Operation Featherweight: Month 14, Week 2, Day 4.

In the week since my previous post on the subject I'm sure that many things have happened on the ground in both Iraq and Syria in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

However before I deal with any of that I first have to address the huge refugee crisis that the conflict has created which has become the big, global news story of the week.

On Wednesday (2/9/15) a small inflatable boat set sail from the Turkish beach resort of Bodrum in the hope of crossing the Aegean Sea to the Greek island of Kos which is around 4km (2.5 miles) away. Unfortunately the boat soon overturned and 12 of those on board drowned.

Amongst them were Abdullah and Rehan Kurdi along with their two small children, Aylan (3) and Ghalib (5). Syrian Kurds from the city of Kobane the Kurdis had fled first to Turkey and in the wake of Turkey's crackdown on Kurds that have included mass arrests and air-strikes were trying to flee again to the European Union (EU).

Photographs of Aylan Kurdi's lifeless body both lying on the tourist beach and being carried away by a Turkish policeman have been beamed around the world and become the defining images of the week, if not the entire refugee crisis.

I still have extremely vivid memories of 562 fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) giving their lives in a 134 day battle so families such as the Kurdis would no longer have to flee Kobane. As a result I personally took the photographs of Aylan Kurdi as a punch in the guts.

This isn't really the time for "I told you so" but on December 30th 2014 (30/12/14) the "Blue Sky M" a cargo ship that had set sail from Korfez in Turkey days earlier radioed the Greek Coast Guard to tell them was out of control on the Ionian Sea and were set to crash into the Italian coast. This prompted an emergency rescue operation by both Greece and Italy that saw the ship and the 970 Syrian refugees aboard rescued the following day (31/12/15).

On January 1st 2015 (1/1/15) another cargo ship - the MV Ezadeen - reported that it was similarly out of control in the Ionian Sea. Again this prompted another emergency rescue operation by the Greek and Italian coastguards along with a civilian Icelandic ship that was in the area. On January 2nd (2/1/15) 360 Syrian refugees were taken ashore in Italy.

At the time both of these incidents were seen as a warning that due to the deteriorating situations in Syria and Libya along with the EU's decision to end "Operation Mare Nostrum" maritime patrol and rescue operation this summer would be absolutely brutal in terms of migrants trying and dying to seek sanctuary in the EU by crossing the Mediterranean, Aegean and Ionian Seas.

The EU responded by slightly increasing the resources of the much smaller "Operation Triton" which replaced Mare Nostrum but took no action to determine what would happen to the refugees once they arrived in the EU.

On April 14th (14/4/15) an unregistered boat from Libya sank in the Mediterranean with the loss of 400 lives - mainly refugees from the country. Five days later on April 19th (19/4/15) another unregistered boat from Libya sank in the Mediterranean - this time with the loss of 700 lives. By coincidence that very same day ISIL's Libya branch released a video showing the beheading of 30 Christians simply for the crime of being Christians.

Again this should have served as a warning to the international community and in particular the EU that due to the worsening situations in Syria and Libya this summer was going to be absolutely brutal in terms of refugees trying and dying to find sanctuary.

This time the EU did respond by suggesting that each of the 28 member states sign up to take a fair quota of refugees from nations in conflict with ISIL.

Despite the fact that this "fair quota" would be defined by a weighting system that would see poorer nations and nations with their own, internal political instabilities receive far fewer refugees then richer, stable nations the idea was shot down by the new, eastern member states such as Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the richer western nations of Denmark, the Republic of Ireland and the UK.

I think the main thing that has hampered the EU's response to the refugee crisis is a widespread - even at the highest levels of certain governments - confusion between those seeking political asylum as refugees and economic migrants who move around the EU.

Although on a Sunday afternoon I don't want to get bogged down in the legal specifics generally it is a condition of EU membership that a country agrees that citizens of all EU member states are citizens of all other EU member states. Therefore if someone in Warsaw, Poland decides they want to migrate to live and work in London, UK it is no different to someone in Manchester, UK deciding they want to migrate to live and work in London.

Due to the speed at which the EU has expanded eastward to include nations that are not politically, economically or socially developed as nations in the west this has seen a mass migration from poorer nations in the east to richer nations in the west.

This has created a lot of tension both in the nations in the west where the migrants are moving too and in the nations in the east where the migrants are moving from. For example Romania's 2015 Eurovision Song Contest entry was largely a plea for Romanian parents who had left the country looking for work to return in order to look after their children.

