him the first carriage he decided to attack contained a US Airman and a US National Guardsman who were both on leave. Along with a US civilian they were travelling with and a British businessmen they tackled the gunman to the ground and disarmed him. The US Airman suffered a serious cut to his hand and another passenger was slashed across the neck. However due to their swift - and I would say heroic - actions a much more serious incident was prevented because the attacker clearly had a bullet for every person on that train.

The train was immediately diverted to the French town of Arras where the attacker was arrested by French police. Investigations are still ongoing but the attacker is believed to be a 26 year Moroccan national who has previously lived in Spain, France and Belgium. He is known to have been a supporter of numerous Islamist terrorist groups and may have travelled to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). However with the investigation spanning 5 countries it will take time to determine exactly what groups he was a member of and whether this was part of a closely held terrorist attack or whether he was acting as a sort of self-radicalised lonewolf.

With disaster having been averted the first I heard about the incident was of a random stabbing on a train. This reminded me of an incident on August 10th (10/8/15) in which two Eritrean asylum seekers stabbed and killed two people whilst injuring a third at an IKEA store in Stockholm, Sweden. To this day idiots on the Internet are claiming that this was an Islamist terrorist attack but the authorities are covering up out of political correctness.

That is not the case. The authorities investigated and found that there was absolutely no link to terrorism and the attackers weren't even Muslims. They also found that the victims were not known to each other nor their attackers and there had been no confrontation in the store prior to the stabbing. They also found that the attackers were not suffering from any form of mental illness that would normally be associated with this type of random attack.

Instead it seems the attack was carried out by two people who realised that if they were caught having committed a serious crime such as murder they would be sentenced to a long period in prison rather then being sent back to the country they were claiming asylum from. The fact that people would rather spend life in a Swedish prison then be sent back to Eritrea says a lot about the current migrant crisis.

Crisis is certainly the right word to describe the current migrant situation across Europe because everyday there seems to be a new story. Towards the end of July and the start of August Britain and France - but mainly Britain - worked itself up into a complete frenzy over a couple of hundred migrants trying to cross via the Eurotunnel rail route. In fact just on Thursday (20/8/15) the UK and French Interior Ministers met up at Eurotunnel's Calais terminal to announce a package of joint measures to stop the migrants. Today the Italian Navy has been forced to rescue some 3000 migrants from 18 boats in the Mediterranean.

The big scandal of the last couple of days though has been Macedonia's decision to slam shut it's border with Greece in order to stop 4000 migrants following a railway track across the border into Macedonia every day. This clumsy decision by Macedonia - which has many of it's own internal problems involving it's Albanian minority - has created yet another choke-point in a well worn pipeline for refugees from ISIL.

After fleeing to Turkey or Lebanon many of them take boats across the Aegean Sea to Greece. From their they make their way north across Macedonia and Serbia into the European Union (EU) via Hungary. Once inside the EU they disperse themselves across the member states with a tiny minority ending up in places like France and Britain.

Therefore I make no apology for including the migrant crisis in a discussion about the war against ISIL because it is very clearly a product of the Islamist insurgencies both in Syria and in Libya. For example the situation in Syria has now got so bad that the EU automatically classifies irregular migrants from Syria as refugees because they are so clearly deserving of political asylum. Although itself has not been caught up in the violence of the so-called "Arab Spring" the flow of migrants from the other big contributing nation - Eritrea - has also been affected.

Located in east Africa between Sudan and the Red Sea Eritrea is perhaps one of the most oppressive nations of earth. For example it's government has an official policy of compulsory, life-long, unpaid military service which many observers would describe simply as slavery. What used to happen is that people fleeing from Eritrea would cross into Libya via Sudan. Despite the sanctions under Muammer Qaddafi Libya was a relatively rich and stable country so many of the Eritreans would simply set up home there. A smaller number would cross into the EU via Italy and then be dispersed between the member states with each nation taking a couple of hundred per year.

The overthrow of Qaddafi and the ongoing Islamist insurgency in the west has plunged the country into complete chaos. As a result the Eritreans who would have stayed in Libya are now crossing into Europe because Libya is simply too dangerous for them. With the northern EU states trying to dump the entire problem on the southern EU states such as Italy and Greece those nations, and their neighbours, are simply becoming overwhelmed causing the chaos we currently see.

As such I think it is vital that action is taken to solve the current migrant crisis. In the immediate term this will involve the European nations - not just EU members - agreeing to take in quotas of, particularly Syrian, refugees so the burden is shared equally. Mainly though the international community needs to stop p*ssing about and bring stability to Iraq, Syria and Libya by defeating ISIL as quickly as possible.

Whilst the European terror attack was taking place the US Department of Defence was embarking on an unusual - and some would say intentionally irritating - deluge of announcements right at the end of what most people consider the normal working week. The first of these is that battle field tests have confirmed that ISIL used a banned chemical weapons - Sulphur Mustard Gas - against Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the town of Makhmour - between the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk - on August 11th (11/8/15).

In itself this is hardly dramatic news because German field tests had already confirmed this and although no-one was prepared to carry out the necessary tests it is strongly suspected that ISIL used Mustard Gas against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in the Battle of Kobane and in multiple attacks against the town of Tel Brak and the city of Hasakah in late June. In the operation to liberate the city of Tikrit the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) reported discovering around a thousand ISIL Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) that were designed to release Chlorine Gas.

So what is dramatic about yesterday's announcement is that is appears the US is no longer able to deny ISIL's use of banned chemical weapons.

The US then attempted to reassure us that everything is under control by confirming that Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali (AKA; Hajji Mutazz) was killed in a drone strike near Mosul on Tuesday (18/8/15). Unlike Fathi ben Awn ben Jildi Murad al-Tunisi (AKA; Abu Sayyaf) Mutazz is widely recognised as a senior figure within ISIL's leadership acting almost as the group's Finance Minister.

However Tuesday's strike did not lead to a large number of ISIL fighters being killed or captured and it did nothing to stem the flow of new recruits joining the organisation. Also it did not liberate any territory from ISIL nor did it destroy significant amounts of their resourcs. Therefore while Mutazz's death clearly hasn't helped the group it's impact is strictly limited because they'll simply promote a junior minister to take over.

As such this strike is little more then further evidence of the problem with US President Barack Obama's  entire attitude to the conflict. Rather then taking the difficult decisions that are required to defeat ISIL militarily Obama thinks that all he needs to do is order the occasional drone strike or special forces raid to distract the voters and the entire humanitarian catastrophe can be ignored.

Finally as I mentioned yesterday on Thursday (20/8/15) Turkey again carried out air-strikes against Kurdish positions in northern Iraq in what was claimed to be retaliation for 8 Turkish soldiers being killed by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in a roadside bomb on Wednesday (19/8/15). These were the first air-strikes Turkey has carried out against Iraq really since a vintage British fighter jet crashed at an air-show in Cheshire, UK on August 2nd (2/8/15).

Today another vintage British fighter jet crashed onto the busy A27 Road just outside an air-show that was being held in East Sussex close to my old stomping ground of Brighton. Seven people were killed in the crash and one remains in hospital in a critical condition. Obviously I don't want to go into too much detail but it's clear this nasty air incident was "over the line" and although they will eventually re-open the one of the main roads in the county it's been made quite clear that "that route is definitely closed."

20:25 on 22/8/15 (UK date).