This economic migration within the EU is completely different from the refugees who are flooding into the EU from nations such as Syria in search of political asylum.

One of the big differences is that to be considered a refugee a person will first have to register with the host government. They will then have to prove that they have a legitimate fear of being persecuted in their own country and are therefore no longer able to live there.

It is not possible to say that people from certain countries are legitimate refugees and therefore worthy of asylum while people from other countries are not. After all Julian Assange is currently being granted asylum in Ecuador over fears of persecution at the hands of Sweden, Australia and the UK. Particularly during my legal issues of 2013 it was also suggested that if I were to claim asylum on the grounds of persecution at the hands of the UK I would be successful.

However if you have fled from a country such as Syria or Libya the current situation in those countries make it almost certain that you will be granted asylum. Unless of course you're a member of ISIL

If an asylum seeker is successful and granted refugee status then they do not automatically become a citizen of the country in which they've been granted asylum. Instead they are granted what is known as "temporary leave to remain."

Although things like summary execution and torture are definitely out a host nation is pretty much free to impose whatever conditions it likes on that leave to remain. For example a nation can impose the condition that a refugee must remain in a detention centre which although there are legal semantics is essentially just a prison. Short of that a nation can order that a refugee signs in at a designated police station every day as if the police had placed them on bail.

Amid the concerns about economic migration and those "job stealing migrants" I think some of the most important conditions that can be imposed are a ban on migrants working or accessing public funds. That last one means that refugees are not entitled to free housing, social welfare payments or medical care. However obviously there is little point granting someone refugee status if you're then going to watch them die of exposure or starve to death.

The biggest difference between economic migration and refugee status is that refugee status is temporary. That means as soon as the war is won or the dictator is overthrown and a person is no longer in fear of persecution they can be sent straight back to their home country.

What I find so infuriating about the EU's position is that if they would stop denying that the problem exists they could start working on a common set of rules about what conditions are imposed on refugees to remove the need for the refugees to effectively cherry-pick the nations that impose the strictest conditions.

For example if the UK were to cancel the 2016 Reading and Leeds music festival it could quite easily house some 260,000 refugees in temporary buildings on those camp sites. If Glastonbury disappeared we could host another 100,000 at little cost.

Within the UK the response to the death of Aylan Kurdi has been particularly dramatic. Although the "Daily Express" continues to waver even some of Britain's most right-wing newspapers have come out to support action to help refugees. This has prompted Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron who has long used the issue of EU migration to cover up the failings of his own incompetent economic and social policies to announce and increase in the support for Syrian refugees.

Aside from USD150million in extra funding for refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan Cameron announced on Friday (4/9/15) that the UK will accept an extra 4000 refugees directly from those camps but none of the refugees that are already within the EU.

Although I think it's pretty obvious that this distinction has been made because the UK intends to continue blocking an EU-wide response it is claimed that this is to avoid encouraging refugees attempting to leave the camps in an effort to enter the EU.

Here I have to say that Cameron does have something of a point because the deaths of refugees entering the EU by irregular means (technically it's not illegal) would be entirely eliminated if the EU arranged transport from Syria to their nations. However Cameron's idea that the UK accepting just 4000 refugees would stop the flow of refugees to the EU is nothing but a joke because the conditions in those camps are extremely poor.

Not counting the camps in Iraq - such as the Dohuk camps that Turkey keeps trying to bomb  - it costs around USD1.2bn to run camps for Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan each year.

Due to the sheer number of refugees this works out at around USD0.30 (20 pence) per person, per day. This covers everything from shelter, water, food, clothing, medical treatment and education. It is only given to people who are so destitute that they have absolutely no money. Due to a massive spending shortfall the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is frequently forced to suspend even this tiny payment.

Although the Gulf State refuse to contribute any money to the running of these camps many of their wealthy 'elite' do take advantage of them to provide very young women for what are termed "pleasure marriages" (Nikah al-Mut'ah). In short these camps have become hotbeds of the sort of rape, sexual abuse and sex-trafficking that ISIL have very much made their calling card.

So no, the UK accepting 4000 refugees from those camps is not going to remove the massive push factors that see the other 3,996,000 refugees want to leave those camps. The only thing that is going to do that is ending this war.

Sadly I don't see US President Barack Obama having what it takes to do that. This is particularly true if he is taking advice from weak little men like David Cameron and his incompetent Finance Minister George Osborne.

17:50 on 6/9/15 (UK date).